Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The question is unanswerable, which is not to say futile.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think human societies tend to be problematic.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Serious history was the West, and the West was white.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I've seen, and liked, 'Insecure' and 'Atlanta.'

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Storytellers have the right to answer any question they choose.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me,”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I have missed seeing you like this, brother." "And how is that?" "At war.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“This idea was the deep subtext of our lives. It had to be. The visible text was survivalist.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I am always surprised people are surprised that people haven't read things.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

White supremacy is a very, very popular and trenchant belief in this country's history and heritage.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The loudest of doomsayers, so often, carry the weightiest of sin.”

— 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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“… 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

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

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

“There was more out there than I had ever hoped for, and I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“That war was inaugurated not reluctantly, but lustily, by men who believed property in humans to be the cornerstone of civilization, to…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“To Trump whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular.…

— 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

“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

“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

“Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own,…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The notion that the Tea Party represented the righteous, if unfocused, anger of an aggrieved class allowed everyone from leftists to neoliberals…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The crude communal myth about black men is that we are in some manner unavailable to black women—either jailed, dead, gay, or…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I know now that all people hunger for a noble, unsullied past, that as sure as the black nationalist dreams of a…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“For that particular community, for my community, the message has long been clear: The Civil War is a story for white people—acted…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“All of these heroes had failed to cajole and coerce the masters of America. Their ambition of a better world had been…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates