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I have no plans to slow down.

Henry Louis Gates

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Henry Louis Gates
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 16
Critic
Essayist
Genealogist
Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Keyser
West Virginia
Henry Louis Gates
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More quotes by Henry Louis Gates

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It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.
Henry Louis Gates
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It's no surprise that White people say things when they are together about Black people.
Henry Louis Gates
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What's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories.
Henry Louis Gates
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Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.
Henry Louis Gates
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When Europeans came upon real ruined cities they refused to believe that they had been built by Africans. Here the past has been distorted and denied.
Henry Louis Gates
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I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward - well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.
Henry Louis Gates
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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
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Dr. King's Nobel Prize had a more powerful transforming effect on him than I think he realized at the time.
Henry Louis Gates
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Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.
Henry Louis Gates
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Ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies - British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist - I still think it was a great moment in human history.
Henry Louis Gates
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I would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity among other ethnic groups - a 'Faces of America 2.'
Henry Louis Gates
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I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.
Henry Louis Gates
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Instill respect for teachers.
Henry Louis Gates
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The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.
Henry Louis Gates
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It's fascinating how life works.
Henry Louis Gates
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My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
Henry Louis Gates
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Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
Henry Louis Gates
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It is the black poet who bridges the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who translates experience into meaning and meaning into belief.
Henry Louis Gates
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In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the greatest historians of both African and African-American history, and hired them as consultants. I had them submit what they thought were the indispensable stories, the ones they felt this series absolutely had to include.
Henry Louis Gates
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Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.
Henry Louis Gates