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Teju Cole
@tejucole
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the Black Atlantictejucole.comJoined October 2009
867 Following
232.7K Followers

Teju Cole’s posts

Teju Cole
@tejucole
5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Good thing the USA won the Cold War, otherwise we might be living in a world of mass surveillance and persecution of dissidents.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
The basic question which no public event alters: how can I, myself, in my limited sphere of influence, be more just?
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
I was wrong, I'm sorry. > If I was wrong, I'm sorry. > If I offended you, I'm sorry. > I'm sorry you feel offended. > Fuck you.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
"I support feminism but I think some women take it too far" is an answer you don't need to give to a question no one asked you.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Read it. It's fine. Read it again. It's fine. Send it off. Now read it again. There's an error in the first paragraph.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
The 9/11 Museum charges $24 entry and has a gift shop. Museums have a way of showing us who we are, and not only through their displays.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Those who need to check themselves: Seemingly decent men. Men who are just saying. Men who are waiting to hear both sides. Men in general.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
How can you denounce Woody Allen and admire Lolita! How can you play xylophone and smell pizza! Penguins have tiny beards.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
And, whatever you do, don't take advice from writers on Twitter. They're talking to themselves, not to you.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed. —Szymborska
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Mourn nothing and you're a monster. Mourn everything and you'll crack. Mourn selectively and you've chosen sides.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Weird. I wrote "croissant" but it autocorrected to "the terror of human life is that we are stalked by Death which may strike at any time."
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Remember: when someone does work that genuinely moves us closer to justice, immediately find the minor faults in it, and dismiss the work.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
You'll never love a book like the book you discovered yourself and bought impulsively and read when you should have been doing other things.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Don't build your brand. Don't stay on message. Lose fans. Be wary and free. Be true to the irreducible complication of things.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
The real reason Paula Deen's in the news is not because she's racist, but because she broke the unwritten rules about how to be racist now.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
You're born against your will into a painful existence you can't exit without causing even greater pain to those you love. April Fool!
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
"What you wrote didn't please me." "I don't write to please." "But you have written things that pleased me before." "It wasn't intentional."
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Saving your good writing for a book is like saving your good running for the marathon: if it's not a habit now, it won't be there later.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
We're not evolving emotional filters fast enough to deal with the efficiency with which bad news now reaches us...
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Lupita proves you can be a rich, gorgeous, brilliant, hardworking, politically-connected Ivy League grad and still be successful.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
"I'm white but..."— *gets extra time on SAT* *mortgage approval* *cautioned for drug offence* —"...I don't benefit from white supremacy."
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Don't get excited over racist old coots: they are valves, taking pressure off conversations we need to have about systemic white supremacy.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Replying to
@tejucole
NYT: In Journalism, No Ease VOX: What is Journalism? BuzzFeed: 26 Epic Journals Upworthy: You Won’t Believe It Slate: No, Journalism Is Easy
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Human beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song can fully right a wrong –Seamus Heaney
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
"Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it."—Chinua Achebe.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Had a chat with my taxi driver in Amman, so if you guys have any questions about the Arab world, I'm an expert now.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
What you read quickly you forget. What you read slowly you remember. What eludes your reading becomes a part of you by other means.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
You write, at best, to think through the fact of the world. Your reader reads, maybe, to be pleased or confirmed. There will be collisions.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
I just imagined an eagle swooping over Mount Rushmore with the Stars and Stripes in its talons. That's how good that goal was.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
To err is human. To forgive, human. But quietly keeping tabs on the motherfucker who double-crossed you, that's divine.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
City shuts down for one armed teen. Market liquidity vanishes after a false tweet. Radical vulnerability, act one, scene one.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Replying to
@tejucole
Any occasion that situates the US as just one among many nations, and not necessarily the most gifted or interesting, is a wonderful thing.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Equal treatment for gays in restaurants is a slippery slope. Soon, there'll be female doctors. And then a negro will marry your daughter.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Years later, as he faced his biographer, the footballer recalled the distant afternoon when a loss of balance made him ingest a man's arm.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
No, the World Cup has not been "marred" by protests. The most beautiful of human rights is the right of refusal. Kudos to the protesters.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Replying to
@tejucole
For four years, Nigerians have tried to understand these homicidal monsters. Your new interest (thanks) simplifies nothing, solves nothing.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Slavery is presented as narratable, available, triumphant, rather than unspeakable, incomprehensible, unfinished.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
We live in different time zones, out of sync but aware of each other. Then the game begins and we enter the same time: the time of the game.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Replying to
@tejucole
Do good work, support good work, find whatever in the inferno is not infernal, but do it from a place of understanding, that is all.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Quite early in a conversation, you can tell if someone considers Palestinian life literally equal to Israeli life. The rest flows from that.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
"Oh bounteous life. We are made for both greatness and grace. The world is magnificent. Poetry matters. NOW BUY CRAP."––ads
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
War: a thing so horrifying that its perpetrators can only be called noble, selfless, and transcendent, for how else will we bear its truth?
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Late capitalism's chimeras—feminist militarists, postcolonial torturers, gay racists, etc—refusing to see that all liberation is connected.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
1. Spurious photos 2. White lady claims she started hashtag 3. Americans collect money in girls' name #ff White Savior Industrial Complex
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
If you're sad and you meet someone who's sad too, even if they're sad in a slightly different way, try to be kind, if you can.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
Good to have a handy one sentence answer for people who ask us to describe America: "9/11 Museum Removes 9/11 Cheese Plate From Gift Shop."
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
3 To be poor is not simply to lack money. Forgetting your wallet at home doesn't make you poor. Poverty is political.
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Teju Cole
@tejucole
That friend with whom you talk from time to time, almost never in words, but in the quiet exchange of favorites.
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