U.S. Civil Rights movement happens other than during rising youth culture?

This one might be harder than it sounds, because the end of WWII led to both the baby boom generation and rising expectations among African-American citizens who had served even in segregated units or even more so as replacement soldiers on a de-segregated basis that they would at long last finally be accorded ordinary status as regular first-class citizens. Plus in the post-war period, the U.S. was more prominently on the world stage and continued obvious de jure segregation in the American south hurt the case which national leaders wanted to make that ours was a better system than that of the Soviet Union.

I’m trying to avoid the politics of resentment of the 1968 election in which George Wallace got 13% of the popular vote and Richard Nixon ran his “southern strategy.”

Bonus points if what looks like a clearly positive change also leads to an unexpected and tricky-to-manage problem.
 
Stuck In The Sixties: Conservatives and the Legacies of the 1960s
By George Rising, 2010.

https://books.google.com/books?id=t...paign issue, describing its rulings "&f=false

' . . . In 1964, Barry Goldwater made the Court a major campaign issue, describing its rulings as exercises of "raw and naked power." He also condemned the Court's "obsessive concern for the rights of the criminal defendant," . . . '

' . . . In 1968, Independent George Wallace of Alabama and Republican Richard Nixon also condemned the Warren Court's criminal-procedure rulings. Their criticisms gained traction because of the soaring crime rates (the U.S. murder rate doubled between 1960 and 1968), intensified ghetto rioting, and more aggressive anti-Vietnam protesting. . . '
Crime is a big issue, and a personal issue which affects the lives of many people. No question about it.

On the political front, however, the politics of resentment seems to blur together opposition to civil rights, rising crime rates, anti-war protests, and probably a bunch of other things as well. Just blurs them all together. And candidates seem to run as a type of anti-establishment candidate.
 
baby-boom1.jpg



And if we shift this graph forward 20 years, how much does sheer demographics explain rising crime rates?

Young men between 16 and 25 statistically commit crimes more so than other demographic groups. I'm sorry, but they do. This is a well-established statistic. And yes, there are all kinds of exceptions, with many young men as easy and positive leaders, solid co-workers, etc. And you can probably find as many examples of young women in the annals of crime as you wish who are daring, ruthless, and reckless criminals. All the same, the overall statistic is there.

And yet, we're highly inclined to reach for far more interesting explanations (Dr. Benjamin Spock and the "permissive generation," etc, etc, etc). I wonder how much of rising crime is explain by boring demographics vs. the "interesting" explanations.
 
The best bet would be to avoid the great depression. The Civil Rights movement was strong the late 1920s. The 1930s would have been the 1960s in terms of civil rights.
 
. . . avoid the great depression. . .
This is higher trajectory than I had in mind! :) But okay, let's roll with it. I rather like multiple possibilities dancing within one thread.

No Great Depression (or maybe a simple downturn handled matter-of-factly by not limiting trade and by not contracting the federal budget). No rise of the Nazi party, no World War II. Stalin is still a nut and still in power for a number of years. But maybe the competition between the U.S., UK, Germany, France, etc, on the one hand and the largely outmatched Soviet Union on the other is two-thirds economic competition on who can better provide genuine economic development for third world countries and honest trade deals. And the competition is only one-third the whole business of arming rebel groups and propping up dictatorships.

So, things generally go very well, and then about the 1980s, a major problem arises which was largely unexpected by the people of the time but which is patently obvious when seen is retrospect.
 
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I'll take a different tack. Lets pretend that FDR is willing in 1935 to support Haile Selassie against Benny, and manages to get an embargo against Italy. Black America was VERY upset over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and it could have provided a catalyst for change. Alternatively, if FDR acts as historical, Black Americans and others organize and take to the streets in protest. IOTL FDR chose Italian America over Black America, but it could have gone the other way. If folks start protesting against Italian aggression, its a very small step to Civil Rights.
 
