Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system. It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited. 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.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Mean, Opportunity, People

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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

  Country, Land, America

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• The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully. Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Men, Bully, World

  Ta-Nehisi Coates (2008). “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood”, p.66, Spiegel & Grau

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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.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Country, Brutality, Rewards

  "Letter to My Son" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, www.theatlantic.com. July 4, 2015.

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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

  Government, People, Black

  "Color-Blind Policy, Color-Conscious Morality" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, www.theatlantic.com. May 13, 2015.

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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 .

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Mistake, Mean, White

  Source: www.npr.org

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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

  Country, Dumb, Idiot

  "15 Powerful Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Quotes To Make You Want To Read 'Between The World And Me'" by Aaron Barksdale, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 14, 2015.

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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

  Country, Color, America

  Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017). “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy”, p.144, One World

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• Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Race

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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

  Numbers, Years, Black

  "Ta-Nehisi Coates: 'In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body'" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, www.theguardian.com. September 20, 2015.

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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

  Crow, Hawaii, Segregation

  Source: www.npr.org

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• These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann's to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Pioneers, Fields, Antidepressants

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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. You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there's some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Morning, Drinking, Home

  Source: www.npr.org

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• I think, as a writer, I'm in my own head.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Thinking, My Own

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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

  Thinking, Government, White

  Source: www.npr.org

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• I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Thinking, White, President

  Source: www.npr.org

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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

  Mom, Phrases, Use

  Source: www.npr.org

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• What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Mother, Two, White

  Source: www.npr.org

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• It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction. I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Running, Believe, Optimistic

  Source: www.npr.org

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• 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

  Bridges, People, Optimism

  Source: www.npr.org

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• [Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. 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.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Winning, Thinking, Symbolism

  Source: www.npr.org

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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

  Reading, Thinking, White

  Source: www.npr.org

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• In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Community, African American, Patronizing

  Source: www.npr.org

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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

  African American, Way, Flip

  Source: www.npr.org

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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

  Voting, Demographics, Percent

  Source: www.npr.org

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