WEBVTT 00:00:01.501 --> 00:00:03.870 The following content is provided under a Creative 00:00:03.870 --> 00:00:05.238 Commons license. 00:00:05.238 --> 00:00:07.474 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:07.474 --> 00:00:11.544 continue to offer high-quality educational resources for free. 00:00:11.544 --> 00:00:14.080 To make a donation, or to view additional materials 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:18.051 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:18.051 --> 00:00:24.657 at ocw.mit.edu. 00:00:24.657 --> 00:00:27.460 MICHEL DEGRAFF: So you think that the ultimate reason 00:00:27.460 --> 00:00:29.095 for these policies is racism? 00:00:29.095 --> 00:00:32.298 So rasicm on its own is the driving factor? 00:00:32.298 --> 00:00:34.567 Because there's been arguments that perhaps the racism 00:00:34.567 --> 00:00:39.858 itself is a result of other factors, like economic control. 00:00:39.858 --> 00:00:41.274 Think in the case of Haiti, right? 00:00:41.274 --> 00:00:42.842 Or the Caribbean in general. 00:00:42.842 --> 00:00:44.144 So what came first? 00:00:44.144 --> 00:00:47.247 Was it the racism first, or then the need for slaves, 00:00:47.247 --> 00:00:50.717 which in turn triggered racism? 00:00:50.717 --> 00:00:53.953 NOAM CHOMSKY: It's a complicated story. 00:00:53.953 --> 00:01:02.662 I mean, racism grew partly out of the Enlightenment. 00:01:02.662 --> 00:01:07.033 If you go back to the 16th century, say in Europe. 00:01:07.033 --> 00:01:10.270 We're talking about Europe now. 00:01:10.270 --> 00:01:15.208 There was the beginnings of the age of exploration, 00:01:15.208 --> 00:01:17.377 exploring the world. 00:01:17.377 --> 00:01:21.314 The Spanish going to South America and so on. 00:01:21.314 --> 00:01:24.186 One of the things that was happening 00:01:24.186 --> 00:01:29.277 was that Europeans-- recall that you go back a little further, 00:01:29.277 --> 00:01:31.257 to say St. Augustine. 00:01:31.257 --> 00:01:34.727 It was widely believed in Europe that nobody could 00:01:34.727 --> 00:01:37.197 live south of the equator. 00:01:37.197 --> 00:01:39.666 For one thing, they would be standing upside down. 00:01:39.666 --> 00:01:40.934 That would be impossible. 00:01:40.934 --> 00:01:42.435 So the idea that there were actually 00:01:42.435 --> 00:01:45.604 people there was kind of novel, anyhow. 00:01:45.604 --> 00:01:51.077 But as the age of exploration continued, 00:01:51.077 --> 00:01:54.481 Europeans were finding creatures of a kind 00:01:54.481 --> 00:01:58.751 that they had never seen before, like orangutans. 00:01:58.751 --> 00:02:02.388 And Africans-- blacks and so on. 00:02:02.388 --> 00:02:04.057 And there was a crucial question. 00:02:04.057 --> 00:02:07.760 Remember, these were deeply religious societies. 00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:11.164 You either had a soul or you didn't have a soul. 00:02:11.164 --> 00:02:12.732 That's critical. 00:02:12.732 --> 00:02:17.237 So the question arose, which of these creatures have souls? 00:02:17.237 --> 00:02:21.007 Can be converted to Christianity and saved? 00:02:21.007 --> 00:02:23.376 That was the dominant issue. 00:02:23.376 --> 00:02:27.947 And was there a distinction between, say, orangutans 00:02:27.947 --> 00:02:30.683 and black natives who they saw? 00:02:30.683 --> 00:02:31.885 How do you distinguish them? 00:02:31.885 --> 00:02:33.186 Can you distinguish them? 00:02:33.186 --> 00:02:38.124 And there were all kind of debates, including language. 