Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the State of Black Americans

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy has been running a remarkable series of columns here, here and here, detailing the sobering analysis of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. about the state of black Americans since the assasination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. One example quote from Gates:

"I remember a poll where black kids were asked to list the things they considered 'acting white,' " Gates said during a recent book signing at the Aspen Institute in Washington. "The top three things were: making straight A's, speaking standard English and going to the Smithsonian. Now, if anybody had said anything like that when we were growing up in the '50s, first, your mother would smack you upside the head and second, they'd check you into a mental institution."

The columns are well worth reading and pondering. More in Gates new book, America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans