Everybody, Lean Forward, Now!

Like the Civil Rights Movement, most movements start out with the goal of equitable acceptance into the current structure � integration without fundamental change. Often this slides into substituting another group into the subservient role and applying or switching the rationalization or intensifying the rationalization for inequity onto the new subservient group. Because of the �mark of Cane� � indelible dark skin � this phenomenon has never worked for blacks. It did work for the Irish, the Italians, the Catholics, and others to the extent they were willing to relinquish most of their cultural markers and to the extent that they accepted the rationalization for continued forms of inequity toward others. This is a dynamic process in the women�s movement where integration into the power elite for some has led to continued inequity for mostly women of color. The LGBT movement lingers in the phase where integration without fundamental change is sought. Latinos are being thrust into a caste system by being marked with an illegal alien identity classification. This effort is attempting to substitute de jure designations for de facto skin color designations with similar rationalizations for inequity. Blacks preceded Latinos in a similar fashion. The African American civil rights struggle stalled when confronted with economic inequity and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; we are being confronted with a �wholesale� re-designation into the criminal complex caste � huge numbers of mostly black males are marked at their times of youthful-rebellion with a criminal record specifying lifelong classification as a target for inequity. [Blacks can no longer avoid taking on the fundamental economic questions that maintain US racist society.]