35 Million Ways to Be Black
The intellectual impresario talks about slavery, his quest to make "Roots for the 21st century," and the need for "moral revolution within the African American community."
Accompanying Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates Jr. across the Harvard University campus is like following a beloved small-town mayor. “Hi Skip!” “How’re you doing, Skip?” “How’s that leg of yours, Skip?”—for he is on crutches today. And he has a kind word for everybody. A young woman approaches and greets him warmly; he gives her a friendly kiss on the cheek; they laugh and chat; we walk on, and he jokes, “Sexual harassment!” Then, barely missing a beat, exuberantly, with her still in earshot, “She’s harassing me!” Typical Gates: to be laughingly relaxed about things that Americans often find hard to talk about.
Nowhere does he do that more than with the vexed issue of race. The 56-year-old Gates is the newly-named Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard, as well as the director of the university’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. For a decade and a half, ending in 2006, he also headed Harvard’s Department of African and African American Studies, assembling what is widely regarded as the world’s most distinguished collection of scholars, both black and white, of race relations. The first black person to receive a Ph.D. from Britain’s Cambridge University, Gates has an impressive string of scholarly publications to his credit. But, as much as any living American, he is a public intellectual—and intellectual impresario—as well. He has made several series of films for PBS and written a string of profiles for The New Yorker. He is the editor or coeditor of numerous anthologies and of a large encyclopedia, both print and electronic, of African and African American life. He is also a past or present member of everything from the Pulitzer Prize Board to the committee that advises the Postal Service on new stamp designs.
Our conversation takes place in Gates’ house, only a few blocks from his Harvard office. Today he is sitting in a recliner, his right leg propped up. It is encased in a strange metal framework whose arms actually penetrate his skin and go into the bone. Over many months, he has adjusted this frame a millimeter or two each day to force his leg bone to grow longer, repairing a childhood touch football injury whose treatment left it two inches too short. When, in West Virginia in the early 1960s, the first doctor to examine the 14-year-old Gates heard him express his ambition (at the time Gates wanted to be a physician), he told Gates’ mother the boy was an obviously unbalanced “overachiever”—a code word for a black person who didn’t know his place. The doctor misdiagnosed the injury as psychosomatic.
As we talk, Gates scratches his leg, fields phone calls, and greets people who bring food, mail, papers he needs to inspect or sign. A short, lively man with rimless glasses, mustache and goatee, his conversation seems centrifugal, like a spinning fireworks pinwheel that shoots sparks in all directions. It is hard to imagine him ever at a loss for words.
Mother Jones: This spring is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain. As you know, British West Indian sugar planters fought this move with particular tenacity. The British are making a huge fuss over this anniversary. Should they?
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Yes. The reason why it was such an exciting thing is that it was a movement organized both by secular intellectuals, people who were in the spirit of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and by religious figures—Methodists and Evangelicals. They broke down those boundaries. So for me it’s fascinating as a movement because of these stark contrasts between these two groups of people who wouldn’t talk to each other on a lot of other issues. Plus, ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies—British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist—I still think it was a great moment in human history.
MJ: What about the role of the West Indian slave rebellions in finally ending slavery there, in the 1830s?
HLG: [Gates proudly points at the wall, to a portrait of Toussaint L’Ouverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution, the greatest of all slave rebellions.] That’s my man! Yes, of course, this was enormously important: the threat of slaves rebelling, slashing someone’s throat and destroying property—whether that meant burning the plantation house or making human property valueless by running away. I think that had an enormous amount to do with ending slavery in the West Indies.
MJ: Let’s look at a more recent step forward, the transition to one-person/one-vote democracy in South Africa in 1994. What made that finally happen? And how big a step was it?
HLG: Well, people like F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid president, and the people around him—those guys didn’t just wake up one day and get the Holy Ghost. They could see the writing on the wall. I imagine them sitting around in some gentlemen’s club, with some of the richest people in South Africa, who said to them: “Look, we can make this transition and preserve our wealth too! Let’s pick the right guys, make them billionaires, and then let Mandela out of jail. We kept him alive for this reason all these years, didn’t we? He’ll be very radical on race, very conservative on economics—what more could we want?” And of course that’s just what happened. I don’t mean to sound cynical. I’m not. I stayed up at night, and I woke my children up, to watch Mandela walk out of prison on TV. It was a great day, but it was complex. These things always are.
