There is a temptation sometimes to think that there is a line of progress in societal issues that moves steadily upwards.
In football, we have been asserting, glibly, for many years that the racism problem in the game is vastly improved from the way it was in the late Seventies and early Eighties, when players such as Ces Podd were loudly abused from the terraces with impunity and bananas were thrown on to the pitch at John Barnes.
That case cannot be made any more. Social and cultural history is not a smooth arc. There are periods of enlightenment and there are periods when things lurch backwards.