So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be ‘blackish’ – really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
People don’t realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
All of the guests on ‘Faces of America’ were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that’s before she married King Hussein of Jordan. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
One principle I’ve been fighting for that doesn’t endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
You can say I had a severe case of ‘Roots’ envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to… do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It’s had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justice has been corrupted by racism and classism. I think it’s difficult for ‘poor people’ – poor white people, brown people – to be treated fairly before the law in the same way that upper-class people are. Henry Louis Gates Read Quote
The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can’t black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? Henry Louis Gates Read Quote