#un

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

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

My father was the funniest man I ever met. He made Redd Foxx look like an undertaker. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#father #funniest #i #like #look

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. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#even #generation #greatest #greatest thing #immigrant

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

#among #basis #betterment #between #black

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

#black #civil #civil rights #civil rights movement #class

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#admire #again #america #avenue #barack

There are two things that have always haunted me: the brutality of the European traders and the stories I've heard about Africans selling other Africans into slavery. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#always #brutality #european #haunted #heard

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#african-american community #attitude #black #brown #city

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#affirmative #affirmative action #black #black community #certainly