“Mitch McConnell… does not want to be responsible for enslavement that happened 150 years ago, but, yet and still, wants the right to operate his business or operate his career in a building that was built by enslaved people.”

—  Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Mitch McConnell… does not want to be responsible for enslavement that happened 150 years ago, but, yet and still, wants…" by Ta-Nehisi Coates?
Ta-Nehisi Coates photo
Ta-Nehisi Coates 36
writer, journalist, and educator 1975

Related quotes

Ta-Nehisi Coates photo

“Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible… This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance, that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations. But well into this century, the United States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one being alive who signed those treaties… But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes the Case for Reparations at Historic Congressional Hearing, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

Albert Camus photo

“Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Pauvre et libre plutôt que riche et asservi. Bien entendu les hommes veulent être et riches et libres et c’est ce qui les conduit quelquefois à être pauvres et esclaves.
Notebooks (1942–1951)

Jean-Baptiste Say photo

“What is the motive which operates in every man's breast to counteract the impulse towards the gratification of his wants and appetites?”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XIX, p. 207

Elbert Hubbard photo

“The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 142.

Bobby Seale photo

“I still want my right to defend myself. A railroad operation, and you know it, from Nixon on down. they got you running around violating my constitutional rights.”

Bobby Seale (1936) American activist

Transcript from Seale's conspiracy case as part of the Chicago 8 (October 1968)

Julius Streicher photo

“In Soviet-Russia the Jew is forging the tool with which he wants to enslave Europe.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

In Sowjet-Rußland schmiedet sich der Jude das Werkzeug, mit dem er Europa versklaven will.
04/25/1928, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Wilhelm Reich photo

“The Little Man does not want to hear the truth about himself. He does not want the great responsibility which is his. He wants to remain a Little Man.”

Wilhelm Reich book Listen, Little Man!

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: My intellect tells me: "Tell the truth at any cost." The Little Man in me says: "It is stupid to expose oneself to the little man, to put oneself at his mercy. The Little Man does not want to hear the truth about himself. He does not want the great responsibility which is his. He wants to remain a Little Man. He wants to remain a Little Man, or wants to become a little great man. He wants to become rich, or a party leader, or commander of a legion, or secretary of the society for the abolition of vice. But he does not want to assume responsibility for his work..."

Stephen Wolfram photo

“I had a very selfish reason for building Mathematica. I wanted to use it myself, a bit like Galileo got to use his telescope four hundred years ago. But I wanted to look, not at the astronomical universe, but at the computational universe.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

"Computing a Theory of Everything" (2010)

George Boole photo

“A studious person may neglect his business for the sake of books; but if he does this, it is not his books that are to blame, but his want of principle of of firmness.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Attributed to George Boole : Des MacHale (1985) George Boole: his life and work. p. 5
Attributed from posthumous publications

Related topics