Quotes About History

In 1945, two fumbling mid-ranking American officers who knew nothing about the country used a National Geographic map as reference to arbitrarily cut a border to make North and South Korea, a division that eventually separated millions of families, including my own grandmother from her family.

Whether our families come from Guatemala, Afghanistan, or South Korea, the immigrants since 1965 have shared histories that extend beyond this nation, to our countries of origin, where our lineage has been decimated by Western imperialism, war, and dictatorships orchestrated or supported by the United States.

But our shared root is not the opportunity this nation has given us but how the capitalist accumulation of white supremacy has enriched itself off the blood of our countries. We cannot forget this.

Humor was a form of survival, since it created a necessary psychic distinction from slavery.

And white tears are why 63 percent of white men and 53 percent of white women elected a malignant man-child as their leader. For to be aware of history, they would be forced to be held accountable, and rather than face that shame, they'd rather, by any means necessary, maintain their innocence.

I'd rather be indebted than be the kind of white man who thinks the world owes him, because to live an ethical life is to be held accountable to history.

Three Chinese laborers died for every two miles of track built to make Manifest Destiny a reality, but when the celebratory photo of the Golden Spike was taken, not a single Chinese man was welcome to pose with the other—white—railway workers.

To live an ethical life is to be held accountable for history.

For to be aware of history, they would be forced to be held accountable. And rather than face that shame, they'd rather, by any means necessary, maintain their innocence.

The long fuse leading up to the L.A. riots was the history of housing segregation, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, and federal stripping of public programs, which is why I was upset that the media conveniently scapegoated Korean merchants as the source of black rage despite the fact that those merchants were barely above destitution.

I thought of Asians throughout history being dragged against their will, driven or chased out of their native homes, out of her adopted homes, out of their native country, out of their adopted country: ejected, evicted, exiled.

I thought of Asians throughout history being dragged against their will, driven or chased out of their native homes, out of their adopted homes, out of their native country, out of their adopted country: ejected, evicted, exiled.

Carthago delenda est

I wanted to give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, protected it.

It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked.

The practice of mutilating women's genitals in Eritrea predated the arrival of both religions, and for hundreds of years neither faith had questioned it. The

For a girl raised on the rim of a wilderness, it was strange to be in a place where every inch of ground had been settled for hundreds upon hundreds of years. I felt the press of people, and the press of ghosts—great hordes of those who had lived and walked before me.

who they were, or how they worked. That's how I add my few grains to the sandbox of human knowledge. It's what I love best about what I do. And there were so many

Ta-Nehisi Coates

But it is one thing to transmit the divine through a blasting storm of holy noise, another thing entirely to write a history forged from human voices, imperfect memories, self-interested accounts.

They argued that women of the prophet's era had ridden camels, the main mode of transportation of their day. The

it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists…same old, same old. It seems to me the book, at this point, bears witness to all that.

Not just Horse," she said. "The horse. What you have here is the greatest racing stallion in American turf history.

The stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.