#lack

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. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#american culture #black #common #culture #dna

I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black? ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#black #geek #how #i #i think

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#ancestry #black #drop #makes #you

It's no surprise that White people say things when they are together about Black people. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#black #people #people say #say #surprise

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. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#avert #between #black #class #inevitable

It's very lonely being a prominent black intellectual at an institution where you're the only prominent black intellectual. That was the model that was followed in the late 60s when black studies started. You'd get one here and one there and one here, like Johnny Appleseed. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#black #followed #get #here #institution

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#assassinated #became #being #black #consider

Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century have not even wondered about the merits of the capitalist system. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#about #black #capitalist #center #century

My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#black #coloured #father #grandfather #i

One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#been #black #complicated #does #ennoble