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
I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of integrating African American culture into the broader educational framework of American society.
Henry Louis Gates expresses a desire for the educational system in America to reflect a more diverse cultural landscape. By advocating for 10 percent representation of black culture within the common educational narrative, Gates highlights the need for inclusion and recognition of African American contributions, ensuring that students receive a well-rounded understanding of their nation's heritage.
In practice
During a speech on cultural diversity in education, this quote could be used to emphasize the need for inclusivity.
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.
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.
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.
One principle problem of educating software engineers is that they will not use a new method until they believe it works and, more importantly, that they will not believe the method will work until they see it for themselves.
America thrived in the 20th century because we made high school free. We sent a generation to college. We cultivated the most educated workforce in the world.
I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate.
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