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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNoam Chomsky: Reagan was an ‘extreme racist’ who re-enslaved African-Americans
......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 its going back to the criminalization of black life.
Its called the drug war, and its 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 thats 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 thats 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
(5,514 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)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
(16,808 posts)ronnie is not clean
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)for the tip!
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)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
(7,908 posts)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
(10,998 posts)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
(7,107 posts)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
(53,475 posts)But it's not racism.
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