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
You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote speaks to the importance of creating symbolic unity among fragmented cultural identities.
Henry Louis Gates reflects on the challenges faced by the diasporic black community, highlighting the need for a symbolic reconciliation of diverse cultural identities that have been fragmented over centuries. By referencing 'Humpty Dumpty,' he emphasizes that just as one could not physically reassemble the broken figure, the task of uniting and giving meaning to the African diaspora requires thoughtful interpretation and representation, which would significantly contribute to understanding and appreciating shared heritage.
Themes
DiasporaSymbolicBlack IdentityAfricaFragmentationUnity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about cultural heritage, one might say, 'As Gates pointed out, we must strive to create a symbolic order from our fragmented identities.'
More from Henry Louis Gates
All quotes →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.
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
Similar quotes
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
Barbara Brown TaylorRead
Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
Desiderius ErasmusRead
Everything is poisoned, and it's all poisoned from greed. I think our inability to communicate with each other and everything that's happening in the world is all a symptom of our greater inability to deal with nature appropriately.
Woody HarrelsonRead
Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
The Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.
Alvin TofflerRead
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
Leo TolstoyRead