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" 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. "

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" Breitbart media is named after the same gentleman who basically framed Shirley Sherrod during the Obama administration. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

After

Gentleman

Media

" I am always surprised people are surprised that people haven't read things. "

" To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world. "

" 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

Enjoy

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I constantly write about my safety walking to and from school, and then I would come home at night, and I would cut on the TV, and I would watch a show like 'The Wonder Years,' or I would watch, you know, some other show like 'Family Ties.' "

" 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

Writing

Want

" I've seen, and liked, 'Insecure' and 'Atlanta.' "

" It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my mind: a violent place. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Racism is a physical experience. "

" Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized. "

" I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did. "

" In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage. "

" I'm not going to break up my family, not for a book. "

" People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time. "

" 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. "

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

" The plunder of black communities is not a bump along the road, but it is, in fact, the road itself that you can't have in America without enslavement, without Jim Crow, terrorism, everything that came after that. "

" I feel like my job is to look at the world and to report what I see, to write what I see as honestly and directly as I can. I don't want to cut it or make it easy, but be as direct as I can. "

" I don't completely understand why people in Aspen want to hear what I have to say. "

" If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America. "

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

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

" 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. "

" We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that. "