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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, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Ta-Nehisi Coates
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: September 30
Blogger
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Baltimore
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TaNehisi 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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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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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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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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[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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