Noam Chomsky recently made several claims about the lives of black people living in the United States and how for most the country's history African Americans have had little freedom, even after the civil war. From this article:
“African-Americans had about two decades in which they had a shot of entering [American] society. A black worker could get a job in an auto plant, as 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 — but the whole drug war is designed, from policing to eventual release from prison, to make it impossible for black men and, increasingly, women to be part of [American] society.”
“In fact,” he continued, “if you look at American history, the first slaves came over in 1619, and that’s half a millennium. There have only been three or four decades in which African-Americans have had a limited degree of freedom — not entirely, but at least some.”
My question is, how accurate are these claims? Thanks in advance.
I'll attempt to tackle this question:
First, most historians would disagree with Chomsky in regards to the 20th century being the only time that African Americans had a chance of "entering" American society (despite the fact that they already inhabit American society, though we will give Chomsky a pass and assume he meant equitable access to meritocracy and large scale integration). For instance, many scholars, such as David Roediger, have written about the period of Reconstruction as one in which a multi-racial and inclusive society was possible, and the failure of this possibility is reflective of the prevailing influence of race, class, and the importance of the "wages of whiteness" in perpetuating racism and racial divide. If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend two of Roediger's influential works; The Wages of Whiteness and How Race Survived U.S History
In regards to Chomsky's statements on the Drug War, largely, I would agree. However, I would push them and state that the Drug War is part of a longer history dating back to Reconstruction in which the criminalization and institutionalization of African Americans was a means to control and subvert their population. Some historians have gone as far as to say that mass incarceration of African Americans has come to replace slave labor in the United States, as these prisoners (then and now) were forced to work for little to no wages for certain industries (picking cotton in the South for example). There are many scholarly articles and monographs on the subject, however, if you are interested in the post Civil Rights era I would recommend The New Jim Crowe as an a starting point.
In regards to the last fact, I suppose the claim is subjective to what one defines as "freedom". However, many historians have demonstrated that whatever "freedom" blacks have gained throughout their history, it has always been subjected and juxtaposed with the unequal access to particular rights, liberties, and resources available to whites. George Lipsitz has written that public policy and private prejudice has been intertwined throughout American history, leading to tangible benefits for whites in terms of education and employment and an "investment" in whiteness against Blackness. Moreover, Du Bois wrote in Black Reconstruction that whiteness provided particular "psychological and public wages" that promoted racial prejudice and racial stratification. It is through this paradigm in which Chomsky's statements must be viewed. Largely I agree with his statements, though I wish he would preface them with the scholarly and theoretical underpinnings in which I have attempted to provide you. If you are interested in the subject, I would highly recommend reading Lipsitz's work that I have linked and Roediger's How Race Survived U.S history as an entry point.