Glossy blue windows tower overhead as millions of people swarm through the bright lights of the city. On one corner sits a newspaper stand, the vendor hollering about the newest miracle cure to a deadly disease. Thousands of busy fingers tap, tap, tap on shiny screens, shooting texts across the world in seconds. In the distance, an airplane shoots across the sky just as fast. This is New York City in 2024, a representation of the fast-paced lifestyle we live in, where technological advancements are made, and used, daily.
In the glamourous hotel a few blocks away, people from across the world cluster in the lobby. In the town hall next door, people of all genders and races cast votes on political candidates, a decision that will determine their future. In the old museum on the corner, tour guides celebrate society’s movement away from segregation and Jim Crow.
Technological and social advancements are flooding in consistently. Each day our quality of life improves. Right?
In reality, the glimmering facade is blinding, and behind it hides an uncomfortable truth that people may not be willing to admit. That glamorous hotel still refuses to host a wedding for a gay couple. In that town hall, men make decisions about women’s bodies. Next to that old museum, a racist slur is painted onto a brick wall. These bigoted actions are little pieces of a puzzle that make up the big picture: American society is regressing.
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly half a century of federal protection of abortion rights in the United States. This decision was a direct result of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, which upheld Mississippi’s ban on abortion once a pregnancy reached the 15-week mark. The overturning of Roe v. Wade erased decades of progress for women’s rights.
Among the dissenting of the 2022 decision were Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who agreed that girls today will grow up with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. As of Optic’s print deadline, 21 states have placed a total ban on abortion or restrict abortions earlier into pregnancies than the standard set by the initial 1973 ruling of Roe v. Wade. Similar to life prior to 1973, millions of women have been stripped of their ability to make decisions regarding their own body, even in circumstances relating to sexual assault.
Even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court was making controversial decisions that threatened the rights of minorities. Representing a step backwards in the United States’ acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community is the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling of 303 Creative, LLC. v. Elenis. In 2016, Christian Website Designer Laurie Smith was hoping to expand her business to create websites for marriages. However, due to her religious beliefs, she did not want to make her business available to clients planning a same-sex marriage. Concerned that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law would force her to create websites for same sex-couples, Smith decided to sue. In a six to three decision, the Supreme Court sided with Smith, ruling that the anti-discrimination law violated the designer’s rights to exercise her religious beliefs. Nevertheless, this decision entails that any religious belief, no matter how outdated, can now limit the accessibility of services. In some religions, women are seen as inferior beings to men, so are companies now allowed to deny service to women as well? The questions arising from this case all point towards one fact — the decision reverses much of the progress made on sexual and gender equality.
Supreme Court decisions aren’t the only threats to gender equality. Working women have a long history of being paid significantly less than their male counterparts, an issue that still persists today. While the idea of a stay-at-home mother did not start to lose popularity until the 1960s, women in the 1920s, although primarily poor and uneducated, made up about 20 percent of the workforce. According to history.com, for similar low-wage jobs in the 1920s, men were paid an average of $25 a week while women received just $18. This gap increased between then and 1980, when the average hourly wage of women was 67 percent of the average hourly wage of men, according to Pew Research Center. Today, according to the American Association of University Women, women continue to earn an average of 16 percent less than men in most occupations. While there has been a drastic improvement in the gender pay gap, the continued difference between men’s and women’s salaries highlight the continued belief that women are inferior, and less valuable in the workplace.
But women aren’t the only minorities seeing their rights stripped away. Despite the promise of religious freedom offered by the first amendment, religious minorities in the United States are seeing their faith challenged every day, both by individuals and the American government. In particular, the 2022 Supreme Court case Kennedy v. The Bremerton School District challenges the fundamental American values of equality and liberty. When the Supreme Court ruled that a coach praying with his students before a football game was constitutional, they ignored the power imbalance between coaches and athletes. If students feel pressured to join this Christian practice, it becomes an obvious violation of their rights. As politicians laude America’s equality, the protections offered by our amendments seem to be declining. The early days of Colonial America, when religious freedom only applied to different versions of Christianity, seem dangerously close to returning.
Education is the key to acceptance, and America’s dwindling religious acceptance is further amplified by curriculum changes made in Florida public schools. In June 2023, the Florida State Board of Education approved new standards for the state’s social studies curriculum. According to the Florida Education Association, this new standard marks a step backward in state-required African American history education practices that had been present since 1994.
Included in the 216-page standards are benchmark clarifications which state that instruction must include that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” which deny the harmful history of slavery. In addition, textbooks were further altered to remove mentions of socialism, the LGBTQ+ community and the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as messages that conflate massacres perpetrated against African Americans to teach that the African American victims had incited a majority of the violence.
Propelled by Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative agenda in the classroom, these standards mark a regression in Florida’s education practices, and force students to adhere to a whitewashed and stereotypical viewpoint regarding America’s history and current events. This reversal in education fosters ignorance and sets a dangerous precedent for future generations. If these practices continue to be unchecked, it is quite possible that other states will follow Florida’s path and we risk normalizing a nationwide distortion of history, perpetuating a mass regression towards bigotry.
A well-rounded education is not possible without diverse opinions and accessibility to higher institutions – an ability that one Supreme Court case threatens. On June 29, 2023 in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC, it was determined that colleges could no longer use race as a factor in admissions, effectively ending affirmative action. The Supreme Court justices falsely claimed this was done in the name of equality. For years, African American and Hispanic students faced discrimination in the college application process. Affirmative action did not give minorities an advantage, but rather was created to make up for the disadvantage they have as a result of stereotypes, a history of subjugation, frequent economic disadvantages and countless other factors. By removing affirmative action, minorities will once again be placed at a disadvantage and find it more difficult to attain a college education at the level of whites. We will soon see a decline in historically underrepresented minorities within universities, and thus, likely within certain careers as well. With one decision, the Supreme Court has affected the lives of millions of individuals, sending our college system back by about 50 years and reversing much of the progress society has made in striving for racial equality in our country.
Society seems to be improving every day, with new iPhone models routinely delivered into the public’s eager hands and AI tools such as ChatGPT marching into the workforce and classrooms. Still, even as we seem to be hurtling forward into a future only imagined in utopian science fiction, society is ultimately tumbling backwards. Progress that has been fought for throughout history to guarantee the rights of women, LGBTQ+ individuals, racial and religious minorities and countless other Americans is being reversed. If this pattern continues, America will soon look just like the society bereft of freedom and equality in our history books that appalls us. And since we can’t travel back in time, we need to take action here and now to turn the clocks forward again.
Whether you are a high school student or the president of the United States, there are actions you can take in order to restore the years of progress that are being erased. We all can take a careful look at our history books in order to ensure that America is not repeating past mistakes. When you watch a documentary, read an autobiography or even take your high school’s history courses, you are holding yourself accountable to ensure that you will keep the clock ticking in the right direction. As the years move forward, America needs to be stepping into a more advanced society, and it is our responsibility to make sure that these steps are forward and not followed by steps back.