Quote

Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. - Ta

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ta-Nehisi Coates
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: September 30
Blogger
Comics Writer
Educator
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
TaNehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates
Country
Liberty
Erected
Life
Land
Plunder
People
Upon
Obnoxious
United
Specifically
President
Exclusive
Black
Racist
America
Obama
States
Labor
Congenitally

More quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Image
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 Coates
Image
Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words - often ironic and self-deprecating - are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
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 Coates
Image
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, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. 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 Coates
Image
I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
I think the sad fact is, there's a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman. 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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
[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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that's a statement.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth, giving opportunities to other people, it's only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House. And I think, like, there's a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver. 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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
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. 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
Image
The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good. To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Image
In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
Ta-Nehisi Coates