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MICHEL DEGRAFF: So you think
that the ultimate reason
for these policies is racism?
So rasicm on its own
is the driving factor?
Because there's been arguments
that perhaps the racism
itself is a result of other
factors, like economic control.
Think in the case
of Haiti, right?
Or the Caribbean in general.
So what came first?
Was it the racism first, or
then the need for slaves,
which in turn triggered racism?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It's
a complicated story.
I mean, racism grew partly
out of the Enlightenment.
If you go back to the 16th
century, say in Europe.
We're talking about Europe now.
There was the beginnings
of the age of exploration,
exploring the world.
The Spanish going to
South America and so on.
One of the things that was
happening was that Europeans--
recall that you go back a little
further, to say St. Augustine.
It was widely believed in
Europe that nobody could
live south of the equator.
For one thing, they would
be standing upside down.
That would be impossible.
So the idea that
there were actually
people there was kind
of novel, anyhow.
But as the age of
exploration continued,
Europeans were finding
creatures of a kind
that they had never seen
before, like orangutans.
And Africans-- blacks and so on.
And there was a
crucial question.
Remember, these were
deeply religious societies.
You either had a soul or
you didn't have a soul.
That's critical.
So the question arose, which
of these creatures have souls?
Can be converted to
Christianity and saved?
That was the dominant issue.
And was there a distinction
between, say, orangutans
and black natives who they saw?
How do you distinguish them?
Can you distinguish them?
And there were all kind of
debates, including language.
In fact, one of my favorite
comments was by Louis Racine.
He's the son of the
famous dramatist who
argued that apes
did have language
and they were more
intelligent than humans.
And he had a proof, actually.
He said the proof
is they don't speak.
And it's a good argument.
He said, they don't
speak because they
know that if they spoke, we
would turn them into slaves.
MICHEL DEGRAFF: Wow.
NOAM CHOMSKY: So
therefore, they keep quiet,
but they're really
smarter than we are.
But that's the kind of argument
that was taken seriously.
So what came first?
What does it mean?
The all integrate--
Take right now the
racism that's surfacing
is in considerable
measure a reaction
to the neoliberal policies
of the last generation,
which have simply
undermined a very large part
of the population.
In fact, for a majority
of the population,
conditions have
stagnated or declined
during the period that
began basically with Reagan.
So just take a look
at the numbers.
So in 2007-- that's
right before the crash.
And if you go back
to that time, there
was great euphoria among
economists and intellectuals
about the wonderful
economy that we had.
Everything had been solved.
There's no more problems.
Great moderation,
perfect, and so on.
1979.
Real wages for American
workers were actually lower
than they had been in 1979
before this grand experiment
was initiated.
And you see the same in Europe.
Now, that's a large part of
the reason for the anger,
the contempt for institutions.
The fear, and so on.
And a lot of it
shows up in racism.
The racism is kind of an
underlying phenomenon,
but it surfaces when you
have to blame somebody.
And there's very
interesting work on this.
If you haven't seen it,
there's a really fine book
by a sociologist named
Arlie Hochschild.
I forget exactly
what it's called,
but she's a Berkeley University
of California sociologist
comes from a liberal background.
She really wanted to
understand, to see
if she could understand
what has always
been regarded as
a strange paradox,
that the people
who are suffering
the most from these
neoliberal policies
are the ones who
most support them.
It's very striking
when you look.
We saw it in the last
election, in fact.
The people who voted for Trump--
the working people-- are
voting for their class
enemy who's kicking them in
the face at every opportunity.
And the more he kicks
them in the face,
the more they support him.
So what's going on?
And it's very widespread.
She went and lived and she
picked an ultra-red county
in Mississippi.
The Bayou area of Mississippi.
And she went to live there for,
I think, five or six years.
And just integrated
herself into society.
Got to know the people.
Had respect for them.
And she should,
instead of contempt.
She became part of the society.
And she got to
understand the way
they were looking at things.
And the way they were
looking at things,
she describes with an image
that they accepted as accurate.
The image of people
standing in a line.
So we're all standing in line.
Behind us are our parents
and our grandparents.
And they worked hard.
They did everything
the right way.
They're religious.
They're conservative.
They had families.
Each generation gets
a little better.
That's the American way.
But all of a sudden,
the line stalled.
We've stopped.
Now, there are
people ahead of us
who are shooting into
the stratosphere.
Multimillionaires.
But that's OK.
That's the American way.
The problem is the
people behind us.
The federal
government, its role is
to take those people
who are behind us,
who don't want to work, who
are worthless, and so on.
And the federal government
takes them and puts them
in front of us with affirmative
action programs, and soup
kitchens, and things like that.
I mean, it's all a
complete fantasy,
but this is the way
people see the world.
And you can understand why
they see the world that way.
These are people
who heard Ronald
Reagan, an extreme
racist incidentally,
give his disquisitions
about welfare queens driving
in limousines to
the welfare office--
black, of course-- to pick
up your hard-earned money.
