What conclusion may be drawn from the treatment of the Chinese, Mexican, and other immigrant workers?
The conclusion to be drawn from this history is that we have an economic system which sees human beings as property, to be used when it is useful, to be discarded when it is no longer profitable. The Chinese were welcomed to provide cheap labor on the transcontinental railroad, but then they were not needed, and creating hostility against them turned the attention of white workers away from their own exploiters and against “the other.” This has been the historic device used by the great corporations to divide the working class. The same factors operate today with Mexicans and other immigrants. You’ve written and spoken much about how crucial a knowledge of history is for us to understand the present conditions in which we find ourselves. You, as well as others like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky, emphasize that it is a vital interest of the government to keep people in a state of “historical amnesia.” Would you explain? When people don’t know their history (and I’m not speaking of the san
