Tid-bits on Critic Henry Louis Gates

A few things to know about my critic, Henry Louis Gates:
*Grew up in West Virginia
*He had a football injury when he was young, and having medical aspirations, he diagnosed himself and relayed it to the doctor. The doctor said that his condition was "psychosimatic"...because his dream of being a doctor was considered over-reaching for an African American.
*Gates' criticism focus' on the African American literature and culture. His works were an effort to establish the African American canon: he stated in the New York Times Book Review, "our efforts to define a black American canon are often decried as racist, separatist, nationalist, or 'essentialist" but he honestly feels that the African American canon needs to be established because it contrasts the Western/Euro canon.
*"He argues that most systems used to judge art are culturally specific. Black work cannot be appreciated or criticized on the basis of a Western cultural aesthetic" (Gale).
*For example: "signifying" in black culture (as far as I understand) is the questioning of the literal. Because the languages, the stories, the folktales, and the music of the early African American slaves were a form of masked communication.
*He wrote an article for Sports Illustrated saying that the black community saw success through basketball, not intellecutalism..."a very poor index to our social advancement or political progress," he wrote in the New York Times — but also by blacks' attitude toward education and athletics. "Imbued with a belief that our principal avenue to fame and profit is through sport, and seduced by a win-at-any-cost system that corrupts even elementary school students, far too many black kids treat basketball courts and football fields as if they were classrooms in an alternative school system," (Gale).