Summary of "Why we can’t see progress | The Gray Area"

Summary of Main Arguments and Commentary

Progress is hard to recognize in real time. Rebecca Snit argues that people consistently underestimate or miss positive change while it’s happening. She attributes this to:
- Amnesia: forgetting historical baselines, so progress (e.g., feminism, civil rights) gets mistaken for failure or reversibility as if change should have happened instantly.
- Short-term focus: over-attending to what happens today/tomorrow instead of looking across decades.
- “Doomer” pessimism: a cultural tendency (especially in English-speaking contexts) toward grumpy, premature surrender—choosing the mindset that the regime/authoritarians already have all power.
The right’s anger signals that the left/progress has power. Snit reframes the backlash narrative: the right is not merely reacting—it is threatened because progress over the last 70 years has fundamentally changed society. She cites the idea that:

“an old world is dying… a new world is struggling to be born… now is the time of monsters,” arguing that the “monsters” are partly backlash against gains made by movements.
A key claim: a “minority story” is being imposed on the public. Snit argues that mainstream/right-wing media convinces Americans that an “angry minority” (anti-vax, anti-immigration, anti–reproductive rights, anti-trans/queer rights, anti-climate) represents the majority. This produces powerlessness, isolation, and alienation—even though, she argues, people who support progressive change are actually the majority.
Backlash is fundamentally about resisting interdependence. She argues the deepest driver is a revolt against the idea that people and society are connected and therefore owe one another obligations/responsibility. In contrast, the American right is portrayed as grounded in rugged individualism/isolation, which Snit links to:
- hostility to systems thinking and consequences (e.g., climate change)
- unlimited “rights” language that omits obligations to others and the environment
- loneliness and joylessness, intensified by hyper-individualist tech/capitalist culture (and potentially accelerated by AI as “substitutes” for human connection)
Progress is real even when outcomes feel incomplete. Snit emphasizes that victories often look invisible or delayed (e.g., harms that never happen—pollution prevented, forests not cut, asthma not triggered). She also criticizes what she describes as a progressive habit to:
- “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”
- write obituaries for movements prematurely
- treat any reversal as proof that everything failed
Legal reversals don’t fully erase cultural change. Using Roe v. Wade as an example, she argues that although the legal right was overturned, the deeper shift in beliefs and activism continues. She points to:
- the long timeline of reproductive-rights gains (including earlier contraception rulings)
- the fact that supportive policies/efforts continue in states
- increased availability of medication abortions, including via mail in some places
- the broader historical pattern that rights can be constrained legally while underlying cultural knowledge and expectations persist
Stories change “normal,” not just laws. She discusses how court outcomes can differ over time because what society considers “normal” and who is seen as deserving rights changes through culture and lived experience—not solely through legislation. She contrasts Supreme Court attitudes on queerness across years, arguing that visibility and bravery by LGBTQ people reshaped social reality long before certain legal milestones.
Why the left can underestimate itself: enemies take progress seriously. Snit claims the right more accurately interprets its opponents’ power. She argues that the right understands progressive changes as part of an interconnected agenda and thus treats them as meaningful—something she says progressives often fail to internalize.
Pace and reversibility: history shows change rarely returns to the exact prior status quo. Asked about sustainable change amid disruption/backlash, Snit argues that while setbacks occur, societies don’t fully revert to the pre-progress past. She points to examples like abolition and women’s suffrage: backlash can roll back parts of rights, but it doesn’t erase the new ideas and social realities already created.
A critique of “perfection” and factional punishment on the left. Snit says some political communities (on left and right) get trapped in identity purity tests. Instead of strategic coalition-building, they may demand perfection and punish “imperfect” members—driven by discomfort with uncertainty and binary thinking. She links this to authoritarian tendencies and to a psychological need for neat categories where thinking stops.
Hope as possibility rather than forecast. She invokes the idea that hope is an attitude of spirit, not a prediction. Radical uncertainty is portrayed as a space for possibility and responsibility—contrasting resignation (“the future is set”) with the belief that people still shape outcomes.