--- title: 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr. | TIME description: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has long had a role in bringing African American history to the forefront canonical: https://time.com/video/fQxzBZGL/ og:title: 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr. og:description: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has long had a role in bringing African American history to the forefront og:url: https://time.com/video/fQxzBZGL/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/fQxzBZGL/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr. twitter:description: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has long had a role in bringing African American history to the forefront twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/fQxzBZGL/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr. > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr. [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr.](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fQxzBZGL.m3u8) (5:54)  _Published 2009-02-06. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has long had a role in bringing African American history to the forefront_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:05 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Questions for Julia Louis-Dreyfus](/video/woTRr0FU/) ### 10 Questions for Julia Louis-Dreyfus [10 Questions for Henry Kissinger in 2011](/video/p9C3LJRc/) ### 10 Questions for Henry Kissinger in 2011 [10 Questions for Henry Paulson](/video/klSPFZtY/) ### 10 Questions for Henry Paulson --- ## Transcript >> Hi. I'm Gilbert Cruz for TIME. com and I'm here with Harvard Professor, Henry Louis Cage Jr. He writes extensively on Race on America and as also a host of the new PBS Documentary, " Looking for Lincoln ", which premiers February 11th. Dr. Gates is here to answer questions from TIME readers. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Our first question comes from Trevor Goldstein from Stone Mountain, Georgia. Can you define the word race? Do you believe we would all be better off doing away with racial terms are an ethnic heritage and ancestry more meaningful in descriptive? >> Well, that's very ancient question. I found that people use the word " ethnic or ethnicity" in race interchangeable. Races and multiplicity of being and for some people it's a biological concept. For other people it's socially constructed. For instance, I have two daughters, two lovely daughters who were half white and half black. If they've been shipped to China, the second they were born, and all the Chinese people who treated them like they're Chinese, what would they be? They would be Chinese. Race is not a biological concept. It is a socially constructive concept. When I use the word " race ", it's about culture. >> Do you think as the nation becomes more diverse and there's more inter- marriage and inter- mixing that we may need to come up with a new way of taking about race-- >> Yes, but you'll be dead and I'll be dead by that time. So, I wouldn't really worry about it if I were you. >> Fair enough. >> One of the things that DNA testing, and you know I have done several series for PBS on ancestry tracing through DNA, the Afghan- American Live series. I've never tested a person who is a 100 percent anything. No matter what the laws in the day time, or that restricted sexual contact between human beings. When the lights came down, everybody got down. Everybody has been sleeping with everybody else for the last 50, 000 years. The quickest way to get people to sleep with each other, you should say. Don't sleep with ex. >> Right. >> If people just fantasize what drives them crazy. >> Our next question is from Lauren Anthony from Victoria, South Africa. Will there ever be a time in which the signifier of race will cease to men? >> For a long, long time, race will remain a primary mark or a primary signifier. But I think it's important also to say that race codes for class that without economic scarcity, there wouldn't be racism. If I say, I hate those black people, usually it's because I fear them economically. >> Right. >> So over centuries of history, the so- called characteristics of racist have been invented in order to justify their economic suppression. It's always about economic [ unk ], always. >> Our next question is from David Wigel from Virginia Beach. Do you think that Afghan- American history is taught enough in our schools? >> No. Afghan- American history generally is taught in Afghan- Ameri-- black history month, which is coldest, darkest, shortest month and so they gather together the month and then they left over, they gave black people. I wanna see every day would be black history month. I want the story of black people and the story of the Hispanic people and the story of Jewish people and the story of Mormons for example to be integrated into the larger every day narrative of Afghan- American history. Look at this point, I'm worried that we don't teach history enough even George Washington Whiteman's history let alone two multicultural histories, so I'm a big advocate for the teaching of history in our public schools on a multicultural level from kindergarten all the way to college. >> Our next question is from Bill Breed from Bremen, Germany. And Bill asks-- in a recent Op- Ed, you explained the complex feelings and views that President Abraham Lincoln felt toward black people. Could you expand on this? >> Yes. Abraham Lincoln-- fundamental part of Abraham Lincoln is more compass was his opposition to slavery and his determination to a, first of all, to limit its expansion and then, B. eventually to abolish. But it took it a long time to embrace black people or the notion that black people could even begin to be equal with white people. [ unk ] to darky jokes. He like black face [ unk ]. We're raised with a fairy tale version of representation of Abraham Lincoln that because he hated slavery, he also loves the slaves. He did-- even a month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he addressed Congress December 1st 1862 and asked for Constitutional amendment to fund the slaves he was about to free to go back to Africa or to go to the Caribbean. He finally began to change for two reasons. First of all, he met a man named Frederick Douglass, who was the smartest black man, the greatest orator of the 19th century and a great black abolitionist. And secondly, the north was losing the war. One reason the north was losing civil war was because surprise, surprise, the confederates brought their slaves with them to the front lines and Lincoln realized that he could damage his self by, at least, legally on paper freeing their slaves. He resisted abolition as long as he could and dire necessity forced him to it and his experience with Frederick Douglass. >> What do you make of the comparisons that commentators and Barack Obama himself have made between him and Lincoln? They both have the genius of improvisatory pragmatism. They're both are-- the most radical thing about Barack Obama is that he's black and he is not radical. He's a left of center slightly is his interest. He's a conciliator like Lincoln. He wants to be non- partisan like Lincoln do and he's a pragmatist like Abraham Lincoln. And so I think of all of the successors in the White House since our murdered 16th Presidents are-- non will be remembered as more alike Abraham Lincoln and Barack Hussein Obama. And that's one of the ironies of American history. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr.","description":"Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has long had a role in bringing African American history to the forefront","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/fQxzBZGL/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2009-02-06T00:07:20.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fQxzBZGL.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/fQxzBZGL/","duration":"PT5M54S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/fQxzBZGL/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```