You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified – that word again – when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I’ve never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. Quotes
So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.
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| Birth: | 16th September, 1950 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Profession: | Author, Critic, Editor, Historian, Professor, Television Presenter |
About
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. was born in Keyser, West Virginia, USA. He is an American literary critic, author, editor, professor, historian, and television presenter. He earned his BA degree in history at Yale University in 1973. He earned his PhD in English literature from Clare College, Cambridge University in 1979. He currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012 Gates has been host for three seasons of the series Finding Your Roots on PBS. He has written several books include: The Signifying Monkey, Loose canons, Colored People: A Memoir, The Future of the Race, Wonders of the African world, Life Upon These Shores, and Black in Latin America.
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