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 COATESI think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
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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.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.
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They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
TA-NEHISI COATES