My dissertation advisor, a veteran of segregated Chicago, liked to say that social science is not rocket science—it’s a lot harder. Social systems and social progress have a lot more variables than physical ones and behave much less predictably.
The five years following George Floyd’s lynching have demonstrated the wisdom of his words.
In 2020, after the largest protests in U.S. history, there was no shortage of outrage. No lack of political will. No confusion about what people wanted—accountability, dignity, safety. Police unions and politicians who once claimed racism was “over” suddenly spoke publicly about the need to do something in response to such a grotesque event. For a moment, our nation had moral clarity, and it felt like we might finally be on the cusp of change that was as large as our collective outrage.
But then the variables changed, and the social systems largely did not. Perhaps that is because there is still a bit about large-scale social progress that is like a moonshot. The launch is hard enough—controlling the explosion of energy, the singular mission, the sense of purpose. But the magic comes in sustaining momentum long enough to stick the landing. And, in the wake of 2020, we have not stuck the landing.
There has been no lasting, federal changes in public policy. The burst of local reforms has slowed considerably, with progress haunted by promising programs disappearing. And the piecemeal change that seemed too small to match the outrage that erupted then would now be considered by many to be radical. Five years hence, we find ourselves living in the shadow of the second Trump administration, with a government that seizes immigrants off the streets and disdains not only efforts to redress racism but the proposition of equal justice itself. The rocket not only failed to land; it exploded.
How did that happen—and where do we go from here?
If history is any indication, big innovations depend on three pillars: A clear vision, often framed in morally appealing terms; people who obsess over understanding the details; and funding to sustain both, through failure and success.
Giant leaps like the 1969 moon landing were built on all three. Most remember the morally clarion calls of President John F. Kennedy marshaling the nation behind NASA’s mission, or Buzz Aldrin’s iconic words broadcast back down on Earth. But few recall the legions of dedicated technical experts behind the scenes, which included women like Katherine Johnson, a Black mathematician from West Virginia, who began her career in a segregated NASA research center before performing critical calculations on the Apollo mission. Not to mention the record-high funding the space program enjoyed through multiple false starts.
Social change operates on the same principles, but it is far harder to meet even one of these conditions. Funding tends to be the least stable pillar. There is also no money in trying to solve racism—at least, not for the people doing it. And, unlike a moon landing, vaccines that eradicate disease, or artificial intelligence that can fabricate art, most people cannot easily imagine what “ending racism” looks like.
Having spent more than a quarter century studying the psychology and history of racism, and the past two decades merging social science with advocacy in more than 60 jurisdictions across the U.S. and abroad, I have seen the financial landscape grow bleaker than it has been at any time before in this century. Federal grants designed to study unnecessary police stops and uses of force have evaporated, philanthropy is being spread thinner, and I have seen financial support for changing public safety evaporate.
The fate of the space program illustrates the importance of robust, durable funding. Since the moon landing in 1969, we have seen comparatively minor innovations in space travel. Absent a clear next goal supported by consistent financing, signal events have all but disappeared.
Social problems without a clear vision for solving them experience a similar deceleration. With excruciating balance, however, we can succeed on the strength of the other two pillars: the moral clarity to mobilize people and the depth of knowledge necessary to achieve lasting change.
Racial justice advocates have pulled this off before. Just a century after slavery, activists, lawmakers, and everyday people dedicated to a more just nation secured passage of the Voting Rights Act. Civil Rights lawyers did it with Brown v. Board of Education, marking less than 90 years from slavery to the end of legal segregation.
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In both cases, accomplishing progress required moral vision and technical expertise working in tandem; one cannot create durable progress without the other. We have seen this throughout history: Behind every landmark victory are numerous, often unnamed professionals who understand what levers to pull and how to find them—the mechanics who make change happen. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, for instance, was made possible by the logistical and technical brilliance of advisor Bayard Rustin, who organized the March on Washington and other iconic protests. Achieving that balance has yielded successes under other banners as well, like the right to organize, for women to vote, and for consumers to be protected from harmful products. All of these landmark achievements followed a clear vision and leaders with deep expertise in how the systems they struggled to change—or topple—actually functioned.
Collective action needs moral clarity—simple, powerful calls to action that cut through apathy and inspire people. But that same clarity—so essential for mobilization—can obscure complexity and downplay technical expertise. The glare of a galvanizing vision means we often squint at problems and champion solutions that feel right in the moment but do not hold up under scrutiny or serve our long-term goals.
In other words, without delicate balance, we risk building around a goal without recognizing the means necessary to achieve it. Justice also faces an additional obstacle: Unlike with most aerospace research, there are often active enemies of social progress deeply invested, culturally or materially, in the status quo. That means that cycles of backlash must be included in the calculations of our moonshots for social change.
