Chomsky looks at the roots of American racism and genocide....
The refusal to acknowledge this history of oppression, violence and genocide may be the most disturbing and terrible tendency of Americas dominant culture. Perhaps the most appalling contemporary myth is that none of this happened, said Chomsky. He added:
There is also a common variant of what has sometimes been called 'intentional ignorance' of what it is inconvenient to know: 'Yes, bad things happened in the past, but let us put all of that behind us and march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry.' The appalling statistics of todays circumstances of African-American life can be confronted by other bitter residues of a shameful past, laments about black cultural inferiority, or worse, forgetting how our wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which we are the beneficiaries and they remain the victims.
