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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. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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" I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed. "

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" The African-American tradition, in the main, is very, very church-based, very, very Christian. It accepts, you know, certain narratives about the world. I didn't really have that present in my house. "

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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. "

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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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" My job is to look out on that world that I write about and be as honest as I possibly can about that world. If that's optimistic and uplifting, OK. If it's not, OK. "

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" 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. "

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" I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23. "

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" For me, my writing benefits from my experience. "

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I guess I'd be put in the ID politics camp. But there is really nothing in the world-view of, say, Bernie Sanders I actually disagree with. I'd like a guaranteed income, single-payer health care, a stronger safety net, etc. The problem is the temptation to paper over historically fraught issues to achieve that is tempting. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I don't attempt to make people uncomfortable; I think that my standards in terms of art and journalism always have necessitated my discomfort. "

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" 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. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do. "

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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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" There's a long tradition of black folks pleading with white people. It's a tradition that emerges from political necessity, so I get it; I'm just not very interested in it. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" 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. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" We had particular policies in this country that resulted in the larger share of poverty that we have in African-American communities. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

African-American

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" 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

" I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists. "

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. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves. "

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

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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. "

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" American myths have never been colorless. "

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" It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true - his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. "

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