Imagine living your whole life thinking you were only one race. Imagine thinking that since you were always whatever race you thought you were, that during your lifetime you insulted another race. Now, imagine that one day you decide to take a DNA test to examine your roots and you find out that bam! your not who you think you are. Prominent African American Studies Henry Gates, found out that he is half white. Yes, those of you who know Gates, would argue that his skin complexion is not white. But according to the attached article, Gates is in deed half white, 50% percent, his father was 67% white. So what does that do to one's phyche. I remember Gates doing a documentary on the African Passage. He went to the final passage in West Africa, and brought up questions as to how can one race of people betray its own people into slavery. And, how can another race be so cruel in its usage of slavery in a country where all men were supposed to be free. So are you curious? Are you afraid to see what your past is?
Article: Exploring Roots Of Famous Black Americans PBS Series Examines Blending Of Races, Cultures In U.S.January 30, 2006 By ROGER CATLIN, Courant TV Critic
When he employed DNA testing to find the roots of prominent African Americans for a new genealogy show on PBS for Black History Month, Henry Louis Gates Jr. couldn't resist looking into his own family's past.What he found surprised him: The W.E.B. Du Bois professor of humanities and chair of the African and African American Studies Department at Harvard University was half white. "Oh, man. It was the long dark night of the soul," Gates says about the discovery, joking: "what about my reparation check? I have to give away half of my reparation check? All that affirmative-action money - I have to give it back. It's terrible. It's very embarrassing to me."Gates, who hosts and produced "African American Lives," a four-hour, two-part series that begins Wednesday on PBS, says he knew his family had some white blood in it. But by administering one of the scientific tests in the program, he found that his father is 67 percent white and that he's 50 percent white."What does that mean? Does that make me less black? I had to ask all those questions," Gates says. "And, no, I mean, I'm very secure in my African American identity. It just means that African Americans and European Americans have been inextricably intertwined on the most intimate level from day one in this country."For those whose past he looks into on the program - including Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Tucker - he traces family lineage back through American history, often back to slavery and in some cases all the way back to Africa, using genealogy, oral history, family stories and modern DNA analysis.While he could have discovered just as interesting stories from ordinary African Americans, Gates says, he deliberately chose celebrities and prominent blacks in part because they would attract more viewers."I was trying to seduce high school and elementary school kids into science and into historical research, and I was trying to make a larger point," he says.Of the more than 100 series PBS has done on the African American experience, Gates says, most concentrate on a very few great people, including Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "I wanted people representing a wide variety of occupations," he says. "So I didn't want to reinforce stereotypes about entertainers and athletes. But I wanted them to be seductive enough so people would actually watch."So besides the celebrities, he chose a scientist - Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut; a religious leader, Bishop T.D. Jakes of Potter's House mega-church in Texas; and a doctor."Ben Carson was my classmate at Yale; he's the chief of pediatric neurosurgery down at Johns Hopkins," Gates says. "He was the first surgeon successfully to separate Siamese twins joined at the brain."Of Jemison, he says: "First of all, there's only been one black woman astronaut. So that was easy. And I knew that she had graduated from Stanford and had majored in African studies, among other things, and I wanted that message that here's a sister who is a medical doctor, who went to outer space and loved black people, black culture. That - you know, that's my trade, right? - so I wanted that."Jemison says participating in "African American Lives" "helped to put American history in context. The surprise for me was that my maternal grandfather was Asian."When she found that out, she says, "I said, `Oh, that's because in Mississippi there were a lot of Asian or Chinese workers that were brought in during this time period. And one of the things that we don't recognize, for example, in U.S. history is how many different groups of people that African Americans, Asians and Hispanics blended together and met and did work outside of the context of, you know, having European Americans as mediators."Jakes, the bishop, was the only one of the nine subjects to accurately guess which African tribe he descended from: the Ebo. "It was gratifying to fill in the missing spaces in my life," he said. "I've been fascinated by my family history for a long time and even about the roots of my culture." "There's been a great dispute in Africa over which tribe I belong to. So this dispels any myths," Jakes says. "They now have answered those questions in my mind, and it is impacting [me] on a very personal level and a very deep way to fill in those blanks."
