A different 1960s - Vietnam, but no racial problems in U.S.

[DTF955Baseballfan]

People have speculated about a 1960s with no Vietnam with with the other problem, but I wonder, what if it had been the other way around?

Let's say that Civl Rights happens earlier; it doesn't have to be that much earlier, if you still think WW II was needed then it can be late 1940s. However, the key is th4e 1960s.

Starting in the middle '60s, there is growing disenchantment over Vietnam, but the race riots and things don't happen. Is the disenchantment with things by that generation going to be as big? Or will it, with some other movement taking its place?

I'm thinking there might be an earlier feminist moement; ISTR hearing in college that they were trying to make their voices heard, but the Civil Rights movement was seen as much more pressing to men. (It may have even been Gloria Steinem who said this, she spoke on our campus in the fall of '87, I think it was.) But, that overall, it would be about the same. However, if integration had only been accepted more recently, Vietnam could be a force that brings the races closer together, because in that case, young men of both races would be dying in Vietnam in what, by the late '60s, was seen as senseless to many Americans.

Your thoughts?

[Melvin Loh]

Heck, you'd need a somewhat radically different course for race relations in the US by the 1960s in order for segregation/integration not to have been a problem over Vietnam. WI a longer WWII and greater civil rights progress as a result, which in the next couple decades lessens the degree of racial animosity ? What about an earlier racial intergation of the US armed forces too ? Then again, that could butterfly away entirely any US involvement in Vietnam...

There'd need to be by the 60-s a wider sense of solidarity in both the armed forces and wider US society that they were all 'brothers under the skin', as Ike had said to the black combat replacements during the Ardennes manpower crisis in 1944-45, which would've fully underpinned the social justice awareness among the armed forces where white servicemen in the Jim Crow South refused to be customers at establishments which discriminated against their black comrades. How could such an inclusive attitude re racial relations have filtered down into US society generally from the armed forces (who were OTL by the US entry into combat in Vietnam America's most racially integrated institution) ?

Maybe if there hadn't been such a great sense of disllusionment by 1966-67 amongst young urban blacks who felt that MLK's integrationist nonviolent approach wasn't achieving anything, and thereby swelled support for the Black Panthers et al ?

I think OTL even though blacks and whites were fightin and dyin side-by-side in Vietnam regardless of their colour, the greatest sense of protest by the civil rights/anitwar movement was over the perception that it was all for an unjust cause. Maybe that could be changed if there was a greater sense among the GIs and America's ppl as a whole of what they were fightin for- say a genuinely democratic RVN and not a corrupt kleptocracy ?

Ironically, there was also the aspect in the civil rights antiwar activism arguing that blacks were just being used as can non fodder due to their disproportionate over-representation in combat units (with allegedly some airborne and Marine units comprising at least 45-55% blacks), which was in total contrast to the black press objections during the 2 WWs that African-American troops were UNDER-represented in combat, since they were mainly relegated to all the menial noncombat roles (with of course such notable exceptions as the 369th Inf Regt HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS and the Tuskegee airmen). WI then there hadn't been such a perception of blacks as 2nd class citizens fightin for a country which didn't even treat them to democracy's full rights ?