Noam Chomsky: Ronald Reagan Was An ‘Extreme Racist’ Who Re-Enslaved African-Americans

[big_dog]

In an interview with Laura Flanders, linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky discussed how the events in Ferguson, Missouri and the protests that followed demonstrate just how little race relations in the United States have advanced since the end of the Civil War. “This is a very racist society,” Chomsky said, “it’s pretty shocking. What’s happened to African-Americans in the last 30 years is similar to what [Douglas Blackmon in Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II] describes happening in the late 19th Century.”

Blackmon’s book describes what he calls the “Age of Neoslavery,” in which newly freed slaves found themselves entangled in a legal system built upon involuntary servitude — which included the selling of black men convicted of crimes like vagrancy and changing employers without receiving permission. “The constitutional amendments that were supposed to free African-American slaves did something for about 10 years, then there was a North-South compact that granted the former the slave-owning states the right to do whatever they wanted,” he explained. “And what they did was criminalize black life, and that created a kind of slave force. It threw mostly black males into jail, where they became a perfect labor force, much better than slaves.”

“If you’re a slave owner, you have to pay for — you have to keep your ‘capital’ alive. But if the state does it for you, that’s terrific. No strikes, no disobedience, the perfect labor force. A lot of the American Industrial Revolution in the late 19th, early 20th Century was based on that. It pretty must lasted until World War II.” “After that,” Chomsky said, “African-Americans had about two decades in which they had a shot of entering [American] society. A black worker could get a job in an auto plant, as the unions were still functioning, and he could buy a small house and send his kid to college. But by the 1970s and 1980s it’s going back to the criminalization of black life.”

“It’s called the drug war, and it’s a racist war. Ronald Reagan was an extreme racist — though he denied it — but the whole drug war is designed, from policing to eventual release from prison, to make it impossible for black men and, increasingly, women to be part of [American] society.” “In fact,” he continued, “if you look at American history, the first slaves came over in 1619, and that’s half a millennium. There have only been three or four decades in which African-Americans have had a limited degree of freedom — not entirely, but at least some.” “They have been re-criminalized and turned into a slave labor force — that’s prison labor,” Chomsky concluded. “This is American history. To break out of that is no small trick.” http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/noam-chomsky-reagan-was-an-extreme-racist-who-re-enslaved-african-americans/

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. Posted to for later. n/t

[Major Nikon]

2. The minimum wage is basically slavery

Keeping the minimum wage stagnant while the cost of living rises simply insures greater profits as the lowest paid workers are subsidized by the government, and making unionization increasingly more difficult insures this situation doesn't change.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. We like Chomsky when he attacks Reagan. When he attacks Obama, not so much.

[steve2470]

4. kick and rec! nt

[bravenak]

5. Prison is the New Slavery.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. I could not agree more strongly. Reagan policy made the Los Angeles I lived in into a war zone of

many fronts. The so called war on drugs was one of the chief players, the other was the Reagan policy of pretending AIDS did not exist as thousands died. Both of these things had hugely racist motivations behind the policies. People know that AIDS devastated the gay community in the 80's but our fellow travelers on that dark highway were African American people, gay, straight, bisexual, everybody skates. By race, African Americans are the group most affected by HIV/AIDS then and now. The infection rates are still disproportionate, that word that always seems to pop up around this sort of thing. Most of the gay people I personally lost during those years were also African American or Latino. These were my collaborators and neighbors and friends and mentors.
Drug war wise I could go on and on because I have stories. Back then I was very tied in with the city and people knew me and I heard things from all sorts of people that would otherwise not be prone to giving me their trust. One story has always stuck in my mind, told to me by a minister in South Los Angeles who said he was telling me because I would believe him and I might remember to tell people later, so I will.
He said he was awakened one night very late by a boy from his Church banging at the door. The child wanted to show him something. He told me the kid took him down to the rail road yard, where tracks come together and cars get shuttled off and such. There stood a box car, wide open and being methodically cleaned out by the local gangs. The box car was full of guns, ammo, all kinds. The child said that the car had been left and unlocked, the doors swung open by two men who left in a plain looking car. Left for the taking.
The minister said 'Now we have to ask who has the power and ability to fill a boxcar full of armaments and then to leave it on public tracks in a city of this size. And very few people or powers could do such a thing. Then we have to ask why and that is too apparent. They bring the drugs, they establish the turfs, then they leave a boxcar full of guns and ammunition."
And that was it. This was the middle of the crack attack. This was the drug war.
Some people on DU think I make too big a stink about Ronald Reagan and the Republicans who gave him power. I don't.
Chomsky is correct, and not even being hyperbolic. Reagan was a racist fucker. He was also a homophobic misogynist and an idiot union buster. But he led with the racism, Southern Strategy and ranting about welfare queens in Cadillacs.

[Octafish]

7. Yeah.

Ronald Reagan declared his 1980 candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where 3 Civil Rights marchers murdered.