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" I had no expectations of white people at all. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Had
People
White
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" Donald Trump did not appear by magic. "
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Did
" There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
History
I Am
Identity
" I started writing regularly for 'The Atlantic' roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Writing
Started
Got
" 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
Skin
Poverty
America
" I don't want them to read what I'm writing and say, 'I think that's right,' and agree with me. I want them to read something and then walk away and be haunted by it. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Writing
Want
" If Obama's enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country's first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop's foundational generation. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
First
Black
Power
" I don't completely understand why people in Aspen want to hear what I have to say. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hear
Want
Why
" I enjoy the challenge of trying to say things beautifully. The message is secondary in that sense. Obviously, I have something that I want to say that's very, very important to me - but the process of actually crafting it is essential. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Process
Me
Enjoy
" Forgiveness is a big part of - especially post-civil rights movement - is a big part of African-American Christianity, and I wasn't raised within the Christian church; I wasn't raised within any church. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Rights
Forgiveness
Church
" 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
" I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Violence
Situation
Born
" We had particular policies in this country that resulted in the larger share of poverty that we have in African-American communities. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
African-American
Poverty
Had
" My chief identity, to my mind, was not 'writer' but 'college dropout.' "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
College
Writer
Mind
" Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers - among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black
Go
Learn
" 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
" White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
White
Racial
Never
" I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black
Think
People
" In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Art
Imagine
" You can't make a direct comparison between middle-class African Americans and middle-class white Americans, affluent African Americans and affluent white Americans. The amount of wealth tends to be less. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
White
Comparison
Wealth
" I am always surprised people are surprised that people haven't read things. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I Am
Always
Things
" I've been very, very careful to tell people what I am qualified to talk about and what I'm not qualified to talk about. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Careful
Been
Tell
" 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
" Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Forces
Abraham
White
" When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it's only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We're talking about something that's so surreal, it's just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
World
Imagination
Know
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Got
Freedom
Government
" The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Presentation
Civil
Rights
" To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black
Before
Naked
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Learn
Born
Partner
" Amiri Baraka went to Howard. Lucille Clifton went to Howard. Ossie Davis went to Howard. And I was aware of that when I was there. Charles Drew went to Howard. Thurgood Marshall went to the law school. Being aware of that and having all of that brought to bear, again, it's one of those things that I can't really separate from my career as a writer. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Bear
Career
Law
" There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Way
Policy
Understand