Manifest Destiny saw Yankee conquest as the inevitable result of a confrontation between enterprise and progress (white) versus passivity and backwar… - Elizabeth Martínez

In actuality, the 1960s was an era of interconnection across lines of sex and race, time and space. But with rare exceptions, these authors are guilty of fragmenting the movement.

For them as for so many others, the anti-racist struggle in Mississippi has its steps forward together with its steps back-like any other struggle. So much has changed and yet remains unchanged. As of 1998, Mississippi had 10 black sheriffs (more than any other state) but chose in 2001 to retain the Confederate symbol of flags and bars in its flag. Racism lives, and not only in Mississippi. From the criminal injustice system to attacks on affirmative action, from environmental racism to intensifying poverty and the prison system, today's struggles often seem not so different from four decades ago. Denial of Black voting rights, a crucial southern issue in 1964, turned out to be very crucial nationwide in 2000, when it may well have decided the presidency, as Florida's voting records confirm. The role of racism in U.S. foreign policy and its domestic consequences became unmistakable with the government's response to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Many people see more clearly today than before that ending racism is central and essential to any transformation of the human condition. The only fatal mistake in this long, hard struggle is cynicism.

When we consider how the anti-terrorism act and other laws passed in 1994-97 have imposed fear and suffering, we have to ask: who are the real terrorists? If terrorism means the systematic use of intense fear as a means of coercion, we can look at Latino immigrants (not to mention others) and find appalling examples of such victimization.