There are two things that have always haunted me: the brutality of the European traders and the stories I've heard about Africans selling other Africans into slavery.
Henry Louis GatesRead
There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Family trees often hide untold stories and histories that deserve to be explored.
Henry Louis Gates highlights the rich and often overlooked narratives that exist within family trees. Each lineage is filled with personal stories, struggles, victories, and history that shape identity and belonging; exploring these narratives can provide a deeper understanding of oneself and one's heritage.
Themes
FamilyStoriesHeritageHistoryIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
During a family reunion, you might say this quote to encourage discussions about shared ancestry.
More from Henry Louis Gates
All quotes βIt's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.
Henry Louis GatesRead
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.
Henry Louis GatesRead
In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.
Henry Louis GatesRead
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.
Henry Louis GatesRead
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.
Henry Louis GatesRead
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Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can't show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn't matter whose body is whose.
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My most treasured possessions are not things; they are only things, my friends, family and animals are what counts.
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