Cultural progress isn’t linear. It’s definitely not inevitable. And once achieved, it is precarious at best. Progress needs to be tended to, diligently, like a garden. Otherwise it’s guaranteed to be short-lived.

Want examples?

Immediately after the Civil War, race relations between blacks and whites in the South (including civil rights) were EXPONENTIALLY better than they were decades later in the early 20th Century when racism was systemic and white racial hatred had become horrific, violent, vicious.

Civil rights for African Americans in the South immediately after the Civil War were EXPONENTIALLY better than they were toward the end of the Jim Crow era, the better part of a century later.

But let’s fast-forward.

In 2008, the cancer of racism in America had been treated so well in recent decades that some (white) people thought it was not only in remission, but cured.

And America elected its first African American president.

I submit to you this as well: The America of 2008 was also—if not for the singular talent of candidate Barack Obama—very much prepared to elect its first woman president.

The America of 2020 is a much different place. Racism and white supremacy is on the rise again. This chronic cancer has returned with a vengeance. Misogyny is also on the rise—perhaps the worst it’s been in 40 years.

America of 2020, when it comes to race and gender, is closer, culturally, to 1960s America than it is to 2008 America.

Now, I know YOU aren’t racist. And YOU are not sexist. But WE certainly are. We’ve regressed as a culture and as a nation.

So, we have to get back to painstakingly treating our cancers again. And when we make progress again (we will!) let’s remember: if we don’t relentlessly tend to that progress, if we don’t protect it, defend it, and care for it . . .