You can read this quote, from Lupita Nyong’o’s acceptance speech at the 2014 Academy Awards for her performance as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave, in its full context here.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.