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8278c6b
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And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.
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war
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
usa
delusions
united-states
cruelty
race-relations
theft
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Colson Whitehead |
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e4d787d
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If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now. Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.
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slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
white-people
possessions
native-americans
usa
united-states
ownership
race-relations
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Colson Whitehead |
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a68e622
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The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.
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religion
native-son
us
american
race
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Richard Wright |
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5f9bad7
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And if the word means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.
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america
reality
love
us
integration
whites
usa
united-states
race-relations
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James Baldwin |
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8ce372e
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The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
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slavery
slave-catchers
us
united-states-of-america
jobs
usa
united-states
criminals
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Colson Whitehead |
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ba97a54
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Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself. Well, the rabble could. The rabble would. He would lead the rabble in managing. The thing would be won.
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war
america
us
united-states-of-america
lincoln
usa
united-states
civil-war
victory
democracy
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George Saunders |
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721900d
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"If this were a courageous country, it would ask Gloria to lead it since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart and the National Leaders we've always had are not. When I listen to her talk about women's rights children's rights men's rights I think of the long line of Americans who should have been president, but weren't. Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth. John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo. Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy." Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or Sweet Honey in the Rock dealing with Anything. It is imagining to make us weep with frustration, as we languish under real estate dealers, killers, and bad actors."
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politics
leadership
change
us
united-states-of-america
presidents
usa
leaders
united-states
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Alice Walker |
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c5fa88d
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We do not admire their president. We know why the White House is white. We do not find their children irresistible; We do not agree they should inherit the earth.
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poems
poetry
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
whites
usa
united-states
race-relations
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Alice Walker |
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35c7689
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"Wait till Buzz takes charge of us. A real Fascist dictatorship!" "Nonsense! Nonsense!" snorted Tasbrough. "That couldn't happen here in America, not possibly! We're a country of freemen." "The answer to that," suggested Doremus Jessup, "if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is 'the hell it can't!' Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical--yes, or more obsequious!--than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio--divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees? Could Hitler's bunch, or Windrip's, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the--well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimee McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?... Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?... Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition--shooting down people just because they be transporting liquor--no, that couldn't happen in ! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!"
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dictatorships
us
united-states-of-america
usa
fascism
democracy
hysterics
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Sinclair Lewis |
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cb587cc
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Mais une societe qui en protege certains par un filet invisible d'ecoles, d'emprunts immobiliers subventionnes, de richesses accumulees, et ne consent a t'offrir que la protection d'une justice criminelle, cette societe la a echoue dans la mise en pratique de ses bonnes intentions - a moins qu'elle n'ait reussi a imposer quelque chose de bien plus sombre. Quel que soit le nom qu'on donne a ce systeme, il n'a eu qu'un seul resultat: notre infirmite face aux forces criminelles a l'oeuvre dans ce monde. Que l'agent de ces forces soit blanc ou noir n'a aucune importance- ce qui en a en revanche c'est notre condition; c'est le systeme qui fait de ton corps un objet destructible.
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us
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Ta-Nehisi Coates |
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c38eac9
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"It is interesting that a guy like W.E.B. Du Bois, who actually did very little, I should imagine, with his hands, wrote about "I am the smoke king." Without the labor, both free and slave, of African Americans this country would still be a wilderness."
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america
poetry
us
w-e-b-du-bois
usa
labor
united-states
race-relations
race
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Nikki Giovanni |
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d834c0a
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La rue fait de chaque journee une suite de questions piege, et chaque reponse incorrecte peut provoquer une raclee, une balle dans la peau, une grossesse non desiree. Personne n'en sort indemne. Pourtant, la chaleur qui s degage de ce danger permanent, de ce flirt constant avec la mort, est excitante.
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us
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Ta-Nehisi Coates |