Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American journalist, award-winning and bestselling author, blogger, and speaker. His work addresses social, political, and cultural issues, especially on the issues of race.
CLEAR ALL
America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging.
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Four years ago, I opposed reparations. Here's the story of how my thinking has evolved since then.
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.
The special will include powerful readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, it will also incorporate documentary footage from the actors' home life, archival footage, and animation.
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates told lawmakers at a House committee hearing that the debate over reparations is “a dilemma of inheritance.”
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.
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To yell ‘black-on-black crime’ is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding.
“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South.
Photo Credit: Paul Marotta / Contributor / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images
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.
