Civil rights in the fallout universe?

[marharth]

Now it was supposed to be the continuation of nuclear 50s culture at the end of world war 2 (generally accepted as somewhere between 1945-1952.) What happened with the civil rights era?

 

This isn't something anyone seems to discuss, and I have been wondering about it since it seems to me like the civil rights era didn't happen, or happened a lot later.

 

1. Most advertisements on billboards are of white people in the 50s style of advertisement.

2. I don't think there were many people in power that were not white that is known.

3. Raul's speech.

4. I think most people in the vaults were also white, I am not sure however.

 

So from all of this, it seems to me like the civil rights era was either quite late or never happened. After the war people just wanted to survive and didn't care about race nearly as much.

 

Also take note that the USA had secret concentration camps during the war that held Chinese Americans, so the USA after the time split was definitely racist as hell.

 

This topic is not meant to be racist either, just pointing out something I noticed about the time split.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I think you are partially right. Obviously there were blacks, hispanics, asians, etc in vaults. The overseer of Vault City was black. The overseer of Vault 101 was hispanic.

I suspect there was no Civil Rights Act as such, but more of an us against them mentality. Americans of all types may have pulled together, to a point, against evil outsiders.

[MoonHoplite]

Isn't the colonel of the NCR asian in New Vegas?

 

There are also a lot of African Americans in the Powder Gangers.

[marharth]

That's after the war though.

[minngarm]

Actually, the camps were a reflection of the real life concentration camps we had for Japanese Americans during the war.

 

Now as for the timeline split, its not a continuation of 50s culture, The "Fulcrum" of the FO timeline is that Tesla did not die when he did. He finished his work, his defence contracts (the very equipment IRL that Mr House used IG to defend Vegas.) As such it radically changed technology as we know it, which thus impacted economically, and spread onto social changes.

 

As for rights, well those changes have always been taking place towards what we all should be able to agree is the good. Hell during the civil war racism was a side note, and mostly only advocated to appear as different from the North as the "Southern Patriots" wanted to be. The thing about civil rights, is they progress much faster with the application of violence and economic pressure. So its perfectly logical to believe that the "civil rights movement" occured in a more civilized way, allbet, longer timeframe than it did in reality.

 

Now if these changes took full effect before the war ended, or if we had basicly a larger scale Vietnam era is unsure. As the presence of all manners of racial traits in all FO games could be because people of all races were allowed to purchase their spots, or simply that while the rich white folk bought theirs, the poor "darker" folk obtained jobs working in the vaults to maintain them for their paying residents.

Edited August 18, 2011 by minngarm