Noam Chomsky: Reagan was an ‘extreme racist’ who re-enslaved African-Americans

[kpete]

......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/

[RedCappedBandit]

1. Chomsky is on point. As usual.

[KingCharlemagne]

2. I like and respect Chomsky a lot. But on this, I have to say he is 'crazy' as far

as blacks being re-enslaved goes. Chomsky should come to my neighborhood (Ladera Heights\Westchester, CA) where he would see a mixed-race neighborhood of middle- and upper middle-class black professionals living side-by-side with whites and Asians. My wife and I frequently comment to one another that we seem more upset about Ferguson than many of our black neighbors seem to be (at least judging from the scenes of daily life around here). Now, just 5 miles south of here is Watts, where the unemployment rate hovers at around 40% and that is something that should shame every American. But Chomsky is conflating class and race and, in so doing, performing a grave disservice to the complex reality of contemporary black American experience, at least as far as I can see.

[dembotoz]

4. read the new jim crow by Michele Alexander--chomsky has a point

ronnie is not clean

[KingCharlemagne]

6. I won't belabor the point, I suppose. I plan to read Alexander's book soon. Thanks

for the tip!

[Dont call me Shirley]

5. It is re-enslavement of blacks, the prison population, the poverty in black neighborhoods,

the low wage jobs, the flooding of guns and gangs into the poor brown neighborhoods.

You're neighborhood sounds wonderful, but it is not the reality for most. The reality for most is low pay, no benefits and lots of blame on them for not being able to "move on up".

[KingCharlemagne]

7. I'm not going to belabor the point. My neighborhood is not wonderful, but it does

sharply contrast with Chomsky's thesis. I have only my experience against which to judge the soundness of his ideas and my experience caused my bullshit meter to tip slightly into the red zone on the issue of blacks' 're-enslavement.'

[Dont call me Shirley]

9. The media is using many references to civil war, antebellum, etc. The music industry promotes

bands such as Lady Antebellum, Civil War. Movies with civil war imagery such as Sahara. Civil rights court cases involving freedom to display the Confederate flag at state capitols and on state issued liscence plates.

The many many references to this time in history, I suspect, is not accidental. The moving of factories and jobs to low pay countries to drive our wages down and break up labor unions. We have the largest prison population in the world, per capita, with a population of majority of people of color.

Slavery does not need to appear like it did in the 1700 and 1800s. Today's slavery, which is in the form of indentured servitude or economic slavery, is hidden behind prison walls and in low paying service jobs.

The economic royalists would not redo slavery as it was before the 19th amendment. There is too much public awareness. They would most certainly "reinvent" how slavery looks and operates, so people will not recognize slavery as it is today.

[FLPanhandle]

3. The war on drugs is more class warfare than race warfare.

The rich, black and white, get support, go to rehab, and rarely go to jail.

The poor, black and white, go straight to jail.

[Scuba]

8. Let's have a "war on drugs" and have the CIA pump drugs into black neighborhoods.

But it's not racism.

Webb's investigation was published in the summer of 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News. In it, he reported that a drug ring that sold millions of dollars worth of cocaine in Los Angeles was funneling its profits to the CIA’s army in Nicaragua, known as the Contras.

Source