Henry Louis Gates Jr. On
Untangling African-American History (an NPR interview about his upcoming series PBS
documentary The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.)
On
the failures of the "Conversation About Race"
Every
time there's a racial incident in this country, there are calls by our
political leaders by our activists, our spokespersons for the so-called
"conversation about race." So what does the conversation about race
mean? People gather together in a kind of town meeting. They stand up and talk
anecdotally about pains and slights... And then everyone feels better and they
go home ... And then a couple weeks later there's another Trayvon Martin
shooting. Real conversations about crucial things in America happen in our
schools. Schools have always, from the beginning of the republic, been the
venue for the shaping of citizenship. The presence of African Americans has to
be integrated into the story we tell about the founding of this great republic
and its settlement, and its expansion.
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