Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that.

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on the planet.

For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.

Blacks essentially play the race card, when necessary as a counter to white privilege.

Ours has not been a racially democratic society for 300 years.

So long as the slave remains ignorant and docile and contented he is taken care of, humored and spoken of with a contemptuous, compassionate kindness. But from the moment he exhibits the attributes of a rational being, from the moment his intellect seems likely to come into the most distant competition with that of whites, the most deadly hatred springs up—not in the black, but in his oppressors.

There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Although slavery may have been abolished, the crippling poison of racism still persists, and the struggle still continues.

A lot of problems that are going on aren't going to get better if we don't talk about it. Race is the biggest one. It's a very, very uncomfortable topic because the biggest part of America was founded on it.

You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.

Racism has two primary functions: the oppression of people of color, which most people recognize, but also the simultaneous elevation of white people. You can't hold one group down without lifting the other up.

While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. - Ta

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let's not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it's not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we are seeing it very, very plainly.

White people are very good at acting like they're not racist. They deserve an Academy Award for that.

It is true that as people, we tend to remember only the positive. With time, the grim details fade away, and as a species we survive on this notion. In our desire to gloss over the undeniable macabre parts of our American history, we forget. That amnesia manifests itself, especially when dealing with the plight of black men.

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.

People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

Codifying discrimination in our laws should be something we read about in American history, not on the front pages of today's American newspapers and magazines.