00:02:38.124 --> 00:02:44.364 In fact, one of my favorite comments was by Louis Racine. 00:02:44.364 --> 00:02:47.200 He's the son of the famous dramatist who 00:02:47.200 --> 00:02:51.204 argued that apes did have language 00:02:51.204 --> 00:02:53.940 and they were more intelligent than humans. 00:02:53.940 --> 00:02:56.309 And he had a proof, actually. 00:02:56.309 --> 00:02:59.279 He said the proof is they don't speak. 00:02:59.279 --> 00:03:01.548 And it's a good argument. 00:03:01.548 --> 00:03:03.183 He said, they don't speak because they 00:03:03.183 --> 00:03:06.219 know that if they spoke, we would turn them into slaves. 00:03:06.219 --> 00:03:07.687 MICHEL DEGRAFF: Wow. 00:03:07.687 --> 00:03:09.522 NOAM CHOMSKY: So therefore, they keep quiet, 00:03:09.522 --> 00:03:12.525 but they're really smarter than we are. 00:03:12.525 --> 00:03:17.030 But that's the kind of argument that was taken seriously. 00:03:17.030 --> 00:03:21.301 So what came first? 00:03:21.301 --> 00:03:22.936 What does it mean? 00:03:22.936 --> 00:03:30.143 The all integrate-- Take right now the racism that's surfacing 00:03:30.143 --> 00:03:33.079 is in considerable measure a reaction 00:03:33.079 --> 00:03:38.296 to the neoliberal policies of the last generation, which 00:03:38.296 --> 00:03:42.522 have simply undermined a very large part of the population. 00:03:42.522 --> 00:03:45.825 In fact, for a majority of the population, 00:03:45.825 --> 00:03:49.095 conditions have stagnated or declined 00:03:49.095 --> 00:03:54.267 during the period that began basically with Reagan. 00:03:54.267 --> 00:03:56.836 So just take a look at the numbers. 00:03:56.836 --> 00:04:02.075 So in 2007-- that's right before the crash. 00:04:02.075 --> 00:04:04.777 And if you go back to that time, there 00:04:04.777 --> 00:04:10.083 was great euphoria among economists and intellectuals 00:04:10.083 --> 00:04:13.152 about the wonderful economy that we had. 00:04:13.152 --> 00:04:14.454 Everything had been solved. 00:04:14.454 --> 00:04:15.922 There's no more problems. 00:04:15.922 --> 00:04:19.559 Great moderation, perfect, and so on. 00:04:19.559 --> 00:04:21.661 1979. 00:04:21.661 --> 00:04:26.032 Real wages for American workers were actually lower 00:04:26.032 --> 00:04:30.870 than they had been in 1979 before this grand experiment 00:04:30.870 --> 00:04:32.605 was initiated. 00:04:32.605 --> 00:04:34.340 And you see the same in Europe. 00:04:34.340 --> 00:04:37.510 Now, that's a large part of the reason for the anger, 00:04:37.510 --> 00:04:41.481 the contempt for institutions. 00:04:41.481 --> 00:04:43.616 The fear, and so on. 00:04:43.616 --> 00:04:46.019 And a lot of it shows up in racism. 00:04:46.019 --> 00:04:49.188 The racism is kind of an underlying phenomenon, 00:04:49.188 --> 00:04:53.326 but it surfaces when you have to blame somebody. 00:04:53.326 --> 00:04:56.029 And there's very interesting work on this. 00:04:56.029 --> 00:04:59.799 If you haven't seen it, there's a really fine book 00:04:59.799 --> 00:05:04.470 by a sociologist named Arlie Hochschild. 00:05:04.470 --> 00:05:06.739 I forget exactly what it's called, 00:05:06.739 --> 00:05:13.413 but she's a Berkeley University of California sociologist 00:05:13.413 --> 00:05:15.548 comes from a liberal background. 00:05:15.548 --> 00:05:17.617 She really wanted to understand, to see 00:05:17.617 --> 00:05:19.819 if she could understand what has always 00:05:19.819 --> 00:05:23.456 been regarded as a strange paradox, 00:05:23.456 --> 00:05:26.125 that the people who are suffering 00:05:26.125 --> 00:05:33.266 the most from these neoliberal policies 00:05:33.266 --> 00:05:36.269 are the ones who most support them. 00:05:36.269 --> 00:05:37.770 It's very striking when you look. 00:05:37.770 --> 00:05:40.773 We saw it in the last election, in fact. 00:05:40.773 --> 00:05:44.089 The people who voted for Trump-- the working people-- 00:05:44.089 --> 00:05:46.665 are voting for their class enemy who's 00:05:46.665 --> 00:05:49.892 kicking them in the face at every opportunity. 00:05:49.892 --> 00:05:51.517 And the more he kicks them in the face, 00:05:51.517 --> 00:05:53.519 the more they support him. 00:05:53.519 --> 00:05:55.655 So what's going on? 00:05:55.655 --> 00:05:57.023 And it's very widespread. 00:05:57.023 --> 00:06:01.260 She went and lived and she picked an ultra-red county 00:06:01.260 --> 00:06:02.695 in Mississippi. 00:06:02.695 --> 00:06:05.898 The Bayou area of Mississippi. 00:06:05.898 --> 00:06:09.535 And she went to live there for, I think, five or six years. 00:06:09.535 --> 00:06:13.106 And just integrated herself into society. 00:06:13.106 --> 00:06:15.942 Got to know the people. 00:06:15.942 --> 00:06:17.110 Had respect for them. 00:06:17.110 --> 00:06:19.579 And she should, instead of contempt. 00:06:19.579 --> 00:06:21.575 She became part of the society. 00:06:21.575 --> 00:06:22.949 And she got to understand the way 00:06:22.949 --> 00:06:24.550 they were looking at things. 00:06:24.550 --> 00:06:26.586 And the way they were looking at things, 00:06:26.586 --> 00:06:32.258 she describes with an image that they accepted as accurate. 00:06:32.258 --> 00:06:36.129 The image of people standing in a line. 00:06:36.129 --> 00:06:38.197 So we're all standing in line. 00:06:38.197 --> 00:06:41.234 Behind us are our parents and our grandparents. 00:06:41.234 --> 00:06:43.034 And they worked hard. 00:06:43.034 --> 00:06:44.670 They did everything the right way. 00:06:44.670 --> 00:06:45.838 They're religious. 00:06:45.838 --> 00:06:47.240 They're conservative. 00:06:47.240 --> 00:06:49.475 They had families. 00:06:49.475 --> 00:06:51.411 Each generation gets a little better. 00:06:51.411 --> 00:06:53.079 That's the American way. 00:06:53.079 --> 00:06:55.648 But all of a sudden, the line stalled. 00:06:55.648 --> 00:06:57.150 We've stopped. 00:06:57.150 --> 00:06:58.885 Now, there are people ahead of us 00:06:58.885 --> 00:07:02.255 who are shooting into the stratosphere. 00:07:02.255 --> 00:07:03.389 Multimillionaires. 00:07:03.389 --> 00:07:04.257 But that's OK. 00:07:04.257 --> 00:07:06.092 That's the American way. 00:07:06.092 --> 00:07:09.195 The problem is the people behind us. 00:07:09.195 --> 00:07:11.964 The federal government, its role is 00:07:11.964 --> 00:07:14.801 to take those people who are behind us, 00:07:14.801 --> 00:07:19.238 who don't want to work, who are worthless, and so on. 00:07:19.238 --> 00:07:21.441 And the federal government takes them and puts them 00:07:21.441 --> 00:07:27.447 in front of us with affirmative action programs, and soup 00:07:27.447 --> 00:07:29.549 kitchens, and things like that. 00:07:29.549 --> 00:07:31.751 I mean, it's all a complete fantasy, 00:07:31.751 --> 00:07:34.620 but this is the way people see the world. 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:38.157 And you can understand why they see the world that way. 00:07:38.157 --> 00:07:39.926 These are people who heard Ronald 00:07:39.926 --> 00:07:43.029 Reagan, an extreme racist incidentally, 00:07:43.029 --> 00:07:48.201 give his disquisitions about welfare queens driving 00:07:48.201 --> 00:07:51.826 in limousines to the welfare office-- black, of course-- 00:07:51.826 --> 00:07:53.773 to pick up your hard-earned money. 00:07:53.773 --> 00:07:58.211 They're just saturated with that kind of stuff from talk radio, 00:07:58.211 --> 00:08:00.646 from Fox, everything they hear. 00:08:00.646 --> 00:08:03.316 So these people behind us are being 00:08:03.316 --> 00:08:06.886 pushed by the federal government in front of us. 00:08:06.886 --> 00:08:09.589 And we're stalled. 00:08:09.589 --> 00:08:11.757 Well, they are stalled, but it's not because 00:08:11.757 --> 00:08:14.126 of those people behind them. 00:08:14.126 --> 00:08:17.591 And you take a look at that amalgam 00:08:17.591 --> 00:08:19.799 and you can see why these people hate the government. 00:08:19.799 --> 00:08:22.134 We don't want the government, even though the government 00:08:22.134 --> 00:08:23.236 is keeping us alive. 00:08:23.236 --> 00:08:24.737 In fact, if you look at it, they're 00:08:24.737 --> 00:08:27.673 getting more subsidies from the government than anyone. 00:08:27.673 --> 00:08:30.643 Like Mississippi is subsidized by New York. 00:08:30.643 --> 00:08:34.347 It's the way transfers take place. 00:08:34.347 --> 00:08:35.982 But these are all kind of hidden. 00:08:35.982 --> 00:08:37.616 You don't see the subsidies. 00:08:37.616 --> 00:08:40.886 What you see is these people behind us 00:08:40.886 --> 00:08:46.893 who are maybe getting some Medicaid, 00:08:46.893 --> 00:08:49.795 let's say, something like that. 00:08:49.795 --> 00:08:52.098 That's what you see. 00:08:52.098 --> 00:08:57.970 A well-designed doctrinal system, propaganda system, 00:08:57.970 --> 00:09:00.873 can focus your attention on that. 00:09:00.873 --> 00:09:04.076 I think we're going to see more of that. 00:09:04.076 --> 00:09:10.516 Trump, his promises about bringing jobs back, obviously 00:09:10.516 --> 00:09:12.118 not going to work. 00:09:12.118 --> 00:09:15.688 What happens when his constituency recognizes 00:09:15.688 --> 00:09:18.324 that they're just getting kicked in the face? 00:09:18.324 --> 00:09:21.494 Well, what's going to happen is scapegoating. 00:09:21.494 --> 00:09:23.663 It's going to be necessary to turn 00:09:23.663 --> 00:09:27.300 their attention to somebody who's doing that to them. 00:09:27.300 --> 00:09:29.669 The Jews, the Muslims, the immigrants, 00:09:29.669 --> 00:09:31.971 the blacks, whoever it may be. 00:09:31.971 --> 00:09:34.307 And that could lead to a really ugly period 00:09:34.307 --> 00:09:37.043 unless there's some reaction, strong reaction. 00:09:37.043 --> 00:09:39.478 And the reaction ought to begin before it takes place, 00:09:39.478 --> 00:09:41.847 not after it takes place. 00:09:41.847 --> 00:09:44.517 But you can see what's very likely to happen. 00:09:44.517 --> 00:09:47.720 And there's plenty of examples in history, 00:09:47.720 --> 00:09:49.956 like the Nazis for example. 00:09:49.956 --> 00:09:52.792 Plenty of examples in our own history. 00:09:52.792 --> 00:09:54.460 Many. 00:09:54.460 --> 00:09:58.164 Race riots back in our own history are often like this. 00:09:58.164 --> 00:10:00.166 Take, say, the Irish. 00:10:00.166 --> 00:10:04.370 When the Irish came in the late 19th century, 00:10:04.370 --> 00:10:08.441 they were regarded as black, dark-skinned. 00:10:08.441 --> 00:10:11.010 They were treated like blacks. 00:10:11.010 --> 00:10:14.347 There were signs in Boston restaurants saying, no dogs 00:10:14.347 --> 00:10:17.116 or Irish, things like that. 00:10:17.116 --> 00:10:23.889 They finally whitened, became integrated into the society. 00:10:23.889 --> 00:10:28.094 But the racist treatment of Irish was miserable. 00:10:28.094 --> 00:10:30.496 In fact, there are some hidden stories there, 00:10:30.496 --> 00:10:32.531 which aren't so pretty. 00:10:32.531 --> 00:10:35.835 Like take gynecology. 00:10:35.835 --> 00:10:39.538 Gynecology was developed by professors at Harvard Medical 00:10:39.538 --> 00:10:40.673 School. 00:10:40.673 --> 00:10:44.176 Their pictures are up on the walls and so on. 00:10:44.176 --> 00:10:45.478 How did they do it? 00:10:45.478 --> 00:10:46.979 Well, you had to experiment. 00:10:46.979 --> 00:10:49.749 So who'd you experiment with? 00:10:49.749 --> 00:10:52.385 People who were good subjects. 00:10:52.385 --> 00:10:55.955 Black women, of course, and Irish women. 00:10:55.955 --> 00:10:57.923 They were the experimental subjects 00:10:57.923 --> 00:11:03.562 who were used to develop the modern scientific understanding 00:11:03.562 --> 00:11:05.164 of gynecology. 00:11:05.164 --> 00:11:08.634 This kind of thing just runs all through history. 00:11:08.634 --> 00:11:12.104 Everywhere you look, you find one or another aspect of it. 00:11:12.104 --> 00:11:14.507 And getting back to Michel's question, 00:11:14.507 --> 00:11:17.076 I don't think there's a chicken/egg issue. 00:11:17.076 --> 00:11:20.513 They all interact. 00:11:20.513 --> 00:11:22.648 MICHEL DEGRAFF: One other place where they interact 00:11:22.648 --> 00:11:25.084 is with language, right? 00:11:25.084 --> 00:11:28.454 So you mentioned the one drop rule. 00:11:28.454 --> 00:11:32.491 In Haiti now, when you look at, say, the politics there. 00:11:32.491 --> 00:11:34.427 Let's say it's put on a zenith. 00:11:34.427 --> 00:11:38.030 And you can see how based on the way you speak, what you say 00:11:38.030 --> 00:11:39.365 is being discarded. 00:11:39.365 --> 00:11:43.102 And we could call it the one accent rule. 00:11:43.102 --> 00:11:47.873 So if you shoot any creole phonemic pattern 00:11:47.873 --> 00:11:49.975 in your French, then you're discarded. 00:11:49.975 --> 00:11:51.744 And I think that's also true in the US. 00:11:51.744 --> 00:11:53.412 So in the US, there was this famous case 00:11:53.412 --> 00:11:56.048 of Rachel Jeantel, when she was testifying 00:11:56.048 --> 00:11:59.952 in the trial of Zimmerman, who had killed Trayvon Martin. 00:11:59.952 --> 00:12:03.689 That's how the Black Lives Matter movement got launched. 00:12:03.689 --> 00:12:06.826 And she was discarded by the jury. 00:12:06.826 --> 00:12:07.960 Why? 00:12:07.960 --> 00:12:11.897 Because she spoke with black English accent. 00:12:11.897 --> 00:12:14.934 And she was judged to be untrustworthy. 00:12:14.934 --> 00:12:16.736 And the jury never mentioned the testimony. 00:12:16.736 --> 00:12:19.238 And she was a star witness for the trial. 00:12:19.238 --> 00:12:22.074 So there is a linguist at Stanford, 00:12:22.074 --> 00:12:25.377 John Rickford, and one of his students 00:12:25.377 --> 00:12:27.980 who wrote a beautiful piece, actually showing 00:12:27.980 --> 00:12:30.316 how because of the way she spoke, 00:12:30.316 --> 00:12:36.155 what she said was given no credibility by the jury. 00:12:36.155 --> 00:12:39.158 And this is why I think that perhaps one could think 00:12:39.158 --> 00:12:43.929 of race alongside language as one of these tools 00:12:43.929 --> 00:12:47.700 that you can use to create this illusion of hierarchies. 00:12:47.700 --> 00:12:49.101 And maybe you're right. 00:12:49.101 --> 00:12:52.972 The two might reinforce each other, but perhaps 00:12:52.972 --> 00:12:57.977 this push for economic control and imperialism 00:12:57.977 --> 00:13:00.880 in the case of the Caribbean colonization and slavery, 00:13:00.880 --> 00:13:04.450 they become enlisted by these larger forces 00:13:04.450 --> 00:13:06.852 to impose these hierarchies. 00:13:06.852 --> 00:13:09.855 If you go say in French, the [french] 00:13:09.855 --> 00:13:11.357 that the French came up with, which 00:13:11.357 --> 00:13:18.297 we saw coming back up with Marine Le Pen, for example. 00:13:18.297 --> 00:13:23.002 NOAM CHOMSKY: We've all seen that in our own experience. 00:13:23.002 --> 00:13:26.505 When I was in college, one of my fellow students 00:13:26.505 --> 00:13:29.742 was one of the rare black students, who 00:13:29.742 --> 00:13:37.383 had managed to develop not just a straight American accent, 00:13:37.383 --> 00:13:39.752 but an elite to American accent. 00:13:39.752 --> 00:13:41.253 So when he talked over the phone, 00:13:41.253 --> 00:13:43.055 you thought you were talking to a Harvard 00:13:43.055 --> 00:13:46.292 professor, or an Oxford professor, or something. 00:13:46.292 --> 00:13:47.760 We brought him to MIT. 00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:49.395 We appointed him, in fact. 00:13:49.395 --> 00:13:53.499 But when he came, he was staying in our apartment 00:13:53.499 --> 00:13:56.068 while he was looking for a place to live. 00:13:56.068 --> 00:14:02.007 And he would call places that were for rent around Cambridge. 00:14:02.007 --> 00:14:03.909 And they'd say, sure. 00:14:03.909 --> 00:14:04.612 Come over. 00:14:04.612 --> 00:14:06.278 But as soon as he went over, it suddenly 00:14:06.278 --> 00:14:07.746 turned out that the place had just 00:14:07.746 --> 00:14:11.183 been rented five minutes ago. 00:14:11.183 --> 00:14:13.485 But over the phone, he was fine. 00:14:13.485 --> 00:14:16.355 But not in person. 00:14:16.355 --> 00:14:20.092 The picking up of a fake acc-- it 00:14:20.092 --> 00:14:22.661 shows up in many strange ways. 00:14:22.661 --> 00:14:25.564 So for example, at Harvard in the early 1950s, 00:14:25.564 --> 00:14:28.534 there was a wave of Anglophilia. 00:14:28.534 --> 00:14:31.604 And people-- men, of course. 00:14:31.604 --> 00:14:34.707 No women-- dressed in English clothes 00:14:34.707 --> 00:14:37.109 and affected British accents. 00:14:37.109 --> 00:14:40.012 And if you kind of just listened and walked around, 00:14:40.012 --> 00:14:42.514 you might have thought you're maybe in Oxford, 00:14:42.514 --> 00:14:44.250 not in Cambridge. 00:14:44.250 --> 00:14:46.785 But these things happen all the time. 00:14:46.785 --> 00:14:49.255 They can be very pernicious when it's 00:14:49.255 --> 00:14:56.595 a part of the population that's vulnerable and deprived 00:14:56.595 --> 00:14:59.498 and under external pressures for other reasons. 00:14:59.498 --> 00:15:03.569 Of course, African Americans, as I said, it's 400 years. 00:15:03.569 --> 00:15:06.170 It's not something sudden.