How did we get here? HENRY LOUIS GATES, America Behind the Color Line (2004)

Published: Dec. 9, 2019, 3:44 a.m.

Here's my conversation with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates on his 2004 television project America Behind the Color Line. Since the late 60's, two distinct classes emerged within Black America: a Black middle class and what some argue is a self-perpetuating Black underclass. One glaring example: the percentage of black children in poverty was about the same as the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. Gates asks, how can we bridge this class divide?