Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy.
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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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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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It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.
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I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.
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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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We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.
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Fighting, I guess, was never the real reason I read comic books as a kid. The fighting was an important part, an integral part of it; I don't know I would've read it without it.
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When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.
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Donald Trump did not appear by magic.
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I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.'
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Abraham Lincoln is singular. Abraham Lincoln, before he was killed, stood up and, you know, for the first time from any sitting president, stood for the right for suffrage for African-American men who had served in the Civil War. And that's a limited suffrage, but it was quite radical at the time.
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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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American myths have never been colorless.
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The president of the United States is not a king. You know? Barack Obama was elected by the American people.