Values change all the time

Africans were brought to work and be traded as slaves in Americas ever since Europeans colonised it in the 16th century. In the year 1865, Abraham Lincoln freed 4 million slaves when he ratified the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery. Africans Americans however, continue to be marginalised and up to the 1950s, there are still much limitation of freedom for them.

A "coloured" person, as they were officially refered to back then, wasn't even allowed to be seated on the "white" seats in public buses or even be accorded similar access to education. The African American Civil Liberties movement kept up the pressure and soon enough (close to 20 years), official racial segregation and and discrimination systems ended. In 2008, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States of America and more significantly, the first African American to hold office. Even before he held office of the President, there are already numerous successful African Americans which made great contributions to the American society.

Key milestones in African American history

In 1836, James Pratt and John Smith are hanged at Newgate prison, London after being caught together in private lodgings (The last known execution for homosexuality in Great Britain). In 2014,same-sex marriage laws came into effect in England and Wales which basically allows persons from the same sex to be officially married. It took 178 years for homosexuality to be accepted as not a crime in the UK.

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt signed federal legislation that banned cannabis use, production and sales in the US. In 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first two states that allowed recreational marijuana rules (Source: Up in Smoke: A Timeline of Marijuana Use in the U.S.) It took 37 years for smoking marijuana to not be a crime in the US.

In 1968, ads like below appeared in magazines and was considered normal in Malaysia at those times. In fact, this ad appeared in Kesatuan Guru-Guru Melayu Malaysia Barat's 1968 AGM, on the page right before the message of the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia (Tun Abdul Razak, back then). In 2009 however, a 32 year old Muslim nurse was caught drinking beer in the state of Pahang and was due to receive whipping but her sentence was then commuted the next year.

Values are proven to change over time. The anecdotes above represents the values that changes in society, after a certain period of time. Humans change values too, perhaps in a faster scale than society. The amalgamation of all the personal human values that changes results in a value change in society. Maybe, it's just really, really hard to imagine a different, future version of ourselves.  Life is a process of growing and changing and people often underestimate how much they will change in the future.

Ideas or values, like living beings, have to fight for survival. Usually, the winners in the battle to survive are the majorities because they have power and control. So, wherever you live in, if you want to predict the future change of the society you live in, look at which values the majority is pursuing and that will most probably be it in the future.

With the advent of Internet where knowledge is freely available online and provides rapid sharing of information, the explosive nature of opposing values can be seen clearly, especially when the values are not in line with what the society wants. For example, in countries where the values are much different than what is the general value that the human population believes, there will be large value frictions. For example, in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the values differ so much from Sunni and Shia Muslims, and also much against compared to what is being practiced in developed, peaceful countries, the friction between values causes the people constantly caught in fighting for their own values to triumph over another.

Our actions today may determine the values of tomorrow. If the leaders of the African Americans did not fight their way in pursuing their ideals, they would probably have a lesser role in America's society. We can't change values overnight, but we should fight for what we believe in to ensure that the value system that we deem to be the optimal one for the future generations.