This post is a “reblog” of an article written by April V. Taylor on the Kulture Kritic. She writes what the renowned linguist and activist Noam Chomsky has been speaking with philosopher George Yancy on the white fear as part of a feature for the New York Times.
In which they discusses race and racism in America pointing out the roots of deeply rooted in America’s soul and the legacy of black enslavement and subjugation in America. It is an impressive read going into detail about how “fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture.” This article articulates the foundation of what American Black people have known:
White People’s Fear Of Revenge For Slavery Is ‘Deeply Rooted In American Culture’
The conversation begins with Yancy pointing out that when terrorism and the United States are discussed, there is often an omission of “the fact that many Black people in the United States have had a long history of being terrorized by white racism.” Chomsky elaborates by saying, “We…cannot allow ourselves to forget that the hideous slave labor camps of the new ’empire of liberty’ were a primary source for the wealth and privilege of American society.” As Chomsky puts it, “The America that ‘Black people have always known’ is not an attractive one.”
When the exploited labor force of slaves was no longer available because of the abolition of slavery, “Blacks were arrested without real cause and prisoners were put to work for…business interests. The system provided a major contribution to the rapid industrial development from the late 19th century.” The Thirteenth Amendment’s Exception Clause, allowing slavery to continue if a person was convicted of a crime, was being used to its fullest extent. Reagan’s War on Drugs provided more Black bodies to be exploited for their labor, leading to what Michelle Alexander terms, the new Jim Crow.
While slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration have been the source of innumerable tragedies, Chomsky points out that perhaps the greatest tragedy is America’s refusal to acknowledge its own history of oppression, violence and genocide. Chomsky describes it as an ‘intentional ignorance,’ that compels Americans to put the horrors of slavery, genocide, racism, and mass incarceration, “…behind us and march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry.”
While this may sound like a compelling ideal, it is reality is much uglier. Black people in America continue to fall at the bottom of nearly every statistical indicator for wealth, economics, education, and health while white America seems to all too easily forget how much their “wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which [white people] are the beneficiaries,” and Black people are the victims.
Hundreds of years of forced labor, racism and subjugation have inevitably led to resentment and anger, and Chomsky does not shy away from acknowledging that white people have long been gripped by the fear that those they have oppressed will rebel against the forced racial hierarchy.
Chomsky states, “Some of the slave-owners, like Jefferson, appreciated the moral turpitude on which the economy relied. But he feared the liberation of slaves, who have ‘ten thousand recollections’ of the crimes to which they were subjected. Fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture, with reverberations to the present.” Alongside this acknowledgement, Chomsky admits that there is not easy answer to ending racism, no magic wand that can erase hundreds of years of violence and terrorism against non-white American citizens.
Most people and surely white folk know that black people have been subjugated, enslaved, oppressed, and still some people pretend this is not true. This article clearly sums up why the centuries of oppression exists, which drives the fear and need for whites to maintain the system of white supremacy and privilege; it is the fear of another Nat Turner like rebellion ever present that one day there will be payback directed at the dominant society [whites] on mass for the “sins of their fathers”. And this is a world phenomena! And that’s my thought provoking perspective…
The Dark Side Of America
This nation will long remember with shame and sorrow when white supremacists descended on the college town of Charlottesville, Va.; supposedly in fury over the threatened removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a park. I will say that and you should know Robert E. Lee was a terrorist just to be clear! These idiots showed up with Nazi slogans, shields. KKK sign without hoods, and anti-Semitic tirades. They injured more than a hundred mostly white people when a deranged member of their ranks sped his car into a crowd and left a woman.
Their President saw it as not an assault or a terrorist act on fellow Americans, but a clash of hate upon hate, violence upon violence, bigotry upon bigotry. Then he issued the most ridiculous statement, he said: “On many sides,” a phrase for the ages. This is what they are taught – racism. If not why would white supremacy lasted four-hundred years? Yes, they have been doing this to us along with the police murder black people – men, women, and children – on average two or three a week. But they all claim to be Christians.
Trump never uttered a word in his remarks and tweets about the nature of the march, the source of provocation nor anything that indicated racism or racism. It clearly was because in an interview late the Grand Wizard of the KKK and the event’s organizer said so. Once torches scare black people but let me let you in on a scared – not anymore. The more shocking part about this was they turned on each other because each wanted to be the biggest racist and the more demonic!
Those white folk who regularly insist that the racists and bigots are a minority of us and that the white-power movement is a marginal and demented faction were proven wrong. Thinking like this and using those kind of statement are what they want you to believe. The mayhem in Charlottesville displayed that this was only a code that is embedded in every white person. However, many came forth with phony and sort of passionate condemnations of blood-and-soil nationalism across the spectrum of ideology.
A president who cannot bring himself to say this immediately and unequivocally squanders any claim to moral leadership. These forms of witnesses were a necessary defense of the American idea and underscored the shamefulness of Trump’s embrace of moral equivalence. There are not, as Trump insisted Saturday, “many sides” to questions that were settled long ago: Racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination, and white supremacy are unequivocally wrong.
Because Trump and many white folk’s inexcusable moral equivalences what actually this event was all about is simply a weak philosophical cover-up of the racism they have in their hearts! As for the president and most white people, they bear his guilt as demonstrated throughout his public life, from his birtherism to his reluctance to turn away 2016 endorsements from Klansmen and other racists.
Nothing has changed and we see that it has not. I have been harshly critical of those black people who support 45 and say things like “our or my country”. I think these fools are INSANE or uncle toms. And that’s my thought provoking perspective…
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