The statistics were dire and oft recited – 1 in 21 killed by 1 in 21, more of us in jail than college.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates (chapter 1 paragraph 26)

Importance: Ta-Nehisi is alluding to the cold facts that young black boys faced in the dangerous, gang-ridden neighborhoods that they lived in. Death or incarceration awaited them outside their doors.

When crack hit Baltimore, civilization fell.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates (chapter 2 paragraph 1)

Importance: Crack had emerged as the drug of the day and the devastation and crime that surrounded it made already impoverished, violent neighborhoods to decline further.

She [Ms. Chance] was not Conscious in the way of my father, but in a different way that I couldn’t name but could spot from one hundred feet away: the general manner of black people who simply wanted to compete and see the good works of their own brought forth. I was my own greatest foe, she told me. She’d be off on quadratic equations, then catch me in her...
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates (chapter 2 paragraph 35)