However, you only have to look back 50 years to see a period when de jure racial discrimination was still common, when women knew their place, the government could enforce journalistic censorship, etc., etc.

We have regressed in some areas recently, but I'm not so sure that the current situation in any particular area is worse than it was in, say 1950.

Continuous forward progress in all areas might not always be possible, and we may suffer some retrograde motion at certain times...

What interests me is how we Westerners expect other cultures to jump from, say, 1300 to 1968 overnight--when we took 668 years to do the same thing. Isn't it true that women had to cover their heads and wear gloves to church in Italy and Spain even in the 1950s? But for a Turkish woman to wear a headcovering is for some reason not allowed...