#ck

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

Very few, if any, first-generation black or white or Asian kids will pursue a Ph.D. They'll pursue the professions for economic security. Many will go to law school and/or business school. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#asian #black #black or white #business #business school

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

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

#about #become #been #believe #black

Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#been #black #buried #contributions #go

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

You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#back #black #contribution #could #created