"Despite the progress the United States has made, Black Americans are too often denied basic privileges that others take for granted. I am not talking about the privileges of wealth, education or job opportunities. I'm talking about fundamental human and civil rights and the dignity and respect that comes with them. I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog."

What progress?

This song was written in 1966. It could have been written this morning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU

We have made technological progress, which has brought it's own benefits, but that may be more in the form of keeping us busy / distracted; pointing our genetically evolved anger and biases towards the Internet rather than the real world.

But progress within humanity itself?

There can't be progress if there are no consequences, or if the consequences are escaped too frequently, or if the blame is laid upon the symptoms and not the cause: Rioting and looting is anti-social and illegal, yes, but property destruction isn't the same ball park as murder. Focus on the cause, and the symptoms disappear.

But then it's impossible to provide any absolute answer. There's overwhelming beauty in humanity. The good ones are forgiving, and the bad ones will take advantage, and this takes us into game theory. The only way the game changes is if the rules are changed to have more / worse consequences for the bad actors; better systems to ensure the enforcement of these consequences.

Bad elements of humanity will persist despite all this; we'll be colonising Mars in parallel with children being brought up to hate anything unfamiliar, female circumcision will still be law in some countries, and there will still governments that censor and censure even minor dissent, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers.

I don't know if the US is making progress in race relations. That song from 1966 says a resounding no. I don't know if the political will exists within those with the political power to change things. US politics (only because that's the current example) is like my parents' fashion sense: stuck in their favourite era and showing no signs of even the consideration of modernising.

I don't know the answer, and it's maddening and depressing. But it's ignorable, for me, and therein lies the cause of the lack of political will: the symptoms aren't bad enough warrant the cost of seeing the doctor. School shootings once a month aren't bad enough to change gun laws; one dead black man doesn't have anywhere near the political capital of a dozen dead children.

For there to be change, the symptoms have to be more extreme, and they have to persist. History says so.

Technologically, this is 2020. Sociologically this might as well be 1966.