Symbolism Quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“It has been said that the first black presidency was mostly “symbolic,” a dismissal that deeply underestimates the power of symbols. Symbols don’t just represent reality but can become tools to change it.” quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates — Download Open image

““It has been said that the first black presidency was mostly “symbolic,” a dismissal that deeply underestimates the power of symbols. Symbols don’t just represent reality but can become tools to change it.””

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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“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 of theater at work in which Trump is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The…

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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.

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What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all…

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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,…

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[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 embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.

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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…

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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…

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“I drove away, as always, thinking of you. I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves.…

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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 talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean…

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The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited.

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[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to…

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Caught in a racial uproar, people make all sorts of promises to make amends. Whatever they do tends to be heavy on symbolism and…

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“Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world. ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as…

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I grew up watching monster movies and horror movies, which I felt were like fairy tales and I think this always spoke to me.…

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[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 embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.

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All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the…

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“our perceptions of the external world are habitually clouded by the verbal notions in terms of which we do our thinking. We are for…

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“her skilled use of her body, especially her eyes and hands, when communicating with people enabled millions sense she was a conduit between royalty,…

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