Pat Bond on Pen-L argues that Chomsky is mistaken, while rejecting JC's ridiculous personal attack. Both Chomsky & Bond make pretty persuasive arguments, and it's unfortunate that a useful degbate got dragged aside by a stupid personal attack. I notice by one of his subject lines that Catrone seems also to be draggingin that false and misleading theory about "white-skin privilege." That was an academic argument to begin with, and as soon as it left the academic journals it began to fuck up anaysis of racial "oppression" in the U.S. "Privilege" is not a useful concept for the analysis of capitalist societies.
Carrol
P.S. On another argument under this subject line, subjective racism, or sheer hatred of Blacks _does_ characterize many if not all Police Departments in the U.S. A decade or so ago a States Attorney from Philadelphia in an op-ed in the WSJ grounded the necessity to kill Mumia onthe need to maintain morale in the Philadelphia Police Department. During the defense of the Pontiac Brothers back in the '70s we put on a panel here at ISU which was attended by a number of relatives of guards at Pontiac. One of them really let the open secret out into the open, almost explicitly: "They" (it doesn't matter which of them) killed one of _US_, now some of _Them_ must die for that (it doesn't matter which ones). Pay Day lenders get their money from larger "respectable" banks, which explains why people from local Banks (that have no _direct_ interest in the matter, attended the City Council hearing on Monday over a proposed ordinance capping interet rates at 36%. _Similarly_, the big capitalists have no interest in racism but _do_ have an interest in maintaining the loyalty of police departments.
P.S. 2: Doug, have you ever written anything on the 'lower' fringes of the financial system? Has anyone? Dickens did in Our Mutual Friend :-).