Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. discussed black genealogy and ancestry to an audience of students, faculty and community members on Thursday at the Ryan Family Auditorium in Tech.
Gates, a noted African-American scholar and author, delivered this year’s Leon Forrest Lecture, which the dean’s office of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of African American Studies has sponsored every year since 1999. Gates discussed the making of African American Lives, the 2006 PBS series in which he traced the ancestry of famous black Americans.
“I base my career on deconstructing race,” Gates said. “There is no purity of race; it just doesn’t exist.”
He outlined how he contacted geneticist Rick Kittles with an idea for a program that analyzed notable black figures’ mitochondrial DNA, which is used to trace ethnic origin. The idea grew into PBS documentary African American Lives. The results of their studies, Gates said, indicated that many black Americans can trace their ancestry both to the west coast of Africa and to Europe.
“I thought it was wonderful. His basic questioning and definition of race is very important,” President Morton Schapiro said of what students should learn from the lecture. “Using genetics is a great way to introduce science to people.”
Gates also drew upon his childhood interest in his own ancestry, discussing his ancestor Jane Gates, a former slave who settled the family in West Virginia. Gates said genealogy could be a vital way to teach children, especially black children, about genetics and their own ancestries.
Weinberg junior Midori McSwain had recently interviewed her grandmother about her family history, so the lecture topic was relevant to her own life, she said.
Other groups have tried to bring Gates to Northwestern in the past, but his schedule was always too full, WCAS Coordinator of Special Events Estelle Ure said. This year, “we’re extremely fortunate to get him,” Ure said.
Gates fielded audience questions about his work on the African American Lives series and how to talk with relatives about painful family histories.
With science and storytelling, people can learn about their pasts, and the same techniques can be used to improve the future of education, Gates said. “My hope is that we can restore…the love of learning, the blackest thing you could do when I was growing up.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Friday, February 18th 2011 at 3:02PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
