The hour-and-a-half-long documentary Earthlings starts off with a statement of fact that will resonate with anyone who has ever taken an active role in a social justice movement. There are three stages in the response to Truth: At first, Ridicule. Then, Violent Opposition. And finally, Acceptance. That’s the way it always is with the fight for civil liberties, and that’s the way it was exactly fifty years ago when four Black students sat down at a cafeteria in North Carolina and ordered food, expecting to be served just like anybody else. Racism isn’t over, not in the United States, and not anywhere else in the world, not by a long shot. But at least the most obvious and obscene manifestations of it, the Jim Crow laws, have been obliterated for good.