A while ago I had dinner at Richard Holbrooke’s house. The editor of Foreign Affairs was there, the editor of the New York Times, etc., a small dinner for a black South African leader. Off the record, it was ______, who’s a friend of mine. And I said to him, in a nice way, “It appears that the redistribution of wealth is focused primarily on creating a small group of oligarchs who are from the elite of the African National Congress.” And he just shamelessly said that it was a necessary step and that over time wealth would trickle down. And I said to him [laughs], “Damn, ______, how much money do you need? South Africa’s going to blow up one day!” In my Africa film series we visited one of the new cinderblock houses they’ve built. A metal roof—in all that heat—no running water, no electricity. I mean, hello, this is housing reform? Huge, huge inequalities like that remain.
MJ: Both abolition and ending apartheid were moral crusades. Do we need one in the United States today?
HLG: Our people have lost their way. The new moral crusade should be dedicated to bridging the class divide that has emerged within the African American community. We now have two self-perpetuating classes: my friends’ kids . . . and a whole lot of others, who haven’t had educational opportunities, haven’t benefited from affirmative action. We have the largest black middle class in our history, but the percentage of black children living at or beneath the poverty line is very similar to that on the day Dr. King was so brutally assassinated. Excuse me? If King came back he would die all over again.
MJ: So how do we solve this problem?
HLG: First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look—no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.
MJ: So why are things like that happening?
HLG: Look at black immigrants landing here in Boston from Haiti who can’t even speak English! After ten years, they own taxi medallions. So it’s not simply a matter of racism. I mean these people are as black as anybody, but they have an immigrant mentality. We need to instill an immigrant mentality back into the African American community. Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the ’50s were immigrant values even though we weren’t immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro. My daddy would say right now if we called him on the phone, “You have to be 10 times smarter than the white boy.” He didn’t say, “Woe is me!” or “The white man is the devil!” He said, “You can make it, but you have to be 10 times better and show up ready to work.” If we could do that in the ’50s, four years before Brown v. Board of Education, for goodness sake, and if the Haitians and other West Indians can do it, then we can do it too. It has nothing to do with race. Yes, there’s racism out there, but losing these values has been much worse. I’m not sympathetic to anybody who talks endlessly about how we are victims.
I think we start with education and with the black equivalent of Hebrew schools. Now, my Jewish friends say that Hebrew schools are the worst institution ever created. But when they have children they send them to Hebrew school. Without Hebrew school there wouldn’t be a Jewish people. Anthony [Appiah, Gates’ former Harvard colleague, now a professor at Princeton] and I got grants from foundations, and we started after-school programs teaching computer skills and black history in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cleveland. If kids hung in there we would give them a certificate from the Du Bois Institute at Harvard saying that they had successfully completed the course. They had to do a PowerPoint presentation. And at graduation all of their family would come and they were all women—big mamas in church hats. The first time I went in I got tears in my eyes.
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Why haven't I heard of this man before?!?! Why haven't the citizens of Detroit heard his message??? I am an innercity teacher fighting a losing battle.....kids without supplies who can come up with $50 for an amusement park field trip, who can buy a lot of junk food ...to help pay for a graduation dinner that they "can't afford"....and on and on. It is the saddest situation I have ever been in....one excuse after another from these kids who think the world should be handed to them on the proverbial silver platter and anyone who says different is a "racist." No responsibility, no accountability..... just life as usual and blame your condition on someone else. Combine that with advice from parents to beat up anyone who displeases you and we have an "interesting" day at school.
Isn't the "immigrant mentality" the abandoned legacy of Booker T Washington?
Oh Well! The real man is Dr. Claude Anderson!!!!!!!
Inspiring! Our granddaughter, Camille Coates(caucasian) graduated from Princeton this year. Her thesis is: "Spheres of Vulnerability for South Africans Growing Up in an Era of HIV and AIDS in South Africa". I will email this article to her.
Very good, I think this information can apply to all races.
I echo the remarks of the first letter - Why haven't I heard of this man before?!?! Why haven't the citizens of Detroit heard his message??? My kids started school in Philadelphia in a combined neighborhood of educated whites & mixed marriages and less well-off blacks. Half their friends were black or mixed. I was nervous about moving down to Nashville, but for the wrong reasons, I learned. The 'reverse racism' was awful in school. Really hard on my kids. I feel so sorry for the 'normal' middle-class black families, like my neighbors, who have to deal with this. The final straw for my son was when, while working at a restaurant, the whole crew decided to 'adopt' a family for Christmas. Part of the deal was dinner at the restaurant. They all came in with those very expensive 'sneakers', cell phones, gold jewelry etc and were extremely demanding & unpleasant. I grew up with my Mom's stories of being Catholic and friends with black people in the South.
