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" 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
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" Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount. "
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" You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do. "
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" We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me. "
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" Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. "
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" Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It's fairly obvious. "
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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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" I think human societies tend to be problematic. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I Think
Think
Societies
" Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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
White
America
Existence
" Long view of history shows evil triumphing more often than we'd like to admit. That's just how it is. I don't despair too much about dying, either. It's just a fact of being human. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Admit
Dying
" When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Childhood
People
Talking
" 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
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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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Skin
Poverty
America
" Fighting, I guess, was never the real reason I read comic books as a kid. The fighting was an important part, an integral part of it; I don't know I would've read it without it. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Fighting
Kid
" There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the White House - who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted by white supremacy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
White
House
Say
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Power
Up
Fear
" There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Way
Policy
Understand
" It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Fact
Quickness
Said
" 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. "
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" I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Wish
Black
Choice
" For nearly a century and a half, this country deluded itself into thinking that its greatest calamity, the Civil War, had nothing to do with one of its greatest sins, enslavement. It deluded itself in this manner despite available evidence to the contrary. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Half
" It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself. "
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Black
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" I started writing regularly for 'The Atlantic' roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Started
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" 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
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
World
American
Black
" The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
American
Her
Proud
" I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Expected
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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. "
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Education
Flag
" 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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History
People
" 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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