Quotes from Ta-Nehisi Coates
An
America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but
the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
Two
hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years
of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy.
Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never
be whole.
Racism
is not merely a simplistic hatred. Racism is, among other things, the
unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned
sympathy for another.
But for all our phrasing — race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy — serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.
The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, of confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.... it has freed me from ghosts and girded me against the sheer terror of disembodiment.
I
think the sad fact is, there's a long history in this country at
looking at African-American as subhuman. And I think that's reflected
in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of
employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are
really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
All
you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power
of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they
necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and
disproportionate number of them will be black.
This
feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police
and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is
actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of
the relationship between black people and their country really in our
history.
* * * * *
What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains — whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver. I'm asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
The essence of American racism is disrespect.
Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.
The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
That's not an accident that Donald Trump didn't begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
I 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.
* * * * *
America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation to ever exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization.
The entire narrative of this country argues against the truth of who you are.
Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of ‘personal responsibility’ in a country authored and sustained by a criminal responsibility. The point of this language of ‘intention’ and ‘personal responsibility’ is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream.
The killing fields of Chicago, of Baltimore, of Detroit, were created by the policy of Dreamers, but their weight, their shame, rests solely upon those who are dying in them. There is a great deception in this. To yell "black-on-black crime" is to shoot a man and them shame him for bleeding.
It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All that you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.
Empathy — not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance — is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth, giving opportunities to other people, it's only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
* * * * *
I am sorry that I cannot make it okay. I am sorry that I cannot save you -- but not that sorry. Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe oneself white divides them from it. The fact is that despite their dreams, their lives are also not inviolable. When their own vulnerability becomes real -- when the police decide that tactics for the ghetto should enjoy wider usage, when their armed society shoots down their children, when nature sends hurricanes against their cities -- they are shocked in a way that those of us who were born and bred to understand cause and effect can never be. And I would not have you like them. You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels. And to varying degrees this is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact. I am speaking to you as I always have -- as the sober and serious man I have always wanted you to be, who does not apologize for his human feelings, who does not make excuses for his height, his long arms, his beautiful smile. You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable. None of that can change the math anyway. I never wanted you to be twice as good as them, so much as I have always wanted you to attack every day of your brief bright life in struggle. The people who must believe they are white can never be your measuring stick. I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.
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