Author

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.

From Henry Louis Gates

People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.

From Henry Louis Gates

Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.

From Henry Louis Gates

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. I think it's fascinating.

From Henry Louis Gates

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.

From 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 country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system.

From Henry Louis Gates

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

From Henry Louis Gates

I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?

From 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 increasingly separate from the black underclass.

From Henry Louis Gates

If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race.

From Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates

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