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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

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Ta-Nehisi Coates
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: September 30
Blogger
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TaNehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates
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More quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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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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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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
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What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through--that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that's a statement.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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
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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
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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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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
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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
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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. 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
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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
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
Ta-Nehisi Coates