Is it really?

Slavery ended in the United States 157 years ago. Did it? We still have legal slavery "as punishment for a crime." I would argue that we are all slaves to the banks for our mortgages, student loans and credit cards, and slaves to landlords for rent.

Black men and women and their allies are no longer lynched, as the thousands were through 1968.

What about Trayvon Martin and many more killed by police or self-appointed vigilantes?

We don’t have separate drinking fountains.

At least those separate drinking fountains had the same water. Now we have separate and unequal water systems, as in Flint Michigan.

Black people can sit on any seat on the bus without reprisal.

But they are subject to more harassment from transit police.

Black people can vote.

But the former slave states are doing everything they can to make voting harder for them.

The Supreme Court no longer says that segregation is legal, as it once did.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that "religious" organizations have a right to discriminate, and are on the verge of reversing the other precedents of the Civil Rights era.

Black people can go to college. Get degrees. Become doctors and lawyers.

The Supreme Court is also on the verge of outlawing the affirmative action programs which opened these doors.

I don't mean to say that we have not made progress. But every step forward has to be defended, and we are always in danger of falling back.