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" People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Individual
Things
Time
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" When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
War
Education
Flag
" For me, my writing benefits from my experience. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Writing
Benefits
Experience
" 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
" 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
White
America
Existence
" I love America the way I love my family - I was born into it. And there's no escape out of it. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Escape
Born
Love
" Like a lot of people, I'm very, very concerned about Senator Clinton's record. I'm very, very concerned about where her positions were in the 1990s, when we had some of the most disgusting legislation in terms of our criminal justice, really, in this country's history. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
History
People
Her
" It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Chaos
America
" We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Losers
Like
" You can't tolerate anybody attempting to threaten or intimidate your body. You must respond with force. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Body
Force
Respond
" I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record of hiring African-American writers. It was really that simple. And I think with the proliferation of the Internet and Internet media, it has been a little harder to maintain that gatekeeper position. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Work
Media
Internet
" I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That's not a mistake. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Time
Mistake
Long
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Over
Process
" It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my mind: a violent place. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mind
Always
View
" 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
" Donald Trump did not appear by magic. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Magic
Appear
Did
" Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black
Flight
Ancestors
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Yourself
Reading
" African Americans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country. We been here since the beginning. Before the beginning. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Country
Beginning
Here
" Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Together
Dreams
History
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Racism
Home
System
" American myths have never been colorless. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
American
Myths
Never
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" One can say Senator Sanders should have more explicit antiracist policy within his racial justice platform, not just more general stuff, and still cast a vote for Senator Sanders and still feel that Senator Sanders is the best option that we have in the race. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Vote
Race
Justice
" Donald Trump begins his political career in birtherism. That idea is connected to a very, very old notion that African-Americans are not citizens. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Political
Career
Connected
" I think human societies tend to be problematic. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I Think
Think
Societies
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You
Space
Mind