Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Forgiveness is a big part of - especially post-civil rights movement - is a big part of African-American Christianity, and I wasn't raised within the Christian church; I wasn't raised within any church.
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In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art.
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You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.
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It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my mind: a violent place.
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Like a lot of people, I'm very, very concerned about Senator Clinton's record. I'm very, very concerned about where her positions were in the 1990s, when we had some of the most disgusting legislation in terms of our criminal justice, really, in this country's history.
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I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.
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Many, many people of the Revolutionary generation, the generation that fought in the Revolutionary War, understood that slavery was somehow in contradiction to what America was saying it was. And many of those folks also, at the very least, gave land to African Americans when they were liberated.
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The symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency - that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons taking up residence in the castle - assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries.
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The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited.
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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.
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The African-American tradition, in the main, is very, very church-based, very, very Christian. It accepts, you know, certain narratives about the world. I didn't really have that present in my house.
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The ties between the Obama White House and the hip-hop community are genuine.
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The president of the United States is not a king. You know? Barack Obama was elected by the American people.
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I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did.
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I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists.
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White supremacy is a very, very popular and trenchant belief in this country's history and heritage.
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Life is always a problem. The fact that I'm on the radio saying that I don't necessarily see hope does not relieve people, does not relieve my son, does not relieve children, of the responsibility to struggle.
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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system.
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It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper.
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I wasn't the biggest Captain America fan, but increasingly, I see him as a great character. Winter Soldier really got into what it meant to actually represent America.
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I've seen, and liked, 'Insecure' and 'Atlanta.'
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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.
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It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself.