Tagged: Noam Chomsky

“[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege. Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just being established now with a private donor. This is the core of our history along with the extermination and expulsion of the native population. But it’s not part of our consciousness.” — Noam Chomsky

Source: Amy Goodman. “Noam Chomsky: White America’s Cruelty to Black People Far Worse Than South Africa.” Alternet. March 3, 2015. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/noam-chomsky-white-americas-cruelty-black-people-far-worse-s-africa.

“There is also a common variant of what has sometimes been called ‘intentional ignorance’ of what it is inconvenient to know: ‘Yes, bad things happened in the past, but let us put all of that behind us and march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry.’ The appalling statistics of today’s circumstances of African-American life can be confronted by other bitter residues of a shameful past, laments about black cultural inferiority, or worse, forgetting how our wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which we are the beneficiaries and they remain the victims. As for the very partial and hopelessly inadequate compensation that decency would require — that lies somewhere between the memory hole and anathema.” — Noam Chomsky

Source: Noam Chomsky and George Yancy. “Noam Chomsky on the Roots of American Racism.” New York Times. March 18, 2015. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/noam-chomsky-on-the-roots-of-american-racism/.

“[African-Americans] had about two decades in which [they] had a shot at entering society. A black worker could get a job in an auto plant, 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 — and the whole drug war is designed, from policing, to eventual release from prison, to make it impossible for black men and, increasingly, more and more women and Hispanics to be part of society.” — Noam Chomsky

Source: Eric Gray. “Noam Chomsky Discusses Ferguson: “This Is A Very Racist Society; It’s Pretty Shocking.'” Salon. December 11, 2014. http://www.salon.com/2014/12/11/noam_chomsky_discusses_ferguson_this_is_a_very_racist_society_it’s_pretty_shocking/.

“[T]he linguist and political philosopher [Noam Chomsky] lamented to interviewer John Nichols last week that while activism is flourishing in communities throughout the country, there’s no cohesive movement for a more just society.”

Source: Luke Brinker. “Noam Chomsky Blasts The Assault On Labor: ‘‘’Right To Work” Means “Right To Scrounge.”‘” Salon. March 25, 2015. http://www.salon.com/2015/03/25/noam_chomsky_blasts_the_assault_on_labor_right_to_work_means_right_to_scrounge/.