Does the arc of the moral universe bend towards justice?

One of MLK’s more memorable lines is, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It turns out that’s a quote from a minister named Theodore Parker with regards to the abolition of slavery, but the sentiment is truly beautiful: the idea that despite the many wrongs we continue to see in society, from a macro perspective, things have and will continue to get more just.

While I really want to believe that sentiment because it’s a fundamentally hopeful one, I have started to doubt it when it comes to racial issues. Sure, we have made significant progress as a society since the days of slavery. But since then? While racism is often less overt, it doesn’t seem to be any less present and the proliferation of technology and social media has shined an ever brighter light on the many ways race continues to play a haunting role in today’s society.

It just feels like we’ve hit this roadblock as a society where those who don’t want to acknowledge the significant role of race in today’s society can hide behind a superficial look at the supposedly meritocratic society we live in. Instead of being able to bring issues into the open and potentially remedy them, our society continues to try to move beyond race when we are clearly not in a place to do so. We even call it “playing the race card” in an effort to diminish the opinions of those bringing to light what others would prefer remain in darkness.

I’m just not sure how we make progress as a society when the problems have moved beyond the surface to the depths of our humanity. Either the arc is really long or the truth is more complex and ugly than this beautiful sentiment.