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" I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Violence
Situation
Born
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" 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. "
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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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" Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage. "
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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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Know
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" 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. "
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Week
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" Storytellers have the right to answer any question they choose. "
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Question
Choose
Any
" There isn't a dude outside my dad who had greater influence on my life. "
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My Life
Dude
Influence
" It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind. "
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Fact
Quickness
Said
" We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I've been among those kids, it ultimately is fear. "
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Think
Walking
Black
" 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. "
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Want
Work
You
" Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book. "
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Everybody
Big
Important
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Two
Racism
Jump
" Outside of hip-hop, it was in comics that I most often found the aesthetics and wisdom of my world reflected. "
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Hip-Hop
Outside
Wisdom
" Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing 'mere' about symbols. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Critics
Nothing
Symbols
" I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did. "
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Expected
Did
Become
" American myths have never been colorless. "
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American
Myths
Never
" 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
People
Take Care
Black
" 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
America
Racism
Remember
" Racism is a physical experience. "
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Physical
Experience
Racism
" The Ku Klux Klan is the most profligate domestic terrorist organization in this country's history. "
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Most
Organization
Country
" If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
American
White
You
" 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
" Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Forces
Abraham
White
" Abraham Lincoln is singular. Abraham Lincoln, before he was killed, stood up and, you know, for the first time from any sitting president, stood for the right for suffrage for African-American men who had served in the Civil War. And that's a limited suffrage, but it was quite radical at the time. "
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Time
Sitting
Men
" There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy. "
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Way
Policy
Understand
" Superheroes are best imagined in comic books. The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much. "
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Connect
Best
Imagination
" 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
" For me, my writing benefits from my experience. "
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Writing
Benefits
Experience
" The casualties in the Civil War amount to more than all other wars - all other American wars combined. More people died in that war than World War II, World War I, Vietnam, etc. And that was a war for white supremacy. It was a war to erect a state in which the basis of it was the enslavement of black people. "
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World
American
Black
" I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Sorry
People
Movies