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 COATESLot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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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 am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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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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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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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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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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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.
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
TA-NEHISI COATES