Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.

Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women's rights, I wrote about what was important to me.

Conservatism's vulnerability is simply that it has no way to extract power from the evils America owned up to in the '60s - no way to use the sins of the past to coerce Americans into doing what it wants.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

I think the NAACP isn't recognized enough for all of the work it does, especially in the field of law. They may have faded from view over the last couple of decades, but they are fighting the good fight.

Acceptance does not mean that you placidly acquiesce to the myriad injustices that are all around you. In fact, that you are incensed about these injustices is the very reason you need to try your level best to 'right' these 'wrongs.'

Reparations, I believe, are talked about for political reasons, trying to cater for the purpose of getting votes. If Congress was serious about reparations - in '93 and '94 the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, and not one single Republican vote was needed for reparations.

When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years.

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

It is now time to mobilize, before it is too late, against the creeping legitimacy of racism in our society.

The injustices of the past are past. There’s no way to make them up.

The United States will never be able to pay us [Blacks] all they owe us. They don't have the money.

The fight against racism must be seen as a revolutionary one.

The times when black women have been successful in confronting and overcoming the structural and institutional sexism and racism that persists in our society have been when we are thoughtful and strategic about speaking up. It's when we've done what it takes to introduce and implement our ideas and our plans to make things better.

Black Lives Matter has already demonstrated that it has the power to shift the societal landscape by bringing awareness to age-old issues that have plagued us as a people.

To me, as I see it, reparations would be something that is fairly specific to the descendants of slaves, and it would also be an official apology from the United States government for slavery.

We created #BlackLivesMatter. We created a platform. We used our social media presence online in order to forward a conversation about what is taking place in black communities.

When Black Lives Matter started, it was polarizing.

With Black Lives Matter, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't just going to live online. We were like, 'We're creating this thing and then it's also going to live with black folks on the street and protests and organizations.' It was very important for us to use the hashtag as a way to have a larger conversation and as an organizing tool.

Nobody black or white who really believes in democracy can stand aside now; everybody's got to stand up and be counted.

There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for. I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.

If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement.

Let it be said that when given a chance to complete the liberation of black Americans, on June 23, 2003 five justices consigned them to another generation - or, perhaps, a term of indefinite duration - of virtual enslavement to the past.

I was doing cartoons and mocking white liberals, mocking the attitude of government who said to go slow, while intending to do absolutely nothing for black people, then called Negroes. And I had a lot of fun and I expressed a lot of anger. That was a thing that was important to know at that time. As I was emerging into more and more into politics that I was angry.