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" 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. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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" The thing people have to remember is there's nothing natural about racism as it exists in America. I mean, we know this historically. We can look at 1619, when Africans first came here, and how early African slaves intermixed pretty indiscriminately with indentured white servants. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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" When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I'm always surprised. I don't know if it's my low expectations for white people or what. "

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" Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy. "

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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 started writing regularly for 'The Atlantic' roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated. "

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

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" It's kind of selfish to say that you're only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see. "

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" The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is not, you know, necessarily about, you know, whether you're a good person or not or whether you see black people, you know, on the street, and you're willing to shake their hands and be polite. "

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" Many, many people of the Revolutionary generation, the generation that fought in the Revolutionary War, understood that slavery was somehow in contradiction to what America was saying it was. And many of those folks also, at the very least, gave land to African Americans when they were liberated. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" You don't make a case for reparations thinking, 'Oh yeah, people are gonna love this.' I didn't see that coming. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me. "

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" You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" Donald Trump did not appear by magic. "

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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. "

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" The only people who usually have input on my writing are my wife and my editor. I'm not in conversation with anyone except the people I report on and the people I work with. "

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" If, to the end of its existence, America harbors white supremacy, I don't know how remarkable that would be. France has dealt with anti-Semitism since its inception. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was my motivating force. That it has become what it has become is shocking to me. I just wanted to be able to take care of my kids. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" 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

" It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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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. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" There isn't a dude outside my dad who had greater influence on my life. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" There is some group of Americans who are really, really curious to understand how we ended up at this point, where every week it seems like you can turn on your TV and see some sort of abuse being heaped on black people. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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" The ties between the Obama White House and the hip-hop community are genuine. "

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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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" The lives of African-Americans in this country are characterized by violence for most of our history. Much of that violence, at least to some extent, you know, done by the very state that's supposed to protect them. "

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" Chaos is what we have. That is what I believe. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates