I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward - well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.

ISBN 978-0-691-14234-0
with Kwame Anthony Appiah Encyclopedia of Africa: Two-Volume Set. 2007. W.

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Gates has hosted several PBS television miniseries including the history and travel program Wonders of the African World and the biographical African American Lives and Faces of America. (born September 16 1950) is an American literary critic educator scholar writer editor and public intellectual. B.