"you have to be 10 times better than..." ie you represent your people. I wish more people like Mr. Gates would speak out - the people who need to hear him don't read books.
I'm sorry you haven't heard of Dr. Gates; He's often been a part of media discussions when race, history and economics are topics. He's also played an integral part in many PBS broadcasts. He tells the truth. Although I live in the Boston area, I was raised in N.J. in a well integrated neighborhood that included many immigrants, some had even escaped from communist regimes. Our parents and teachers, Black, White and Asian were marching in locked steps about one thing: that we children were going to reach higher (vocationally or academically) than the previous generation. I was told by my high school teachers "When you get to college, other students may have had better equipment to work with. We are preparing you to compete." We all made sacrifices and knew the difference between a "want" and a "need". I was never made to feel inadequate, but encouraged. Three days after my arrival at university, I received a note from the Black Stdent Affairs office asking why I had not yet sign up for remedial English. I explained that on the basis of my board and AP scores, I as exempt from English. It ws a kick in the gut for a 17 year old. I'd never been the object of anyone's low expectations. Half the battle is raising children to know they are capable of great achievement.
Sorry about the typos above. The incident still galls me.
I would love to think all the problems of lower income people could be solved by adopting an immigrant mentality, but that is only a very small step to a much bigger problem. I am biracial/Haitian American/Jewish/Christian, but here in the deep south, I am simply black. Where I am issues/life is still white and black, north/south, rich/poor, etc. Schools are largely resegregated after a 10 year desegregation program. It's easy to blame people who blame their problems on someone else and a grant here or there may change a life or two. But, I believe we can think bigger than that and be bigger than that if we change how we view others who spend all of thier income for a chance to be recognized among their peers. Not everyone in poverty has a bling bling mentality and there is a structure to poverty. Education is key for all involved in change...let's move mountains!
good interview...at least this time it is not skewed negatively towards immigrants......My "man" on these issues is still Orlando Patterson(Harvard)...and btw "skip" may be the first African American Harvard Cambridge PHD....but there are Black scholars(from the Caribbean and Africa ) with Oxford/Cambridge residing in the USA with such degrees long before'skip"
The reason the immigrant mentality is not in the African-American community is because it is not taught in school that Black America is simply a colony of America. It was taught but that was before Brown v. Board. Now, we are taught that equality is here, and we are stupid because we haven't succeeded. But honestly, do black people know why they are historically, outside of slavery. Hell no. That is the the problem because if they did, they would not be trying to integrate, they would be trying to educate.
That's my professor and mentor!!! =). You can read more on Skip here: http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/gates_h.htm
What great thoughts, by a great thinker. Dr. Gates is correct in many of his thoughts on life in America.
As a documentary photographer I see his statements played out across this great Americana each day.
The heart of darkness in Los Angeles is Skid Row; race and economics clash and African-Americans are in the trap of crime and squalor.
Down the Nickel... Where folks only have a nickel bag of hope!
There is a legacy of injustice towards humanity: the poor, and those that simply have poor educations.
America exports the "Urban Bling Factor" and it creates great wealth for some. While, those in the trap of real inner city living remain in extreme poverty.
Dr. Gates is correct, and you can see it in this link:
http://www.skidrowportrait.aminus3.com
Peace.
William Shepherd
What great thoughts, by a great thinker. Dr. Gates is correct in many of his thoughts on life in America.
As a documentary photographer I see his statements played out across this great Americana each day.
The heart of darkness in Los Angeles is Skid Row; race and economics clash and African-Americans are in the trap of crime and squalor.
Down the Nickel... Where folks only have a nickel bag of hope!
There is a legacy of injustice towards humanity: the poor, and those that simply have poor educations.
America exports the "Urban Bling Factor" and it creates great wealth for some. While, those in the trap of real inner city living remain in extreme poverty.
Dr. Gates is correct, and you can see it in this link:
http://www.skidrowportrait.aminus3.com
Peace.
William Shepherd
skidrowportrait@gmail.com
i am the blackesest muahauhahahahaha
Hillary is spreading falsehoods in black church speeches claiming that she was for the civil rights movement when in fact she was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
GOOGLE: 'Hillary Against Civil Rights Act'.....Learn the Facts.....We're glad Hillary changed her views but please tell her to stop lying in black churches about her past !!!
