Seperate but Equal

I particularly found several parts of Gates's article interesting. First, the part about Abraham Lincoln pulling together some black people to tell them because of their great racial difference, they should go back to Africa. By this point, however, the Africans that were shipped to the United States are not the same black people who overcame slavery. These black people have begun to assimilate, and have never been to Africa, and know nothing about Africa. The equivilant would be telling the Spanish, Italian, or Irish to go back to the respective countries their realatives came from.
This is actually is probably something the English wanted to say based on page 1894 of Gates when the comment was made that the difference could be made between Irish protestants and Catholics based on their race. Of course, this is rediculous. Even light-skinned black people sometimes passed as white without notice.
I think the argument could be made that black people were not allowed to be educated, not because they were inferior, but because it would prove they are of the same intellegence as white people. The example of the black girl Phillis Wheatley shows that black people can be properly educated and create works of literature. Does it define them as a race? Well, I would argue no. If having the ability and freedom to express yourself defines a race as being equal to other races, then it must hold true for all races. Someone's blog (sorry, I forgot who) talked about the concept of "writing themselves into being," applying to everybody regardless of race.