How many actually read the full interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates? And not the bullshyt selective quotes and framing from the fukking dailycaller? The dailycaller is bullshyt, btw.
Coates: Isn’t there just—not to cut you off—isn’t there, and this is out of the role of U.S. president, I’m almost speaking to you as a law professor now, an intellectual, in fact—
Obama: Well, that’s how I was answering the question, because if you want me to talk about politics, I’ll be much more blunt about it.
Coates: I figured that. I thought that was what I was getting.
Obama: I was giving the benefit of playing out, theoretically, how you could think about that.
Coates: And I appreciate that. And the question I would ask is in that situation, to the immigrant who comes here, first generation, and says, “I didn’t do any of this,” but the country is largely here because of that. In other words, many of the benefits that you will actually enjoy are, in fact, in part—I won’t say largely—in part here because of the past. So when you want the benefits, when you invoke the past, that thus you inherit the debt, too—
Obama: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess, here’s the way—probably the best way of saying it is that you can make a theoretical, abstract argument in favor of something like reparations. And maybe I’m just not being sufficiently optimistic or imaginative enough—
Coates: You’re supposed to be optimistic!
Obama: Well, I thought I was, but
I’m not so optimistic as to think that you would ever be able to garner a majority of an American Congress that would make those kinds of investments above and beyond the kinds of investments that could be made in a progressive program for lifting up all people. So to restate it:
I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader’s ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow. Now, we can debate the justness of that. But I feel pretty confident in that assessment politically. And, you know, I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now, and—
‘Better Is Good’: Obama on Reparations, Civil Rights, and the Art of the Possible
My President Was Black
This is the cold, hard TRUTH of America. How anyone could look at this and still refer to Obama as a "c00n" is lacking in 1) an understanding of who controls the purse strings, that's required to pay out reparations, and 2) lacks the capacity for critical thinking.
This is a person that actually understands that this country is still incredibly racist.
Yeah they really in debt with that military budget tho Also.....
on top of black immigrants.