I really enjoyed reading this article. It has enlightened me and inspired me to be black in 35 million ways. It really inspired me because it was with Henry Louis Gates Jr., who I have been trying to contact about My family tree not know if we are related in any way. If so it would be one more reason for me to share with my three sons' and two daughters his many writings and ideas.
thank you for sharing with us this interveiw. If I can get a response back for Mr. Gates it would be appreiciated. this is my email address opengatesdevelop@yahoo.com
Thank You
Ms Helen D Gates
I would like for Mr. Gates to interview more Black people, i mean the ordinary ones, especially about their own family research and family tree. He is doing interviews with celebrities etc. but need to interview the little man. I am searching for the House family of North Carolina. Thanks.
I want to contact him for business. Help!
Dear Mr. Gates, I was fascinated by the PBS piece on tracking the ancestry of African Americans through genetics. I was introduced to the history of this horrific history of human bondage through a book authored by Hugh Thomas entitled, The Slave Trade. My question is, Are you familiar with this book and how accurate are the statistics and data contained within. I teach history and biology and would like to pass on additional information to my students. V/R yours,
I enjoyed watching your newest PBS special Africian Americam Lives II. I was curiuos as to whether you heard of the book " Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in the U.S. History " by Thomas DeWolf . I was watching CSPAN Books just days after watching PBS and thought you might be interested in this book.
Office Phone: +1 617 496 5468 x65468
104 Mt. Auburn St. Rm 303
Office Fax: +1 617 495 9490
University Mailing Address: W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African Am
3r
104 Mt Auburn St
Cambridge MA 02138
Email: hgates@fas.harvard.edu
I wanted you to help me to find my great grandmother's slibings and her Father's relatives..
I am pissed at you Henry Lois Gates!!!Educate yourself .
Low income girls of all races get pregnant because they have no other
successes in life.It is something they can do when there is nothing else.It is also a way to find love often abssent in their lives.
They need to have self worth and self love in order to make different decisions.This is about their morality.....hmmm that sounds a little sexist Mr Gates......
I teach the kids you are taking about ,they live in an island of poverty in the projects.
The incarceration rate is high ,the nutrition sucks, their moms are babies themselves.Many of the kids are so traumatized or stressed by their lives that it is all they can do to control their behavior.They are told to make correct choices--what does that mean if you have nothing on which to base your choice?
The schools use behavior management non-profits.They operate through the teachers to convince the parents to make their children clients ;this is paid for by medicaid.It is cheaper than paying a teaching assistant since it is an outside contractor .The child gets a "counselor" who sits in the class room waiting for the student to "act out" then he is pulled out to a room down the hall for behavioral management training,this happens several times a day.What is he missing in class?What is he learning about interacting with peers in the room away from them down the hall? Is he being prepped for his future jail sentence?All the kids in the program are put on meds which parent administer sporadicly.Do they need meds because they are ADHD or because they are stressed,hungry ,upset ?......but be sure if they don't keep quiet about what distresses them ,meds will be readily available.
In some classrooms 10 out of 15 kids have a parent in jail .I keep food in school because they are underfed and malnourished.The abuse rate is high ,but services are unavailable or extremely difficult to obtain.
If you still can't keep it together after elementary school you may end up in the equivalent of a pre- juvenile detention center(you go home at night) called CCP ,the kids have nicknamed it The Colored Children's Prison.
What do they need Mr. Gates, up there in your mountain?My kids are well indoctrinated in African American heroes so much so they can't name one person not black in history.They know no one who is not black,most of their teachers are black ,everyone in their ghetto is black,their city council is predominantly black,their mayor is black,most of their city is black.They are the culture about which you teach because they are still isolated and segregated.Church hats?Half the teachers in the school have church hats ,half the city has a church hats made.
Of course as with cultures in the U.S. as people gain wealth and power they become increasing part of the mainstream. These kids will not be in that mainstream,I just pray they live through their early 20's.
These segregated neighborhoods are smothered in church vans,church programs, and jailhouse profits running their extreme religious programs,everyone is teaching computer skills and pushing their beliefs on them in exchange for services offered.They already have the Hebrew school and they have had it for some time.
I believe in order to break cyclical poverty you must integrate not segragate the poor into stabile areas with access to work and school, and people who are different from them.Mixed income ,mixed cultures.
They have no clue how to live differently ,it is not as simple as literacy or learning to respect authority .These are the people left behind by the civil rights movement who later were ravished by crack wars.They never were doing well to begin with. Those who were from stability but only kept back by Jim Crow moved on when they had opportunity ,the rest just were left to struggle on with maybe even less in a way.Community without glue.
So go write another book and trace some Operah DNA, and preach some separatist crap.
I am white and I love my babies and I think they are geniuses and I never have had demand to respect ,because it is mutual. So that's where I am ,where the [deleted] are you at?Not down here.
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