American - Journalist | September 30, 1975 -
You don't actually have control of the position people want you to be in. If they say, 'You king of the blacks,' you're king of the blacks - whether you like it or not.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
KingPeopleControlYouSayWant
Fighting, I guess, was never the real reason I read comic books as a kid. The fighting was an important part, an integral part of it; I don't know I would've read it without it.
FightingKnowImportantNeverKid
Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers - among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black.
PerspectiveBlackLearnPersonGo
I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23.
MomBornI Was BornHis
I had to learn to not be so hard. And I had a wife and, at that time, a partner when Samori was born, and for most of Samori's life, a partner, who, for whatever reason, did not have to learn that and was very tender and very, very soft with him.
LifeTimeWifePartnerLearnBorn
I write what I write in the way that I write it. I'm not being abstract, you know. I'm talking about something that, you know, is a part of my life.
LifeMy LifeTalkingYouKnowWay
Donald Trump begins his political career in birtherism. That idea is connected to a very, very old notion that African-Americans are not citizens.
PoliticalCareerDonald TrumpOld
Black people have been fighting for basic citizenship rights since the inception of the country.
PeopleBlackFightingCitizenship
If I have to jump six feet to get the same thing that you have to jump two feet for - that's how racism works.
RacismFeetYouJumpTwoSame
When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad.
TimeChildhoodPeopleTalkingBad
I think Barack Obama was born into a home not just to a white woman and white grandparents, but a white woman and white grandparents who shockingly told him it was okay that he was black and that he should not be ashamed of it and that he should, in fact, be proud of it.
HomeWomanProudBlackThinkBorn
American myths have never been colorless.
AmericanNeverBeenMyths
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