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If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.

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
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Keyser
West Virginia
Henry Louis Gates
Religion
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Faith
Civics
America
Article
Firsts
Amendment
First
Amendments
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Democracy

More quotes by Henry Louis Gates

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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
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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
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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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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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The genius is making a way out of no way.
Henry Louis Gates
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In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All of us watched it. I don't mean Mama and Daddy and Rocky. I mean all the colored people in America watched it, together, with one set of eyes.
Henry Louis Gates
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All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small.
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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I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti.
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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Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
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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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
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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
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I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.
Henry Louis Gates
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The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.
Henry Louis Gates
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I got a letter from this lady of Russian and Jewish descent. She asked me if I was a racist because I didn't do any White people. I was shocked, because my mandate is to do Black studies. It would have never occurred to me if this lady hadn't written this letter. We decided we were going expand the brand and do everybody.
Henry Louis Gates
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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
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Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.
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