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" I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Sorry
People
Movies
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" Kaepernick's protest has been very successful. I really appreciate the fact that he's been giving away money to organisations; he pledged to give away a million dollars, and he's been doing it. "
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Giving
Doing
Appreciate
" Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi. "
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Flag
America
War
" I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That's not a mistake. "
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Time
Mistake
Long
" The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited. "
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Presentation
Civil
Rights
" I had no expectations of white people at all. "
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Had
People
White
" I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's good. If it doesn't, that's too bad. "
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Think
Speak
Job
" When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That's not true of movies, where you see everything. "
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You
Space
Mind
" I started writing regularly for 'The Atlantic' roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Writing
Started
Got
" Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Men
Parents
Time
" When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Childhood
People
Talking
" I think it's really important to be conscious of yourself and the world around you. For me, that meant reading a lot and reporting. "
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Me
Yourself
Reading
" When people hear the term 'political prisoner,' especially on the Left, it becomes a kind of abstraction. Folks are aware of injustice, and they're aware that there are folks in prison who are in prison, you know, largely because of their activism. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Injustice
Prison
People
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mind
Body
People
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Kind
World
Side
" There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the White House - who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted by white supremacy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
White
House
Say
" My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Much
Information
Tradition
" Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Theft
Same
Return
" I write what I write in the way that I write it. I'm not being abstract, you know. I'm talking about something that, you know, is a part of my life. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You
Know
Life
" We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Racism
Past
Political
" I think Barack Obama was born into a home not just to a white woman and white grandparents, but a white woman and white grandparents who shockingly told him it was okay that he was black and that he should not be ashamed of it and that he should, in fact, be proud of it. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Home
Think
Born
" Long view of history shows evil triumphing more often than we'd like to admit. That's just how it is. I don't despair too much about dying, either. It's just a fact of being human. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
View
Admit
Dying
" The African-American tradition, in the main, is very, very church-based, very, very Christian. It accepts, you know, certain narratives about the world. I didn't really have that present in my house. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Tradition
Know
World
" When you know that people know who you are, you are always working - and not the work you want to do. You are sort of performing, because you know they are looking - or at least glancing - at you. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Want
Work
You
" It's kind of selfish to say that you're only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You
Selfish
Fight
" When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
People
Dead
100 Years
" My belief is in the chaos of the world and that you have to find your peace within the chaos and that you still have to find some sort of mission. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
World
Mission
Find
" I just think that if one is going to preach nonviolence and one is going to advocate for nonviolence, one's standard should be consistent. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Just
Think
Advocate
" It meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books. It was this beautiful place that I felt pop culture should look like. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Place
People
Me
" It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper. "
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Me
Chaos
America
" Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Forces
Abraham
White