Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

American - Journalist | September 30, 1975 -

We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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The casualties in the Civil War amount to more than all other wars - all other American wars combined. More people died in that war than World War II, World War I, Vietnam, etc. And that was a war for white supremacy. It was a war to erect a state in which the basis of it was the enslavement of black people.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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I feel like my job is to look at the world and to report what I see, to write what I see as honestly and directly as I can. I don't want to cut it or make it easy, but be as direct as I can.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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The Ku Klux Klan is the most profligate domestic terrorist organization in this country's history.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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There's a long tradition of black folks pleading with white people. It's a tradition that emerges from political necessity, so I get it; I'm just not very interested in it.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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I just want to be really clear about this: Anyone who has read Colin Powell's biography - there's an entire section where he talks about experiencing segregation. Colin Powell did not appear when he became head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's not how it happened.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.'

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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If your response to the first black president is to say they weren't born in this country... you might be a white supremacist.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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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, something that the show's more militant characters can't see.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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