Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

I know a number of people who - from the comments they make - are going to vote for [Donald] Trump when that curtain closes. But let's keep it real honest here: They are voting for a xenophobic, anti-Latino white supremacist - don't try to pretty it up. This is now the age when people want to be white supremacists, but they don't actually want to be known for it.

White identity politics has permeated our rhetoric.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

The 99 percent of those people who voted for Donald Trump are not Alt-righters. They are not racists. They've never even heard of the word.

That's just how white folks will do you. It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserved of their scorn.

[Donald Trump] has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it.

I mean, but obviously, in people's eyes, it still - it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they're white?

I mean, we're not talking about simply racism, we're taking about white supremacy.

There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin.... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me.

I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anybody's death, but I do think that when the white public uses its press to magnify the fact that there are the lives of white hostages at stake, they don't say "hostages," every paper says "white hostages." They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin.

no case of libel by a negro against a white would even reach a southern court.

Donald Trump has been about we, the people. I just wanted to counter that sound bite because that's part of the problem, bad sound bites. He's been about we the people. If he were just about Donald Trump, you wouldn't have had 14 million people voting for him.

The inference is, that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does like that when a thousand white people surround one dark one. Dark people are always "bad" when they do not admit the Divine Plan like that. A certain Javanese man who sticks up for Indonesian Independence is very lowdown by the papers, and suspected of being a Japanese puppet.

Probably about 35 percent of Donald Trump's supporters do not believe that President [Barack] Obama is Muslim or that he was not born in the United States.Those Trump supporters are not white supremacists. But if Trump did not have the support of Obama haters who believe that the President is a Muslim, who believe that he was not born in the United States, Donald Trump would lose two-thirds of his support.

Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom. The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.

I think there's an awakening now of a realization that we too early congratulated ourselves on the end of racial prejudice and white supremacy. And that was a feeling that we had when I was president, that we had pretty much overcome that problem.

Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

The strength of Donald Trump as a candidate - and I'm not in any way defending moral convictions or anything of the sort - was that he says what he means, you know where he stands.

Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the persuasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal adult behavior in lower races.

I don't sign for white people.

It somehow became an article of faith on the right that Obama is the most extreme president in American history. Although, when they say that, I think what they really mean is...he's black.

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

If the white man ain't the devil, he's been aiming at the history of the Americans.

I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.