Between the World and Me (One World Essentials)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The fact of history is that black people have not—probably no people have ever—liberated themselves strictly through their own efforts.

Had I informed this woman that when she pushed my son, she was acting according to a tradition that held black bodies as lesser, her response would likely have been, “I am not a racist.” Or maybe not. But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not a tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic—an orc, troll, or gorgon.

there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such.