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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the brutal history of slavery, highlighting both the role of European traders and the complicity of some Africans.
Henry Louis Gates emphasizes the haunting legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, where the cruelty of European traders is paralleled by the troubling reality of some Africans participating in the enslavement of their own people. This acknowledgment of both external oppression and internal complicity serves as a poignant reminder of the complex history of slavery and its enduring effects on cultural memory and identity.
In practice
In a history class discussing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade.
It'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.
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.
In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.
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.
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.
Very few, if any, first-generation black or white or Asian kids will pursue a Ph.D. They'll pursue the professions for economic security. Many will go to law school and/or business school.
We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.
Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.
The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the future of Christian civilisation.
My father's father fled a pogrom in Russia in the early 20th century and was welcomed to the United States. So was my stepmother, who escaped as a young girl from Communist Hungary in 1950.
The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad.
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
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