Ta-Nehisi Coates famous quotes

03-28-2025

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others...
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Racism #Hatred #Broads
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

#Country #Thinking #Long
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

#Years #Two #America
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

#Country #People #African American
I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#World #Shapes #Strange
I think, as a writer, I'm in my own head.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Thinking
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

#Past #America #Looks
What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Responsibility #People #Black
If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Judging #Matter #Pursuit
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

#Country #Past #White
Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Race
When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#War #Calling #Halfway
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

#Heartbroken #Needs #Moments
You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Taken #World #Myth
The essence of American racism is disrespect.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Essence #Racism #Disrespect
Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Racism #Groups #Skepticism
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
What Iâ€™m talking about is more than recompense for past injusticesâ€”more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What Iâ€™m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling â€œpatriotismâ€ 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.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Spiritual #Dog #Mean
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 #Knuckles

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