Who am I?
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., is an American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. He was the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship.
Movies and TV shows: Finding Your Roots, African American Lives, Faces of America, Looking for Lincoln, America Beyond the Color Line, A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.More
Education: University of Cambridge, Yale University, Yale Law School, Clare College, Cambridge, Potomac State College of West Virginia University
Awards: MacArthur Fellowship, American Book Award, Jefferson Lecture, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
Skip's New Series: "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross." It airs in the Fall of 2013 and will be a 6 hour series.
For more than 30 years, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been an influential public intellectual with a distinct style, that I personally witnessed this past weekend, helping all of us who were in the audience understand complex genealogical concepts.
For more than 30 years, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been an influential public intellectual with a distinct style, that I personally witnessed this past weekend, helping all of us who were in the audience understand complex genealogical concepts.
Henry Gates, known by me as "Skip" is best known for his research tracing the family and genetic history of famous African-Americans. "There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees," I heard him say. "My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree."
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| Charlemagne |
Skip has traced the roots of prominent Americans like Oprah Winfrey and celebrity Yo-Yo Ma and now the Hutchins/Pegram family tracing our roots back to Charlemagne.
Charlemagne (pron.: /ʃɑrlɨmeɪn/; French pronunciation: [ʃaʁləmaɲ]; c. 742 – January 28, 814 at Aachen), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus or Karolus Magnus) or Charles I, was the founder of the Carolingian Empire, reigning from 768 until his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdom, adding Italy, subduing the Saxons and Bavarians, and pushed his frontier into Spain. The oldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, Charlemagne was the first Emperor in Western Europe since the fall of the West Roman Empire three centuries earlier.
Skip told us his goal in this work is twofold: "First, to show that we're all immigrants, and secondly, that we're all mixed — that we all have been intermarrying, or interrelated sexually from the dawn of human history."
But, is a genealogical connection who we really are?
Or, all that we can be?
Will be become great because our ancestors were?
Will that give us the hope that we need to aspire to great achievements like they did?
Skip told the Hutchins family that “…we were as white as white can be… that we had no mixtures of other races and cultures in our DNA…” And, while I found that interesting, I also found that sad because I like the idea of being “mixed-up” with the rest of the world.
But still as I continued to wonder, this did not tell me who I am only from whence I came.
So, who am I?
I am a:
1. Male
2. Husband
3. Father
4. Brother
5. Cousin
6. Uncle
7. Nephew
8. Divorced
9. Remarried
10. Over 60
11. Well educated
12. Veteran
13. 60’s survivor
14. Southerner
15. Over 6 feet tall
16. Over-weight
17. Have heart disease
18. Cancer survivor
19. Liberal thinker
20. Cat owner
21. World traveler
22. Writer/blogger
While this list is still very much incomplete is this who I am?
At times, I find myself very compassionate and submissive and at other times I find myself hateful, angry, and vindictive.
According to the Meyers-Briggs Personality Profile, I am an INTJ. INTJ’s are typically found in 1% of the general population and can be best described as “builders of theoretical models and concepts.”
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| www.reflectionsinthoughts.blogspot.com |
According to the astrological signs, I am a Scorpio, since my birthday falls on Halloween.
According to my personal beliefs, I am very spiritual and religious showing my appreciation in the way I live my life regardless of what my DNA shows.
But, is all of this enough to fill the emptiness inside that we all eventually feel and attempt to fill as we grow older and attempt to discover who I really am.
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