American - Journalist | September 30, 1975 -
Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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It meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books. It was this beautiful place that I felt pop culture should look like.
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I think it's really important to be conscious of yourself and the world around you. For me, that meant reading a lot and reporting.
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The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration.
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When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That's not true of movies, where you see everything.
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For nearly a century and a half, this country deluded itself into thinking that its greatest calamity, the Civil War, had nothing to do with one of its greatest sins, enslavement. It deluded itself in this manner despite available evidence to the contrary.
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It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper.
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It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.
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I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don't think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don't think it is. It's just true.
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I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate.
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As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.
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White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.
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