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 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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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You 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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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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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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.
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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
TA-NEHISI COATES