Black Quotes by Henry Louis Gates

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

— Henry Louis Gates

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

— Henry Louis Gates

One must learn how to be black in America.

— Henry Louis Gates

Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.

— Henry Louis Gates

No white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

— Henry Louis Gates

I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less,…

— Henry Louis Gates

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes…

— Henry Louis Gates

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

— Henry Louis Gates

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

— Henry Louis Gates

The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is…

— Henry Louis Gates

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

— Henry Louis Gates

I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.'

— Henry Louis Gates

The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master…

— Henry Louis Gates

Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century…

— Henry Louis Gates

One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just…

— Henry Louis Gates

We must begin to understand the nature of intertextuality . . . the manner by which texts poems and novels respond to…

— Henry Louis Gates

There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack…

— Henry Louis Gates

It's very lonely being a prominent black intellectual at an institution where you're the only prominent black intellectual. That was the model…

— Henry Louis Gates

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…

— Henry Louis Gates

The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded…

— Henry Louis Gates

The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've…

— Henry Louis Gates

I think that is what we do by preserving and telling our stories. If you don't tell your stories, other people will…

— Henry Louis Gates

I think that we need more economic-based solutions to the problems afflicting the Black community, and I think that that's a way…

— Henry Louis Gates

Very few Black people ever embraced back to Africa movements, and very few actually, a tiny number actually went back to Africa.…

— Henry Louis Gates

Like the amazing story of Anthony Johnson. This man was a slave, then became free, accumulated 250 acres, and even had his…

— Henry Louis Gates

The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the…

— Henry Louis Gates

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for…

— Henry Louis Gates

Everybody wants to have sex - you don't have to have a baby when you're 16. You don't have to do drugs.…

— Henry Louis Gates

Our society is driven today by so much ethnic discord. We have Black Lives Matter, which I praise and celebrate. We have…

— Henry Louis Gates

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the…

— Henry Louis Gates

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

— Henry Louis Gates

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

— Henry Louis Gates

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most…

— Henry Louis Gates

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no…

— Henry Louis Gates

America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the…

— Henry Louis Gates

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.…

— Henry Louis Gates

I got a letter from this lady of Russian and Jewish descent. She asked me if I was a racist because I…

— Henry Louis Gates

No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The…

— Henry Louis Gates

What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to…

— Henry Louis Gates

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black…

— Henry Louis Gates