Whatever one thinks of International ANSWER (Act Now To Stop War and End Racism), the group is doing an outstanding job of organizing young black, brown and yellow people. They typically don’t attend U.S. anti-war rallies, due mainly to the role of the nation’s color line. The white peace movement gains nothing by burying its head in the sand on this sore subject. Honesty is the only policy here.

Arguably, widespread involvement of young people of color who previously have been absent from anti-war protests is essential to building a movement for equality that reflects the complexity and diversity of the U.S. Folks are waking up to this understanding. Some perhaps quicker than others. Better late than never. We have a world to save.

U.S. elites see it differently. They have a world to steal, and have waged wars abroad for decades against black, brown and yellow people to this thieving end. These wars have dovetailed with U.S. racism in complex ways. Thus it’s no coincidence that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s energized opposition to U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia. Then, the political power of the U.S. majority was rising. Meanwhile, the post-World War II economic boom was ending.

As U.S. economic growth slowed during the 1960s and 1970s, the political power of the majority weakened. The subsequent restructuring of the world economy followed. A racist reaction against those least to blame for it spread in the U.S. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration waged Central American wars against the supposed communist menace of brown people. This dovetailed with the phony "War on Drugs" against people of color in the U.S.

A kind of class war ensued between and within nations, facilitated by white racism. In the U.S., the Drug War removed surplus workers of color to the prison system. They were politically neutered. This process continues today in a nation that has an incarcerated population of two million human beings. Currently, an endless terror war promises no end to such racialized policies that expand inequality in the U.S.

Moreover, the young people of color not incarcerated will be more likely than most to be sent to fight in the endless terror war. They will arrive home in body bags, or alive but poisoned in body and spirit by their brutal and brutalizing experiences. These same youth are now being targeted by military recruiters in public high schools. Military recruitment is currently connected with federal education aid http://www.wagingpeace.org/new/getinvolved/index.htm.

Is it any wonder that nonwhite youth in the U.S. being militarily profiled for the terror war and racially profiled for jails and prisons are voicing an advanced political consciousness? Steeled by a harsh social reality, their activism is linking Washington’s aggression in the Persian Gulf to a militarization of life in the U.S.

These youth are publicly connecting the dots between capitalism, racism and militarism in U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Globalization of inequality begins at home. That thought crossed my mind as I watched a young white man walk with a sign decrying racism. He was part of the call for U.S. peace with the people of Iraq. He was refusing to go along with the white-skin privilege that serves to blind many to the common humanity they share with others from Iraq to Indianapolis who have a slightly different pigmentation.

The mostly white Third World solidarity movements focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, forgiving World Bank debt and opposing corporate-led globalization partly remind Max Elbaum, author of "Revolution in the Air: Third World Marxism of the 1960s," of the young people he mobilized with during the anti-Vietnam War struggle. He also sees the mostly non-white people’s anti-prison system and pro-African American reparations movements as heirs to the tradition of U.S. people protesting racism and social injustice that sparked people to sit-in and march during the Civil Rights era.

History, of course, never repeats itself exactly. But one thing appears clear. Peace with equality begins at home in the U.S. Let’s keep supporting the emerging color of the young people’s peace movement here.