When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
Ta-Nehisi Coates[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn't directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesI did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesLot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesI want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn't mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it's not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
Ta-Nehisi CoatesPart of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible. You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there's some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
Ta-Nehisi Coates