No Great Depression (or maybe a simple downturn handled matter-of-factly by not limiting trade and by not contracting the federal budget). No rise of the Nazi party, no World War II. Stalin is still a nut and still in power for a number of years. But maybe the competition between the U.S., UK, Germany, France, etc, on the one hand and the largely outmatched Soviet Union on the other is two-thirds economic competition on who can better provide genuine economic development for third world countries and honest trade deals. And the competition is only one-third the whole business of arming rebel groups and propping up dictatorships.
I’m not sure that without the Great Depression and World War II things would have been that smooth in Europe. One has to recognise that the 1950s and 1960s “Green Revolution” would have broken (as it did in actual history) the power of the landed upper classes who kept anti-Communist dictators in power in the Balkans, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, Austria, Spain and Portugal. Once those nations developed comparative disadvantage in agriculture due to high land costs, there would be a certainty of radical political change since once-hegemonic large landowners became less and less wealthy and the radical working classes grew larger and larger as these nations’ areas of comparative advantage shifted away from farming. It is no certainty that the absence of a Great Depression would have saved democracy in most of these nations. Even in Austria, the wealthiest and most industrially developed, historians trace the breakdown of democracy as far back as 1927, and in most it had broken down by 1926.

That would mean that, without Stalinist regimes taking over eastern Europe, most of the region would in the 1950s or more likely the 1960s have been subject to revolutions similar to or possibly more violent – and certainly more widespread – than Portugal’s “Carnation Revolution” of 1974. It’s not implausible that a radical Communist regime would have come to power in more than one of these nations, since the working classes – though tiny – were still seen as a grave threat. This could have put Eastern Europe in a worse situation that it was under Stalinist regimes after the war, unless a democratic or Communist regime settles matters rapidly enough – and if it were the latter they would potentially be an enemy of both power blocs.

Then, with the US, the Civil Rights era would have occurred in the face of declining economic competition, which would have greatly increased white resentment and hostility.
 
. . . IOTL FDR chose Italian America over Black America, . . .
Or he may just not have been able to see a winning scenario for intervention. I wish he would have :)

All the same, this does provide a potential branch point for African-American citizens getting involved earlier and in a more substantial way in international affairs. And this might have led toward greater activism for the right to serve in the U.S. army and navy in a de-segregated capacity?

As it was, toward the end of WWII, replacement soldiers were sent to units on a de-segregated basis. If this could have been shifted forward just a little bit earlier . . . I think it would have added a lot of extra weight on the side of civil rights.
 
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. . . One has to recognise that the 1950s and 1960s “Green Revolution” would have broken (as it did in actual history) the power of the landed upper classes who kept anti-Communist dictators in power in the Balkans, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, Austria, Spain and Portugal. . .
And with better fertilizers, pesticides, crop varieties (such as short-stalk rice), more available tractors — well, it lowered the cost of food and was a sky-opening improvement to the many, many people in many parts of the world who could not quite buy enough to eat!!!

except . . .

Former rural farmers moved to the city, where there was not quite enough jobs. This has happened in country after country. And it certainly can play out in different ways politically as you point out.
 
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youtube: Humans Need Not Apply

Merely a possible future for us (tech optimists tend to be job pessimists, and vice versa).

But without WWII and a seemingly much more hopeful future, maybe it actually comes to pass in the 1980s?
 
More likely, we’ll probably even make generally good ethical decisions as AI gains stages of sentience, and we’ll matter-of-factly protect ourselves as AI and robots become smarter and faster than us.

But we might founder on how we treat ourselves . . .

We so bristle of anything which smacks of Universal Income because of how we consider fairness and “someone getting something for nothing,” rich and poor may split even wider. Maybe a better alternative is an investor society in which each person get shares, say, of the S&P 500 each month which they’re then free to re-invest as they see fit.

But if our above high trajectory ATL hit an automation crisis in the 1980s, it could in fact go a couple of different ways.
 
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