Despite its virtues, ... Colored People is not a satisfying book. It seems, at times, too facile and too cliché-ridden. How many more accounts of hair-straightening and greasy soul food can we stand? How many more scenes of conversions in black evangelical churches? How many more accounts of how older relatives were convinced that whites were dirty and smelled like dogs when wet? Gates sketches these scenes almost as if he is leading tourists through an African American theme park, or through a "colored" museum. Gates, in short, set his target too close. He did not challenge himself as a writer, and he did not demand of himself or of his material what he needed to make an important book, instead of an amusing, occasionally touching, but often sentimental work.

--Gerald Early, the New Republic, July 4, 1994