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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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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
Cities
Came
Africans
Upon
Distorted
Past
Europeans
Real
Refused
Believe
Ruined
Denied
Built

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.
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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.
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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
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We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of The African Americans.
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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.
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There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.
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My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black.
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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.
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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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So, the kind of precious memories about being black for my generation won't exist for my kids' and grandkids' generations unless we preserve them through fiction, through film, through comic books, and every other form of media we can possibly utilize to perpetuate the story of the great African-American people.
Henry Louis Gates
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In the old days, you lived in one neighborhood, you knew all your neighbors and your daughter married the guy next door. That was social and economic progress. That model is gone now. We also had a world order that was fraught but fairly stable.
Henry Louis Gates
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So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history.
Henry Louis Gates
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Instill respect for teachers.
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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.
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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?
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Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.
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My producers and I worked with these consultants and came up with seventy [stories] which we think are exemplary of the larger arc of African-American history between 1513 and 2013. We covered half a millennium, and it's amazing.
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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