First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look – no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the ’50s were immigrant values even though we weren’t immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That’s when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he’s 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you’re back to 1820 already. For an American that’s pretty damned good, you know? Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, ‘You can like Mozart and ice hockey…’ – and then I used to say ‘golf,’ but Tiger took over golf! – ‘and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades.’ Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
I’m a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black? Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just like I try to be. He’s been bridging divisions his whole life. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It’s like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the ‘Encyclopedia Africana’ would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
A more humane form of capitalism is about the best I think we can get. Which might sound very reformist or conservative, but that’s basically where I am. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as ‘Tarzan’ and in programs such as ‘Ramar of the Jungle’ and ‘Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.’ Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
