Henry Louis Gates quotes - page 3

I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.' (Henry Louis Gates)
My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example. View quote
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. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black? View quote
Henry Louis Gates
I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
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. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
I have no plans to slow down. (Henry Louis Gates)
My father was the funniest man I ever met. He made Redd Foxx look like an undertaker. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
The Right insists that anyone can escape poverty by working hard but that is simply not the case. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
My brother and I had a really privileged relationship with my parents... They treated us like adults. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
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. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
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)
My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy in Piedmont, W.Va., and his name was Skip. They called him Big Skip, and I was Little Skip. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
It's fascinating how life works. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
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. View quote
Henry Louis Gates
You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa. View quote
Henry Louis Gates