Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
If your response to the first black president is to say they weren't born in this country... you might be a white… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
Black people have been fighting for basic citizenship rights since the inception of the country. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good. To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old.… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record of hiring African-American writers.… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
I think there's a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Black-on-black crime’ is jargon, violence to language, which vanishes the men who engineered the covenants, who fixed the loans, who planned the… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“To Trump whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
“The focus on one sector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
I think 'Dear White People,' the show, is a tremendous artistic achievement. It's always hinting that there is something beyond the pleading and wokeness,… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. The… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
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… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
“I drove away, as always, thinking of you. I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves.… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
“I sensed the schools were hiding something, drugging us with false morality so that we would not see, so that we did not ask:… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
You don't make a case for reparations thinking, 'Oh yeah, people are gonna love this.' I didn't see that coming. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
“And I know that there are black boys and black girls out there lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or stranded in… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share
![“[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.” quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/feb/ta-nehisi-coates-733_ability_grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama_75931.png)
