WIST Quotations

Coates, Ta-Nehisi -- “Hubris,” Atlantic (7 Apr 2011)

Dave — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 12:26:45 +0000

It’d be nice if we’d now stop hearing political appointees and MBA candidates crowing about their private sector successes, their nose for accountability and the perils of broken government. Whatever. All I hear in that is the sneering of reformers who actually don’t much like democracy. I don’t want politicians who are “above politics,” anymore then I want a plumber who’s “above toilets.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (b. 1975) American writer, journalist, educator
“Hubris,” Atlantic (7 Apr 2011)
(Source)

Coates, Ta-Nehisi -- Between the World and Me, ch. 1 (2015)

Dave — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 20:56:18 +0000

Race is the child of racism, not the father.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (b. 1975) American writer, journalist, educator
Between the World and Me, ch. 1 (2015)
(Source)

Coates continues:

And the process of naming "the people" has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible -- this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi -- The Message, ch. 3 “Bearing the Burning Cross” (2024)

Dave — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:47:26 +0000

I don’t really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (b. 1975) American writer, journalist, educator
The Message, ch. 3 “Bearing the Burning Cross” (2024)
(Source)