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" I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.' "
Henry Louis Gates
Black
Because
People
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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
Opportunities
Ending
Black
" People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for somebody to blame. And a real leader speaks to anxiety and to fear and allays those fears, assuages anxiety. "
Henry Louis Gates
Leader
People
Look
" If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race. "
Henry Louis Gates
Race
Need
Say
" Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the United States, to Miami. It's like a doppelgaenger. It's the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans. "
Henry Louis Gates
Destination
Mirror
Miami
" It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution. "
Henry Louis Gates
American
Army
Revolution
" Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth? "
Henry Louis Gates
Day
War
Think
" I didn't feel particularly close to my father. "
Henry Louis Gates
Particularly
Close
Feel
" People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances. "
Henry Louis Gates
Looking Back
People
Decision
" What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just like I try to be. He's been bridging divisions his whole life. "
Henry Louis Gates
Life
Black
History
" First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager. "
Henry Louis Gates
Revolution
Community
Black
" 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
System
Black
Right
" Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. "
Henry Louis Gates
Story
American
Everyone
" What's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories. "
Henry Louis Gates
Way
Me
Kid
" If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA. "
Henry Louis Gates
Family
DNA
Going
" The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? "
Henry Louis Gates
Children
Truth Is
Truth
" It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art. "
Henry Louis Gates
Great
People
Culture
" 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
Small
You
Historians
" 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
Two
Slavery
Always
" I have no plans to slow down. "
Henry Louis Gates
Slow
Down
Plans
" 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
Community
City
Attitude
" Everything my mother and father did was designed to put me where I am. "
Henry Louis Gates
I Am
Father
Everything
" Diversity doesn't mean black and white only. "
Henry Louis Gates
White
Diversity
Black
" Dr. King's Nobel Prize had a more powerful transforming effect on him than I think he realized at the time. "
Henry Louis Gates
Time
Think
Powerful
" 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
White
Black
Class
" For as long as I can remember, I have been passionately intrigued by 'Africa,' by the word itself, by its flora and fauna, its topographical diversity and grandeur; but above all else, by the sheer variety of the colors of its people, from tan and sepia to jet and ebony. "
Henry Louis Gates
Diversity
People
Remember
" 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
Ship
Tree
You
" 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
Great
Racism
People
" So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history. "
Henry Louis Gates
History
Been
People
" My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves. "
Henry Louis Gates
Live
Think
Words
" Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice. "
Henry Louis Gates
Art
Justice
Censorship