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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don’t know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn’t feel like a line to me.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Bridge Contradiction Country Felt Optimism People Peron Sincere
I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Head Own Thinking Writer
Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Democratizer Fact Great History Image Reconciling Self Yelling
It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Exploiter Made People Some
Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Boundary Community Human Ironic Pleasurable Relationship Self Word
Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Better Bow Chaim Go Head Knuckle Tuck
Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Back Giving Know might Opportunity Other Pay People Right Want
An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Color Concentrate Country Effect Instead Melanin Paired Poverty Spreadma Cross
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Country Equal Humdres Separate Slavery Two Year
Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Country Land People Person President State United
With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Color Come Concentration Country Disadvantage Injured Isolation Robbed Segregation
What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through–that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Feel Heartbroken Know Moment Need Right Tell
I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Between Black Border Boy Crack Education Era Eye Great Height Hydra Instructor Murder Pitch Pregnancy Prison Teenage
That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Accident Actually Anything Begin Country First Job People Peron President Trade
Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Condition Drinking Folk Home House Morning Neighbourhood Ordinary Country Part See
This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Country Feel Many People Person Police Skepticism Towards

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.

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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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