By Samantha Pergadia ’11 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.” Gates’ experience with DNA analysis inspired his plan to
“revolutionize the