Henry Louis Gates Jr. Quotes

I think to be very blunt about it, in a lot of that support is a desire for convergence of a black skin with the United States Presidency, with power on that level - the idea is that to have a black in that office leading a largely white country would be redemptive for America.

Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

I always said I'm not disappointed with Obama because I voted for him because he was black, and as long as he kept being black, I was a happy man.

Sharpton and Jackson are 'race brokers.' Their job is to define black identity and then keep blacks in line to vote to the highest Democratic bidder that serves their purposes. 'Black enough' is just another tool in the bamboozler's toolbox.

The black conservative is responsible for making people question an idea that racism must be extinct before black people can overcome. Understanding that our goal is to thrive despite racism rather than fetishizing it is, in fact, the central ideological plank of people deemed "black conservatives." This is a coherent position, but that can be hard to perceive, given the way that race has been discussed in our land over the past 40 years or so.

We must continue to insist to our better off brothers and sisters that they are in the same racial boat as their less better off kin. Even elevated class status and superior financial standing cannot ward off the effects and consequences of racism.

The New Black doesn’t blame other races for our issues. The New Black dreams and realizes that it’s not a pigmentation: it’s a mentality and it’s either going to work for you, or it’s going to work against you. And you’ve got to pick the side you’re going to be on.

I always tell young people in particular: Do not say that nothing's changed when it comes to race in America, unless you lived through being a black man in the 1950s or '60s or '70s.

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too.

Black artists deserve the opportunity to create work without the burden of alleviating the social ills plaguing many black communities.

Anyone reading contemporary poetry - especially contemporary African-American poetry - will quickly see that race is an enduring subject. What some don't realize is just how diverse the handling of that subject is. It's as diverse as blackness.

I like to think my work is furthering black culture by educating and empowering black people.

I am so proud to be black. I am, nevertheless, tired of the oppression. We need to develop and support a cohesive black agenda. We need to do what leaders have suggested since slavery. We need to recognize that while we are not monolithic, there is power in embracing a common agenda.

I'm not for having to support everything that's black, because I definitely don't. But I do feel like it is imperative for us to see that we are not a monolithic people.

There's not one black narrative. There's not one way to be black.

There were people who voted for Obama simply because he was the first African-American. We had a lot of people that would not have voted for Obama but who did because they really hoped that the nation, making the statement electing an African-American president, would prove once and for all that this is not a racist nation. I believe that there were all kinds of people that voted for Obama with that hope. That was the reason. Everything else was irrelevant to them.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

I'm inclined to believe that most Negro leaders, professional Negroes are professional Negroes. Being a Negro is their professional, and being a profe - a leader is their profession. And usually they say exactly what the white man wants - wants to hear them say.

There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

If Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins or any of these compromising Negros who say exactly what the white man wants to hear is interviewed anywhere in the country you don't get anybody to offset what they say. But whenever a black man stands up and says something that white people don't like then the first thing that man does is run around to try and find somebody to say something to offset what has just been said. This is natural but it is done.

I am proud to live in a country with an African-American president. But President Obama cannot be proud of the fact that the prevalence of black poverty has actually increased under his leadership. The specific policies advanced by the president and his allies on the left amount to little more than throwing money at the problem and walking away.

Jesse Jackson's living depends on the maintenance of an African-American victim culture

My heart is so heavy when I see the reality of the Indian reservation and as an American, I know I am, too, responsible.