A Conversation with Skip Gates: "My mother hated white people..."

CSPAN/Booknotes ^ | October 1994 | Skip Gates and Bryan Lamb

[Dinah Lord]

"LAMB: At one point you had a line in there, something to the effect, "My mother despised white people."

GATES: My mother hated white people.

LAMB: All her life?

GATES: Probably. I didn't know until -- in 1959 we were watching Mike Wallace's documentary called "The Hate that Hate Produced." It was about the Nation of Islam and I couldn't believe -- I mean, Malcolm X was talking about the white man was the devil and standing up in white people's faces and telling them off. It was great...And she loved Malcolm X and she loved what the Muslims were doing..."

[Tellurian]

I honestly believe that this whole incident has taken on a life of its own. He was jet lagged. He was tired. He probably wasn’t thinking too clearly, and he probably popped his mouth off. My disappointment, if this is what happened, is that he has continued to call the policeman racist, and this spread to his daughter. That’s where I’ve really lost respect for him.

I got the same impression after reading the 1994 interview. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, at that time anyway. He must have been having a bad day, or he's going through a late-life crisis - losing his esteem or something, taking it out on a convenient scapegoat, and trying to re-establish his declining credentials with his "you don't know who you're messing with" rant.

[bannie]

You're right about the informative value (I was unaware of the sneaky hatred); but that quality alone does not give it the merit it claims. I believe that its popularity was achieved just because it was the first of its type.

(My torture, too, occurred over ten years ago, but it was disgusting enough that the bad taste it left lingers.)

Gack.

[Scotswife]

I guess it’s just a case of different strokes for different folks.

It’s hard to relate to people if you don’t know what they’re thinking - so I try to learn from the horse’s mouth and he delivered.

[xrmusn]

In my 70 +- years, I have been around way to many people -including a few relatives who ‘hated’ black people.
Some of the older ones ‘hated’ Japanese people, ‘hated’ German people, ‘hated’ Italian people but I didn’t fall in line with their supposed problems.
For a ‘distinguished educator’ and Harvard Fellow to blame his mother for HIS prejudices is kind of lame isn’t it?
Kinda like BO and his reference to his Grandmother and his description of her being a typical ‘white person’ who feared blacks comment.
I am virtually a HS dropout and learned to overcome petty differences so guess there is some truth to being over educated and ending up with NO common sense.

[HollyB]

I wasn’t aware that FR went down earlier tonight. Thanks for letting me know.

[Jet Jaguar]

Sure thing.

Out for about an hour or so.

It was running slowly before the outage. It seems John Robinson got it fixed.

[PghBaldy]

I cant remember how to spell disappeared (?) so I used “gone.”

[ponygirl]

He doesn't seem like a bad guy, at that time anyway. He must have been having a bad day, or he's going through a late-life crisis - losing his esteem or something, taking it out on a convenient scapegoat, and trying to re-establish his declining credentials with his "you don't know who you're messing with" rant.

Former flight attendant here with first-hand experience with people having bad days and "don't you know who I am?" kinds of crises. With some people, stuff like this builds and builds and then something sets them off. I'd say that exhaustion is the number one culprit. In the back of their mind, they know they are completely out of control, but there's something that just snaps. I mean, I've seen grown men (and women) throw luggage, shove senior citizens, yell until spit is flying out of their mouths - true 4-year-old temper tantrum type stuff. I've witnessed a guy grab a box of ticket stubs out of a gate agent's hand and shake them out onto the floor just because he didn't get a first class upgrade. All the kinds of things that later, they are absolutely embarrassed about - especially when the cops show up.

Someone else here mentioned that Gates had come in from a flight, was probably tired, not to mention coming home and realizing you are locked out of your own house - and then the police showing up just caused him to snap. That's all fine and well. But now that he's had time to cool off, a true adult would realize, "Man, I really overreacted," and just lay off it. Not this guy - and that's where I lose all respect for someone and could care less about whatever he's been through in his life. He's just a big freaking whiner in the end - and a whiner who has realized he can achieve 15 minutes of undeserved fame.

[libh8er]

GATES: Yeah. She's white."

A self loathing guilt ridden white no doubt. Why else would she marry a racist like Gates ?

[libh8er]

He looks like he has a fair amount of white in him also.

The most virulent anti white blacks tend to be the ones with some or quite a bit of white in them. Just an observation. We have Jeremiah Wright, this Gates character, and of course Obama himself. Obama is no less anti white than the others (including his wife), just that he managed to keep it under wraps. And then the press conference happened and it was out in the open before the whole country.

[wardaddy]

Plantation master's daughter....has a very strong appeal.