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Failing to account for this phenomenon can breed catastrophe. My first exposure to this idea came in May 1985, as a kid growing up in Philadelphia. The city tried to evict members of MOVE, a Black liberation group that had sparked neighborhood complaints of noise, trash, and threatening behavior, by using a police helicopter to drop a bomb on the West Philly rowhomes where members lived. The bombs started fires that killed 11, including five children within a few years of my age; displaced 250 people; and destroyed two city blocks.
I was seven years old when the bombs dropped. I could not understand the context that led then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode, Philadelphia’s first Black Mayor, to that catastrophic decision, but I was terrified by the images. One of those victims, a child named Phil “Little Phil” Africa, even shared my first name.
A few years later, my parents brought me along to a dinner hosted by a close family friend, Lucius Outlaw Jr., a brilliant professor of philosophy who retired from Vanderbilt University in 2023. Uncle Lou, as I called him, would often host Black academics and activists at his table, including an up-and-coming professor named Cornel West. When I asked the adults about the bombing, there was outrage—but also shame and regret.
These luminaries were not naïve. They believed in their revolutionary vision and the forward trajectory of racial justice. There was a sense around that table, and throughout my formative years, that those who planned for change had an obligation to include the cycles of backlash into their calculations—and that failing to do so sufficiently was part of the way “we ended up here.” In retrospect, the MOVE bombing was part of a backlash cycle that yielded tough-on-crime policies and mass incarceration. Not least was the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act—legislation that still shapes the way law enforcement operates around the country.
Failing to account for backlash against racial progress at this point feels negligent precisely because it is so historically predictable at this point. Reconstruction gave way to Jim and Jane Crow. Brown v. Board and the victories of the 50s and 60s gave way to the racially regressive politics of Nixon, Ford, and eventually Reagan. The election of the nation’s first Black president catalyzed the Tea Party and, eventually, Donald Trump.
Given the reliability of these cycles, the only option is to treat moments when public opinion and progress align as narrow windows when change is possible. The task must be to wield fleeting power effectively for durable gains. Get what you can while you can, then come back for the rest. That means there is little time for clarity and expertise to be at odds.
In the wake of Floyd's death, there were calls to mandate less police violence, hire more diverse police forces, track police performance, and make it easier to hold officers and departments accountable. Advocates and police chiefs largely agreed that police are tasked with too much and that we should have alternatives to police in many cases and focus on preventing crises rather than just responding to them where possible.
But there were also loud disagreements on whether improving police behavior was a fool’s errand. So, collectively, we didn’t. Advocates and elected leaders debated whether short-term improvements to our public safety systems were counterproductive to a long-term goal—as if, absent violent revolution, a clear goal married to technocratic change has not always been the path that racial progress traveled in this country.
Consider the failure of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The legislation was not close to everything the nation needed to end racism in public safety, but it aligned with public opinion and, despite the critiques of some activists, represented real progress. Measures such as a national database that would have kept corrupt cops from securing jobs in other jurisdictions, a national ban on chokeholds, or a new legal standard that would make it easier to pursue claims against police—all on the table at one point or another—would have saved lives.
2020 failed to produce the balance between moral clarity and policy complexity that might have led to durable gains. And so infighting flourished while momentum faded. The money (such as it was) dried up and 2020 did not produce the changed nation so many wanted.
Working within systems may not be enough. But those who walk away from the table in service to a sense of moral purity are often leaving lives in the balance. To outlast the backlash and achieve more than symbolic gains, both vision and progress are required—even if the progress is unsatisfying.
So, how do we honor the spirit of 2020 without losing hope when the progress is slow to materialize?
The first step is recognizing that progress cannot be sustained by moral clarity alone. To be clear, the language that engages communities and brings supporters off the sidelines is a necessary ingredient to progress. Lasting solutions, however, require both that clarity that inspires action and the knowledge of how systems work.
The second step is understanding that moral clarity is not the enemy of complexity. We do not have to abandon a bold vision of the type of society we want to live in—but we do have to ground our long-term demands in the rigorous, strategic work that ensures they lead to substantive change. People who dreamed of going to Mars do not call NASA traitors for landing on the moon. Nor should positive changes to public safety be maligned for being too small or working within systems that should not exist. The systems do exist. And if we want to save lives, we cannot walk away from every table that does not feature our preferred moral centerpiece.
The third step is abandoning the idea that justice is a single achievement—a moon landing, one legislative win, one landmark court ruling, one budget reallocation that will fix everything. Justice is not a single scheme. It is not a destination. It is a sustained effort, something that must be secured over and over again. Insufficient gains are still gains. While legislation documenting habitually abusive police is not enough, neither is it meaningless.
We do not launch rockets once and say that space is conquered. We keep building. We reach for new frontiers. Those striving for progress must attempt the same. Every victory is a step, not the final destination. We do not get to rest long. We do not aim to be permanently satisfied. We win a battle, then we get back to work. Because, as history keeps reminding us, the moment we stop pushing upward is the moment gravity starts pulling us down.
Solomon is the Carl I. Hovland Professor of African American Studies and Psychology at Yale. He is co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity
This project was created in partnership with the Center for Policing Equity.