Foucault on Political Power

Via Apurva who uploaded a debate between Chomsky and Foucault. Foucault says something on the university and educational system that I believe is a reality in todays America, as well as a few other systems. He says, starting out with explaining government institutions:

These institutions transmit orders, apply them and punish people who don't obey. But I think that the political power is also exerted by a few other institutions which seem to have nothing in common with the political power, which seem to be independent but which actually aren't. We all know that the university and the whole educational system that is supposed to distribute knowledge, we know that the educational system maintains the power in the hands of a certain social class and exclude the the other social class from this power...Psychiatry is also a way to implement a political power to a political social group. Justice also.

His point on psychiatry also reminds me why the Association of Black Psychologists started back in 1968. Even though psychiatrists and psychologists liked to pride themselves in being "objective" they were actually very subjective and psychiatry and psychology were just another tool used by this American system of white supremacy to subjugate people of color to the will of the white male. Black psychologists needed a space to develop their own theories and to help their own people and take on that system of white supremacy without the tentacles of Euro-centric education trying to strangle them.