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Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.

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
Ennoble
Necessarily
Suffering
Doe

More quotes by 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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Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with.
Henry Louis Gates
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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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Instill respect for teachers.
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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In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.
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 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
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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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My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.
Henry Louis Gates
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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.
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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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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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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I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.
Henry Louis Gates
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I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time, but to do so in order to come out on the other side, to experience a humanity that is neither colorless nor reducible to color.
Henry Louis Gates
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In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.
Henry Louis Gates
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Everything my mother and father did was designed to put me where I am.
Henry Louis Gates
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The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.
Henry Louis Gates
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My brother and I had a really privileged relationship with my parents... They treated us like adults.
Henry Louis Gates