Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
TA-NEHISI COATESYou know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn’t directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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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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My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.
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You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
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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.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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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