Juneteenth is a celebration of progress, and an inspiration for the long road ahead 

This Juneteenth, we should all take a moment to think about breast cancer. 
 
In 1954, only 25 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer survived for 10 years. In 2024, that number is over 84 percent.  

For 70 years, everyone hunted — unsuccessfully — for a cure. What we did find was a thousand tiny fixes, a better way to diagnose cancer early, a new drug and a tweak to a treatment regimen. Over the years, these incremental steps added up, not to a final victory, but to an impressive achievement nonetheless. 
 
There was no top-down solution. No one person can take credit for the advances in cancer treatments. It’s the work of millions of people, researchers, doctors, nurses — even patients — each making their own contribution. 
 
Racism is a lot like that. For one thing, I suspect racism, like cancer, is a lot of different diseases rather than just one. And despite constant calls to “end racism,” progress has been made incrementally through implementing a new policy here and addressing a specific problem there. Just as with cancer, there is no “anti-racism” silver bullet. 
 
In 1954, segregation was legal in America. In 1955, Emmett Till, an African America teenager, was lynched for speaking with a white woman in a grocery store. His murderers, who eventually admitted their crimes in a magazine article, were acquitted by an all-white jury after deliberating for 67 minutes. 
 
Whatever problems we may have today, it’s not 1954. We haven’t ended racism, but millions of tiny victories have, nonetheless, transformed America. We’ve traveled a long and upward road, if only one step at a time. Sixty years after Emmett Till was murdered for nothing, there was an African American president in the White House. 
 
Just like the stunning improvement in breast cancer treatment, this, too, was the work of many hands, hundreds of millions of hands. And it’s something every American should be proud of. 
 
That doesn’t mean everything is wonderful and we’ve reached the end of the civil rights road. It doesn’t mean we’ve finally built a society where people are judged solely on the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. There is still racism in America, both intentional and unintentional. Every example should be treated with the utmost seriousness, just as you would a cancer diagnosis. And, just as with cancer treatment, we should always be pressing to do better. 
 
But there is no reason we should not celebrate the progress we have made even as we push to make more. When the road gets steep and rocky, when we get discouraged about how far we still have to go, it is good, sometimes, to look back and see how far we’ve come. The proof that change is possible should energize and inspire us for the next leg of the journey.  

I am very seldom on the same page with Cornel West, but some time ago I saw an interview in which he described America’s history by quoting Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” That’s the perfect description for America’s progress since 1954. 
 
America works, flaws and all. Two hundred and fifty years later, the aspirations that founded this country are not dead. This Juneteenth, think about how far we still have to go. But also spare a thought for how far we have come. 

Chris Truax is a Republican and an appellate attorney.