In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage. — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I'm always surprised. I don't know if it's my… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
If I have to jump six feet to get the same thing that you have to jump two feet for - that's… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Some of us make it out. But the game is played with loaded dice. I wish I had known more, and I… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation: These bonded white people into a broad aristocracy united by the salient fact of unblackness.” — 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 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
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others... — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The civil rights generation is exiting the American stage—not in a haze of nostalgia but in a cloud of gloom, troubled by… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Liberals today mostly view racism not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Pointing to citizens who voted for both Obama and Trump does not disprove racism; it evinces it. To secure the White House,… — 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
You had eight years before President Trump, a situation where the opposition party basically ran in opposition to the president on a… — 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 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
“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 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… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Ideas like cosmic justice, collective hope, and national redemption had no meaning for me. The truth was in the everything that came… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“There's a liberal story that limited opportunities, and barriers, lead to employment problems and criminal records, but then there's another story that… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“The tightly intertwined stories of the white working class and black Americans go back to the prehistory of the United States—and the… — 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
“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
“I came up in segregated West Baltimore. I understood black as a culture—as Etta James, jumping the broom, the Electric Slide. I… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“When presidential candidate Barack Obama presented himself to the black community, he was not to be believed. It strained credulity to think… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“Every February, my classmates and I were herded into assemblies for a ritual review of the Civil Rights Movement. Our teachers urged… — 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
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
“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
White supremacy is a very, very popular and trenchant belief in this country's history and heritage. — 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
White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers. — 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)