They're just saturated with that
kind of stuff from talk radio,
from Fox, everything they hear.
So these people
behind us are being
pushed by the federal
government in front of us.
And we're stalled.
Well, they are stalled,
but it's not because
of those people behind them.
And you take a look
at that amalgam
and you can see why these
people hate the government.
We don't want the government,
even though the government
is keeping us alive.
In fact, if you
look at it, they're
getting more subsidies from
the government than anyone.
Like Mississippi is
subsidized by New York.
It's the way
transfers take place.
But these are all
kind of hidden.
You don't see the subsidies.
What you see is these
people behind us
who are maybe getting
some Medicaid,
let's say, something like that.
That's what you see.
A well-designed doctrinal
system, propaganda system,
can focus your
attention on that.
I think we're going
to see more of that.
Trump, his promises about
bringing jobs back, obviously
not going to work.
What happens when his
constituency recognizes
that they're just getting
kicked in the face?
Well, what's going to
happen is scapegoating.
It's going to be
necessary to turn
their attention to somebody
who's doing that to them.
The Jews, the Muslims,
the immigrants,
the blacks, whoever it may be.
And that could lead to
a really ugly period
unless there's some
reaction, strong reaction.
And the reaction ought to
begin before it takes place,
not after it takes place.
But you can see what's
very likely to happen.
And there's plenty of
examples in history,
like the Nazis for example.
Plenty of examples
in our own history.
Many.
Race riots back in our own
history are often like this.
Take, say, the Irish.
When the Irish came in
the late 19th century,
they were regarded as
black, dark-skinned.
They were treated like blacks.
There were signs in Boston
restaurants saying, no dogs
or Irish, things like that.
They finally whitened, became
integrated into the society.
But the racist treatment
of Irish was miserable.
In fact, there are some
hidden stories there,
which aren't so pretty.
Like take gynecology.
Gynecology was developed by
professors at Harvard Medical
School.
Their pictures are up
on the walls and so on.
How did they do it?
Well, you had to experiment.
So who'd you experiment with?
People who were good subjects.
Black women, of course,
and Irish women.
They were the
experimental subjects
who were used to develop the
modern scientific understanding
of gynecology.
This kind of thing just
runs all through history.
Everywhere you look, you find
one or another aspect of it.
And getting back to
Michel's question,
I don't think there's
a chicken/egg issue.
They all interact.
MICHEL DEGRAFF: One other
place where they interact
is with language, right?
So you mentioned
the one drop rule.
In Haiti now, when you look
at, say, the politics there.
Let's say it's put on a zenith.
And you can see how based on
the way you speak, what you say
is being discarded.
And we could call it
the one accent rule.
So if you shoot any
creole phonemic pattern
in your French, then
you're discarded.
And I think that's
also true in the US.
So in the US, there
was this famous case
of Rachel Jeantel,
when she was testifying
in the trial of Zimmerman,
who had killed Trayvon Martin.
That's how the Black Lives
Matter movement got launched.
And she was discarded
by the jury.
Why?
Because she spoke with
black English accent.
And she was judged
to be untrustworthy.
And the jury never
mentioned the testimony.
And she was a star
witness for the trial.
So there is a
linguist at Stanford,
John Rickford, and
one of his students
who wrote a beautiful
piece, actually showing
how because of
the way she spoke,
what she said was given no
credibility by the jury.
And this is why I think
that perhaps one could think
of race alongside language
as one of these tools
that you can use to create
this illusion of hierarchies.
And maybe you're right.
The two might reinforce
each other, but perhaps
this push for economic
control and imperialism
in the case of the Caribbean
colonization and slavery,
they become enlisted
by these larger forces
to impose these hierarchies.
If you go say in
French, the [french]
that the French
came up with, which
we saw coming back up with
Marine Le Pen, for example.
NOAM CHOMSKY: We've all seen
that in our own experience.
When I was in college,
one of my fellow students
was one of the rare
black students, who
had managed to develop not just
a straight American accent,
but an elite to American accent.
So when he talked
over the phone,
you thought you were
talking to a Harvard
professor, or an Oxford
professor, or something.
We brought him to MIT.
We appointed him, in fact.
But when he came, he was
staying in our apartment
while he was looking
for a place to live.
And he would call places that
were for rent around Cambridge.
And they'd say, sure.
Come over.
But as soon as he
went over, it suddenly
turned out that
the place had just
been rented five minutes ago.
But over the phone, he was fine.
But not in person.
The picking up of
a fake acc-- it
shows up in many strange ways.
So for example, at Harvard
in the early 1950s,
there was a wave of Anglophilia.
And people-- men, of course.
No women-- dressed
in English clothes
and affected British accents.
And if you kind of just
listened and walked around,
you might have thought
you're maybe in Oxford,
not in Cambridge.
But these things
happen all the time.
They can be very
pernicious when it's
a part of the population
that's vulnerable and deprived
and under external
pressures for other reasons.
Of course, African Americans,
as I said, it's 400 years.
It's not something sudden.
