You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, … - Henry Louis Gates

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People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way.

Henry Louis Gates

You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to. . . do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.

Envy, Family, Roots, Say, Slave Ships

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But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black
white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

Example, Our Generation, People, Problems, Trapped, White

Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the United States, to Miami. It's like a doppelgaenger. It's the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans.

Democratic, Doubt, Image, Miami, Mirror, Mirrors

I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti.

Admired, Birthday, Father, Haiti, Man, Men

I'm looking forward to the time when we all look like Polynesians.

Like, Look, Looking, Looking Forward, Looks, Polynesians

I would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity among other ethnic groups - a 'Faces of America 2. '

America, Among, Analyze, Diversity, Ethnic, Groups