BlackPerspective.net

Henry Gates, Jr Again Shifts Blame To The Victims Of The African Holoucaust

April 27th, 2010

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who became the subject of a row last year involving Cambridge police when he was arrested for breaking into his own Harvard community housing; has published a piece in the New York times absolving Europe and America for the transatlantic slave trade, and the pillaging of Africa.

Of course he puts the blame for the greatest transfer of wealth, greatest mass-kidnapping and greatest wholesale slaughter of a broad people group in the history of the world right were it belongs, on those people, the Africans.

Henry Louis Gates Beer Summit

This is why I wasn’t upset when they dragged him down to the police station, as I noted in this piece at the time.

In Gates world where he seeks to justify himself, and ingratiate himself into the highest social circles of white acceptance, he has worked arduously for many years to make those who he so relies on for his self-actualization feel justifiably removed from any guilt for not only historical racism and its effects; but even from current racism (of course accept when he mouths off and gets arrested). This calls for attempting to eliminate any links between the vestiges of overt racial oppressions, and the outcomes in society that we see manifest today. This would create the space for the acceptance as an intellectual and an equal that Gates apparently so craves from socio-economic upper white society. This also allows Gates to fill superior to all the lazy blacks who haven’t achieved as he has, and to wipe his guilt for his chosen disassociation from the black masses and from black struggle.

“If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”
–Carter G. Woodson
The Mis-Education of the Negroe

Brother Jesse of the FinalCall.com examines Gate’s Op-Ed more specifically:

Op-Ed: The Mis-Education of Henry Louis Gates, Jr

In an April 23, 2010 Op-Ed piece for The New York Times entitled “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game,” Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. argues that a moral, historic, political and economic equivalency exists between the culpability and responsibility of some Africans who participated in the transatlantic slave trade with the nations of Europe and the American colonies . This article perverts history and violates what Dr. W.E.B. DuBois called “scientific truth.” The article was intellectually disingenuous from the stand point of history and scholarship.

The article is a perfect example of the “educated Negro” who has been taught to find his “proper place” at the back door, as stated by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in his book, The Mis-Education of the Negro. Professor Gates demonstrates through this article that he has accepted his proper place at the back door, showing he is in the category of an “educated Negro” that has, in fact, been mis-educated. It is not surprising then that when Professor Gates was mishandled by white policemen in Massachusetts, he felt it necessary to inform the police that he was a Harvard professor. This is the mind of black inferiority masquerading as an “educated Negro” who has in fact forgotten who he is in the mind of White America.

Sadly, the “educated Negro” state of mind has been a historic problem in the struggle of the masses of Black people for true liberation because there has always been a segment within the black community who are the buffers and apologists for the evil of White America against its black citizens. This phenomenon has been discussed in several scholarly works including The Black Bourgeoisie, by Dr. E. Franklin Frazier; The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, by Dr. Harold Cruse; The Souls of Black Folks, by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and of course, The Mis-Education of the Negro, by Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

Professor Gates’ arguments are far below the standard of what one should expect from the Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Dr. DuBois was the first Black man to receive a Ph.D degree from Harvard University in 1895. The irony of Professor Gates’ article is that Dr. DuBois’ doctoral dissertation was entitled, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to The United States of America, 1638-1870. It was first published in 1896 as one of the Harvard historical studies. This study properly placed the culpability and responsibility for slavery on Europe and the American colonies. Whatever the role some Africans may have played, Dr. DuBois did not seem to view it as requiring research and scholarly attribution.

About The Blog

Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.

Click the "More About The Blog" link for rest of this statement.

Also, if you like what you see, subscribe for a once a day email to be sent on days when we post by entering your email address in the feed burner subscription box below.
More About The Blog...

Subscribe via email

Site Meter

Subscribe Via RSS

My Twitter

Twitter Widgetgreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

Podcast

Podcast Commenting

Click here to comment on the podcast messages. Click on the title of the message you want in order to comment. Or you can comment to the post which the podcast may refer to.

Stop the Electrocutions and Executions! (175px)great free widgetsWidgetbox