Henry Louis Gates Jr. Quotes

So-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

Latinos come from different countries, and they tend to segregate with only their country instead of embracing all the other countries, because in reality, all the Latinos are going through the same experiences of discrimination and racism.

You didn't know whether Chuck Berry was black or white - it was not a concern.

I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.

Black history is American history.

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.

... a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.

In vain have I looked for the Christian to take me by the hand and invite me to his cabin the way our fathers welcomed him, not out of curiosity, but out of friendship.

Racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings. And even here men of the same color are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice.

The rulers, scholars, officials and big merchants as well as the port workers, farmers, craftsmen, and slaves, were dark-skinned people speaking African tongues in everyday life

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

Our history is responsible for the differences in the South African way of life.

I think the first time 'white' was used was in the 1600s. Generally, we were described by where we came from... All of a sudden, this word 'white' came through, and now everyone is going for their own sense of power... to figure out who's on top.

When I was in high school, I looked for the black presence in a British historical tradition - before too much slavery and empire - that would not cost me my self-respect.

I was bullied when I was in middle school in D.C., especially for being an Indian, because there weren't many Indian kids in school. And because of that, I tended to hide my Indian culture, but that changed by the end of high school. Now, I am 100% proud of it.

The idea of the beauty of diversity came from just growing up where I grew up. Los Angeles is a very big city - there's Little Ethiopia, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, there's African-Americans, Latinos, Europeans.

My mom went through civil rights; my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name.

My mother is white. My biological father is black. When my mother was 17, she got pregnant. They lived in Waterloo, Iowa, which at the time in 1971 was a very segregated society.

I've lived 16, 17 years of my life in Asia, and that's most of my life. I was born in Asia - I've lived cultures that are synonymous with Asian culture - but it's still not Asian enough for some people.

African-American history is American history.

My mother is a German who was brought up in the U.K. So, there is so much cross-cultural exposure I had as a child. But Mumbai is my city.

In many ways, everything about my upbringing decreed that I wouldn't write a memoir because in the world where I grew up, in Chicago in the Fifties and Sixties, one key way of protesting ourselves - 'we' meaning black people - against racism, against its stereotypes and its insults, was to curate and narrate very carefully the story of the people.

There are so many people out there struggling with racism, or their sexuality or where they're brought up or how wealthy their family was ans these issues are not hidden, they were in the late 19 century and they're still important today.

Definitely the Korean culture is very strong to me, and I grew up in Hawaii where Asian-Americans are the dominant culture, but I never thought of myself as the minority.