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In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.
Henry Louis Gates
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Henry Louis Gates
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 16
Critic
Essayist
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West Virginia
Henry Louis Gates
Existence
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More quotes by Henry Louis Gates
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
My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent chance of living a long life like him.
Henry Louis Gates
There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Henry Louis Gates
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
You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.
Henry Louis Gates
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
My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.
Henry Louis Gates
Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.
Henry Louis Gates
Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
Henry Louis Gates
Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth?
Henry Louis Gates
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
I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?
Henry Louis Gates
The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass.
Henry Louis Gates
The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master and black ex-slave alike.
Henry Louis Gates
It's fascinating how life works.
Henry Louis Gates
People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.
Henry Louis Gates
I have no plans to slow down.
Henry Louis Gates
Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.
Henry Louis Gates
I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, Did you see what that Negro did? A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.
Henry Louis Gates
The genius is making a way out of no way.
Henry Louis Gates