Go live in a black man's environment for an extended period. It's an obsession for many.

and it's not treated as a respectful obsession but rather degrading to put it mildly...like white women are more freaky sexually and less likely to try to run them...for them women are authority figures in their formative years since so few have daddies

but plenty of white girls who go for it, some genuine love, some that's all they can get and some think they are missionaries between the races

down here very few end up with married procreation, just the procreation part without marriage..just babies..no daddy..like the hood

whereas when white men marry “black” women it's a totally different animal usually...more likely to be Leave to Beaver like regular middle class crackerdom...and the women are better lokking....this is what gets Spike Lee's (and I bet Skip Gate's too) goat

i’ve seen white gals down here so fat no one ever looks their way till some skinny little black dude gives em a run and dang they get so excited they blush out like a ripe tomato, God love em...they're just lonely for some loving...just wish they'd make a family instead of just another daddyless kid stuck in mixed race land which can be tough enough already without being fatherless

don't blame me for an honest observation....unlike many here I have lived as a peckerwood in the black man's world for most of my life...during the James Crow years, the transition years and now post racially

I think things are worse now actually

[wardaddy]

are you kidding?

this cat has made a life as a racial antagonist and black revisionist...

is Obama not a bad guy either?

[Albion Wilde]

He was on the Oprah radio show after the "incident" and he said he lives alone.

No big surprise there. It's lonely at the top. As Benjamin Franklin observed, "The man who loves himself shall have no rivals for his affections."

[wardaddy]

Think of the inverse, a white woman marries a black man who hates whites

plenty of white women do that..usually because it's the only opportunity but some are racial "bridge builders"

marrying outside one's culture is fairly difficult but not too bad, marrying outside the race especially when one race is pretty hard on for the other just makes marriage tougher...not saying it can't be done but it ain't fer sissies

marriages I've seen between white and orientals seems less problematic just because of less macro-racio-cultural friction

i was married to a Brasilian beauty of Leb Christian descent...it was not a cakewalk....now married to a Southern white girl from my same culture and values and traditions....so mush easier, hence were I to desire a black or mullato woman (like one would have my old school peckerwood arse) maybe a rural well bred brown woman wfrom a bonafide deep south family would not be too hard a stretch but a Chicago style brown woman...no way baby...man it's be like Virginia Woolfe with grits and cornbread

[Albion Wilde]

I was getting ready to post to the original poster and the page would not load. Prolly just a coinkidink as it is up and running.

Yep, I had the same thing around 8:30 or 9:30 eastern - just went blank. Page wouldn't load, over and over. So I played an online game for awhile and when I came back, it was back up. I thought maybe it was an attack; but now you have me considering that it might have been an Admin "time out." Earlier in the evening I had seen a controversial thread taken down. Between the oversensitivity of this Admin and the CopGates story, I'm sure the Mods are very, very busy.

[Gondring]

Wow...1994...I’m getting nostalgic, remembering back when Brian Lamb was so good.

[Albion Wilde]

Wow, really wow! This man is obsessed with black and black culture and black churches, and black elite clubs, and he adored that his mother loved hating whites ... I’m dumbfounded. They sat around talking about whites???... I never think to have a white group, white church, white book, sit around talking about black people, I’m just flabbergasted. Maybe I’m not old enough, but I’ve never thought of other people as a color. If I look at you like I don’t like you - it definitely has nothing to do with your skin color....I just guess I’ve never been exposed to any racist stuff... Sure there are crazy people out there that are prejudice against things, but it sounds to me as if this man is really a racist.

I guess you are young. I am in my 60s, and remember the segregation and separate (but unequal) facilities and very bad behavior by whites quite clearly. Many of the conversations whites had in their homes during the civil rights era, as blacks were agitating for equality, I will take to my grave. It was a very ugly chapter. But it wasn't every household; and the changes did come, and there has never been a race war, even though extremists on both sides were itching for one.

I can tell you that blacks were often humiliated in public, and often for sport by mean whites. If you want to see an example, rent the excellent movie "The Great Debaters" with Denzel Washington that came out a couple of years ago.

Gates' mother and father were of an age to have genuinely suffered under racial segregation. But it is sad to hear that it distorted her. Other blacks testify about their parents' moral dignity and adherence to the promises of Jesus that they would be delivered. They stressed education and clean living. I think of Condoleezza Rice's family as one example, and she is from the same era as Gates:

[2ndClassCitizen]

The black culture in this country is based upon hate of the white people, not their culture, the white race itself.

The kkk was a hate group also. It produced nothing of value. No scientists, inventors, etc.

The black race in this country is as a result of its culture of hate is producing inferior performers in every industrial section of our culture. Their achievements are entertainment figures, civil rights persons, and steroidal sport persons. The ones who are going beyond the culture of hate are the ones who are achieving in this country. There are exceptions to this, but very, very few.

If a culture produced nothing but sports figures, entertainment figures, and civil rights figures it would be enslaved by the first tribe it came upon. And that is what happened in Africa. The dominant tribes preyed upon the weaker tribes and exported them to our country.

Once freed by a civil war and given rights equal to everyone else in our superior culture they were manipulated by the marxists into being used to totally destroy our culture and constitution.

[South40]

Father and son?

[Mila]

"Hell, Halle Berry hates white people even though she was abandoned by her black father and raised by her white mother."

I don't think that Halle Berry hates white people. She is close to her white mother who sat next to her at the academy awards the year Halle was nominated for Monster's Ball. When she won and gave her acceptance speech, she included a moving and tearful thank you to her mother. I've see many pictures of Halle and her mother out and about and I've never seen a picture of she and her father. Also, after a few failed marriages and ugly relationships with black men, she is happily involved in a long term connection with a white man. About a year or so ago they became the parents of a baby girl.