#fin

I know there's a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that's fine with me. ↗

— Bill Gates

#fine #i #know #me #never

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

#affinity #african #african american #american #construct

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

#categories #color #difficult #fascinating #find

So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#beautiful #blend #bottom #brazil #brown

There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#boom #com #few #find #genealogy

You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know? ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#american #as far as #back #black #born

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. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#africa #alex #back #case #envy

The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines. ↗

— Charles de Gaulle

#aim high #apart #art form #big #confines

You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul. ↗

— Charles de Gaulle

#finally #give #giving #hat #out

Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#demise #final-project #research #death