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Comment by chrisco255

4 years ago

What part of the world in 1950s would you travel to that you think would be better?

If we're discussing relative activities would you rather have a finger cut off or a leg cut off?

The idea of time travel being a fun concept, especially in recent history has very real implications if you go anywhere in the world where you're a minority or not from a colonial power subjecting people to your will.

  • Yes, even before colonial times, this sort of thing is ancient. Being a Frenchman in Britain 400 years ago you would find yourself in the disdainful company if not outright contempt of your peers. These countries fought 100 year war despite being extremely close from a racial perspective. And you had this same pattern play out all over the world. Indian tribes and nations warred with each other, slaughtered each other, sacrificed each other. Asians, Africans, Mediterranean empires, etc. There is no point in history you can go back to where these dynamics are not in play. It's the remarkable achievement of the past 100 or so years that we move relatively freely in most of the first world today without fear of violence or extreme bigotry. Tribalism is the rule of human history, not the exception. And U.S. was for better or worse a proving ground for how a multicultural and multiracial society could work. No doubt that came with sacrifices and tragedies, but I suspect without those, we'd not have had much change in the world.

    • The US didn't end the tribalism, ever. Europe did, and even more because of the Nazis' antiexample.

Somewhere that wasn’t majority white then. American whites people were lynching. That’s a very horrible thing to have done. They celebrated that.. with the kids. White people...smh

  • An extremely small number of people were involved in those. And meanwhile, China was extinguishing anti-communist dissidents by the millions in the Mao revolution. India had its caste system in full effect. Africa was even poorer than it is today with many battles, regional strifes, etc. Cuba got taken over by communists, for example, many forced to flee to the U.S. afterwards. They didn't seem to worry about the "prevalent lynchings" as you characterize it, or exaggerate it beyond its relative scale in what was going on in the world at the time.

  • Europe was majority white and even in the Fascist Spain if you declared yourself Catholic, pro Spain and such, no one would give a shit except for propaganda ("look, a remote blackie from Africa being happy in the regime, we are a success").

    Gay people got screwed not matter the race, tho.

  • > American whites

    Um, yeah, *^#{! all American white people from the 1950s (note the lower-case “w” because they don’t deserve the respect of upper-case)