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.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
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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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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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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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