Henry Louis Gates Jr. Quotes

When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

You can have class in the ghetto and trash in the White House.

I think class is still an issue in this country.

A lot of the things that we think of as being racial differences are really class differences in America.

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Michael Jordan brings millions of dollars when he shows up in an arena. Since money is how we judge people, he's very valuable. But while that's happening, Rome is burning within the black community.

Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.

What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.

There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the poor, between the educated and the non-educated. And there are huge and growing chasms daily. And I want to say that it's not simply about generation. It's about genre.

Social inequality … divides society into two classes -- the wage-slaves and the grabbers of capital

There are only two families in the whole world, my old grandmother used to say, The Haves and the Have-Nots.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.

Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

Growing up on, say, the Upper East Side, you're so isolated. If you go to the Hamptons every weekend, you never talk to a construction worker, and the construction worker would never talk to you.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass.