Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

WOMAN: Mr. Chomsky, I just wanted to say that I saw the New York Times review you were discussing, and I was absolutely appalled by it. If I was a black man in this country, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself—it would just be a burning fire inside, I would feel such rage. How about if you were a black woman? That article took seriously the idea that black women don’t nurture their children—because they evolved in Africa, where the environment was such-and-such. It was pure racism, something straight out of the Nazis. But look: it’s really not even worth talking about it. The right way to respond is just to ask, what are they doing it for? And they’re doing it for a very simple reason. 30 million people in the country go hungry. 40 percent of the children in New York City, most of them black and Hispanic, live below the poverty line—which means they’re destroyed, okay? And that is the result of very definite social policies that these people are supporting. Well, you want to keep making all your money, but you don’t want to face any of the rest of it, so you need some kind of a cover. And what’s the cover? “Bad genes.” Okay, once you understand what’s really motivating all of this, then at least you’re in a position to deal with it. The point is, just as it was proper at some point for the Nazis to say, “Jews are a virus that’s destroying our society,” it is now proper for the New York Times to run articles taking seriously the idea that black mothers don’t nurture thei...