IN PRINT: Gates on Genetics

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. spoke to a packed audience in the Carl A. Fields Center March 5, explaining his current project on ancestry and his goal to implement genetics testing into history and science curricula for inner-city schools.He began his talk by showing clips of African American Lives 2, the second PBS miniseries hosted by Gates. The series traces and reveals the lineage of several prominent African-Americans, including Chris Rock, Maya Angelou, and Tina Turner.A renowned race theorist known for his book The Signifying Monkey, Gates has maintained an underlying interest in genetics and lineage. Gates said that humanists face a challenge of inserting themselves into discussions increasingly based on biological data. He said it will be difficult for them to “stop just saying stupid stuff about the social construction of race and figure out what that really means at the molecular level.”Read entire article here.