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" For me, my writing benefits from my experience. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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" We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory. "

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" The FHA literally drew up the redlining map and then basically distributed - I'm sorry, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation actually did it, and then distributed to banks who used that as policy to determine how they would lend and who they would lend to. The racism in the system was pervasive and total. "

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" You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere. "

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" If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America. "

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" I wouldn't argue that Mitt Romney is a white supremacist. "

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" As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option. "

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" The president of the United States is not a king. You know? Barack Obama was elected by the American people. "

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" People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time. "

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" The soul is part of the body. The mind is part of the body. When folks do physical violence to black people, to black bodies in this country, the soul as we construe it is damaged, too - the mind is damaged, too. "

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" My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that was exactly what was happening all around us. "

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" Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book. "

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" We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that. "

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" I love America the way I love my family - I was born into it. And there's no escape out of it. "

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" Black people have been fighting for basic citizenship rights since the inception of the country. "

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" There's a kind of optimism specifically within Christianity about the world - about whose side God is on. Well, I didn't have any of that in my background. I had physicality and chaos. "

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" I try to write in a way that makes people feel things. "

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" If I have to jump six feet to get the same thing that you have to jump two feet for - that's how racism works. "

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" I constantly write about my safety walking to and from school, and then I would come home at night, and I would cut on the TV, and I would watch a show like 'The Wonder Years,' or I would watch, you know, some other show like 'Family Ties.' "

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" Comic books have a long, fraught history with sexism. "

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" I just want to be really clear about this: Anyone who has read Colin Powell's biography - there's an entire section where he talks about experiencing segregation. Colin Powell did not appear when he became head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's not how it happened. "

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" Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. "

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" The symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency - that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons taking up residence in the castle - assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries. "

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" I had to learn to not be so hard. And I had a wife and, at that time, a partner when Samori was born, and for most of Samori's life, a partner, who, for whatever reason, did not have to learn that and was very tender and very, very soft with him. "

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" The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in. "

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" I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves. "

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" I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did. "

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" When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years. "

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" The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time. "

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" To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world. "

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" We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me. "

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