Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.
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Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity.
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I feel like my job is to look at the world and to report what I see, to write what I see as honestly and directly as I can. I don't want to cut it or make it easy, but be as direct as I can.
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Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It's fairly obvious.
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In the mid-90s The older gods were falling off. EPMD were breaking. Chuck and Flav had taken us as far as they could, and already the new voices were being hijacked by the death cults. Brothers who last week were shouting out Malcolm were flipped into studio gangsters, killing every nigger in sight.
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White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.
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I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere.
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Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows - and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere.
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The only people who usually have input on my writing are my wife and my editor. I'm not in conversation with anyone except the people I report on and the people I work with.
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In Richard Wright, Dad found a literature of himself. He'd read Manchild in the Promised Land and Another Country, but from Wright he learned that there was an entire shadow canon, a tradition of writers who grabbed the pen, not out of leisure but to break the chain.
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I love living around black people. Home is home. We suffer under racism and the physical deprivations that come with that, but beneath that, we form cultures and traditions that are beautiful.
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I don't completely understand why people in Aspen want to hear what I have to say.
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Storytellers have the right to answer any question they choose.
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It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.
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My belief is in the chaos of the world and that you have to find your peace within the chaos and that you still have to find some sort of mission.
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You don't make a case for reparations thinking, 'Oh yeah, people are gonna love this.' I didn't see that coming.
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'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.
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I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate.
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You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere.
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Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized.
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From last century's 'The Birth of a Nation' to this century's 'Gods and Generals,' Hollywood has likely done more than any other American institution to obstruct a truthful apprehension of the Civil War and, thus, modern America's very origins.
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The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time.
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I think 'Dear White People,' the show, is a tremendous artistic achievement. It's always hinting that there is something beyond the pleading and wokeness, something that the show's more militant characters can't see.
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Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount.