Ta-Nehisi Coates

Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think it's really important to be conscious of yourself and the world around you. For me, that meant reading a lot…

— 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…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“For realists, the true story of the Civil War illuminates the problem of ostensibly sober-minded compromise with powerful, and intractable, evil.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

There's a long tradition of black folks pleading with white people. It's a tradition that emerges from political necessity, so I get…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

You can't make a direct comparison between middle-class African Americans and middle-class white Americans, affluent African Americans and affluent white Americans. The…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I had never seen a black man like Barack Obama. He talked to white people in a new language—as though he actually…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“There is a notion out there that black people enjoy the Sisyphean struggle against racism. In fact, most of us live for…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards’ code of ethics warned that “a Realtor should never be instrumental…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“There were distinct advantages to black atheism, to a disbelief in dreams and moral appeal. First, it removed the weight of believing…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“But if you see black identity as you see southern identity, or Irish identity, or Italian identity—not as a separate trunk, but…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

One can say Senator Sanders should have more explicit antiracist policy within his racial justice platform, not just more general stuff, and…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“One strain of African American thought holds that it is a violent black recklessness—the black gangster, the black rioter—that strikes the ultimate…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“And I know that there are black boys and black girls out there lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Even the Dreamers, lost in their great reverie, feel it, for it’s Billie they reach for in sadness, and Isley they hum…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“If there was one thing that South Carolina feared more than bad Negro government,” wrote Du Bois, “it was good Negro government.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“… writing is always some form of interpretation, some form of translating the specificity of one’s roots or expertise or even one’s…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

There is some group of Americans who are really, really curious to understand how we ended up at this point, where every…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

My job is to look out on that world that I write about and be as honest as I possibly can about…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

If, to the end of its existence, America harbors white supremacy, I don't know how remarkable that would be. France has dealt…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully. Better you knuckle up and go for yours…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I love living around black people. Home is home. We suffer under racism and the physical deprivations that come with that, but…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

In the 1930s and the 1940s, we set up the FHA. We set up the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. We set up…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

When people hear the term 'political prisoner,' especially on the Left, it becomes a kind of abstraction. Folks are aware of injustice,…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the White House -…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

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…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

You don't actually have control of the position people want you to be in. If they say, 'You king of the blacks,'…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“culturally conservative black Americans who are convinced that integration, and to some extent the entire liberal dream, robbed them of their natural…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

[E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates