Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
White supremacy is a very, very popular and trenchant belief in this country's history and heritage. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
If I could have anything - you know, and this is across the board for any presidential candidate - I would have… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“For that more ennobling narrative, as for much of American history, the fact of black people is a problem.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The warlords of history are still kicking our heads in, and no one, not our fathers, not our Gods, is coming to… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“In those days I imagined racism as a tumor that could be isolated and removed from the body of America, not as… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Americans, too belong to a class—one responsible for and intrinsically tied to a history of torture, bombings, and coups d’état carried out… — 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
One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The promise of a cost-free escape from history should have made me suspicious. But what ultimately made me question the “rising tide”… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Here we find the roots of American wealth and democracy—in the for-profit destruction of the most important asset available to any people,… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Five years later, 750,000 Americans were dead. But the fact that such carnage had been wreaked for a cause that Ulysses S.… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The Jim Crow South,” writes Ira Katznelson, a history and political science professor at Columbia, “was the one collaborator America’s democracy could… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Still later, I read Ira Katznelson’s history of discrimination, When Affirmative Action Was White, which argued that similar exclusions applied to other… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“When it comes to the Civil War, all of our popular understanding, our popular history and culture, our great films, the subtext… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“And now the lies of the Civil War and the lies of these post-racial years began to resonate with each other, and… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage,… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“For African Americans, unfreedom is the historical norm. Enslavement lasted for nearly 250 years. The 150 years that followed have encompassed debt… — 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
I think the sad fact is, there's a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman. And I think… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The weakness in the case for integration was that it ultimately rested on a critical mass of white people playing along, either… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“We invoke the words of Jefferson and Lincoln because they say something about our legacy and our traditions. We do this because… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
[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 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 different. We… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited. — 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 ability to… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
![“[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 symbolism was in - and this sounds really, really small, but it's actually big for African-Americans - the symbolism was not in being an…” quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/5dc/ta-nehisi-coates-733_achievement_winning-the-white-house-was-an-achieveme_47651.jpg)
![“[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/img-quotes/feb/ta-nehisi-coates-733_ability_grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama_75931.jpg)