Author

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

So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.

From Henry Louis Gates

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.

From Henry Louis Gates

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?

From Henry Louis Gates

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

From 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, buried.

From Henry Louis Gates

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

From Henry Louis Gates

Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with.

From Henry Louis Gates

You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.

From Henry Louis Gates

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.

From Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

David Herbert Donald

Angela Davis

John Henrik Clarke

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Steven Spielberg

Authors with Opposing Views

Alexander Herzen

Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Sullivan

Anushka Sharma

Barry Schuler