|
8efed5f
|
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.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
84b0af3
|
We are not blind to recent events, Tetu. Nor are we blind to Damisa-Sakri's allies. But we are, as you say, a new country, a new nation. Prudence is required." "Even in your allies." " Especially our allies."
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
4554a3a
|
We know who you are. We know of your battles with the king. We think you may well prove to be a true friend of our cause. But right now all we share are kind words and a common enemy. That is not yet enough.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
227b27b
|
I do not think your problem is an old philosopher. I do not think your problem is the renegade Dora Milaje. Your problem, T'Challa... is the people.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
5b27ddd
|
For my people I have battled world-breakers, death cultists, and men who would make themselves gods. For my people, I lost the only woman I ever truly loved. There is nothing left, Mother. I have given it all." "No, T'Challa. Let us not mince words here-- you have never given willingly. You feel the weight of the crown, but you have never felt the great honor of being king. Your people are a burden to you, and you have never let them forget..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
7227e0f
|
I am Damisa-sakri. And there is no escape. Not for my enemies. Not for my people. Not for my mother. Not for me. So much rage. So much hate. I must master all of it. I must not let it master me.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
cfa0424
|
These men are Wakandan, even in rebellion. Pride in their nation was everything to them. And when the Golden City fell, they fell with it. Now they fashion their very bodies into living bombs, for they measure their lives in the blood of others. I know what haunts them-- shame, hate, rage. I know what shall save them. The Golden City fell. But Wakanda has not yet died.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
07f0fb5
|
Poetry aims for an economy of truth--loose and useless words must be discarded,
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
27a39e0
|
I come back to the motherland and this is the thanks I get?" "Still better than the knife-wielding thugs I found in Harlem, Misty. You do remember, don't you?" "I resent the term "thug"." "That's 'cause you a thug." "For life."
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
9b6df17
|
You... kill... what you cannot control. Break... what you cannot bend. Is this what all my teachings have brought you to? Victory by any means? Conquest? Terror? You say you oppose kings, and yet your methods do not differ from theirs. You say you war against tyranny, but you too war against your own people. You say you bring the power of life. Then how did it happen that your very name became death?
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
aca8533
|
The question with no answer. This is what you wished us to consider. But there was an answer. And you knew it. "What is our remedy against the robber, who so broke into our house?" We burn down the house-- with the robber inside."
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
9b3fe72
|
Enslaved" is what the plunderer does to a righteous woman but "a slave" is a righteous woman who has accepted the plunderer's law."
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
e1041e9
|
The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism a la carte. A nation outlives it generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delawre, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying ou..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
336cd71
|
Black is beautiful
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
86d7fef
|
You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
862540c
|
When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure 'that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,' he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant 'government of the people' but what our country has, throughout ..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
4322fc6
|
All of these heroes had failed to cajole and coerce the masters of America. Their ambition of a better world had been frustrated. This was the story of my ancestors, the story I expected for myself. These were not stories of hope, but were they without import? If Celia, Margaret, and Ida had failed to help the country at large locate its morality, they had succeeded in living by their own. And that was all they could control. Within the sma..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
c0c6582
|
Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of labor - it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rape so r..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
3129067
|
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 a..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
f44a11b
|
I did not want to raise you in fear or false memory. I did not want you forced to mask your joys and bind your eyes. What I wanted for you was to grow into consciousness. I resolved to hide nothing from you.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
3e535c9
|
I sought a world where peasants and kings were as brothers. But what new world was ever made without the sword? Now I am old, and I fear that some young dreamer shall resolve my contradiction, and commit to that which is both terrible and plain. On that day the era of theory will have passed. All the dreamers will be dead.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
b114c51
|
I will be king. Your country needs me. I'm gonna bring out the best in Wakanda. And what is best in Wakanda is that fantastic pile of vibranium. I'm gonna make 'em love me, baby.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
171065b
|
Racism--the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them--inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
5a8846d
|
Before the president spoke, George Zimmerman was arguably the most reviled man in America. After the president spoke, Zimmerman became the patron saint of those who believe that an apt history of racism begins with Tawana Brawley and ends with the Duke lacrosse team.
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
963aa36
|
The irony of Barack Obama is this: He has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear, by being "clean" (as Joe Biden once labeled him)--and yet his indelible blackness irradiates everything he touches. This irony is rooted in the greater ironies of the country he leads. For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts--one, a..
|
|
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |