In today’s Impromptus, I have a couple of items on Henry Louis Gates — the Harvard Af-Am prof whose arrest last summer was a big to-do. He has donated the handcuffs used in the arrest to the Smithsonian Institution. (I guess no one will go to see Lindbergh’s plane now.) And he said something interesting in a Q&A with the New York Times. The Q was, “What will America look like in our increasingly mixed-race future?” The A was, “I’m looking forward to the time when we all look like Polynesians.”
This is kind of a wonderful line — but, as I say in my column, I couldn’t give a hoot: a hoot about what Americans look like. Shades and shapes and all that. I’m much more interested in who and how we are (spiritually, mentally . . .).
In any case, there have been many e-mails concerning Gates — the cuffs and the Polynesian business — and I thought I’d share just one, a very brief one. It concerns an America in which “we all look like Polynesians.” Says our reader, “Wouldn’t be very diverse, would it?”
True.