Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14909251-20170522044827/@comment-25936766-20170528204858

Personally, I currently see it this way (note: this is a theory of sorts): 

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When I say "Faunus Discrimination", I mean that they face discrimination from the great majority of the people. Not just from a few hundred, but by the millions.

Obviously, not 100% of humans will accept Faunus, much less inmediately, because old sentiments linger. It can take years, even decades, for those sentiments to disappear as new, more open ideas show up.

Roughly by the time RWBY begins, most people, at least in places like Vale, were more open towards Faunus. At the very least, because of the ideal of "self-expression" and individuality pushing forward more acceptation of the Faunus as equals. But those things take time, it wasn't something that happened right after the Great War.

There was no discrimination, in the sense I mentioned above. But, obviously, there will always be some who still treat Faunus like dirt, they just were a minority now, even if a vocal one.

But the Faunus kept protesting and complaining, because things didn't change 100% inmediately. Of course, they were getting there, but just like there was a vocal anti-faunus minority, there was a vocal violently-anti-human minority. Once a member of said minority became the new leader of the WF, that minority started enacting their ideals.

The violent WF's actions did not help end the remaining leftovers of real discrimination. They only brought it back, only in a more silent form due to fear.

The anti-Faunus minority used the WF's actions as "proof" to convince others that the Faunus can't be trusted and are savages, while the WF itself used the (revived) discrimination that they brought on themselves as proof of it's existence to get new members.

However, even though the WF revived the real discrimination against Faunus, said discrimination isn't half as high as it was before, thanks to what I said before in the 3rd paragraph. As the generations went on and on, the younger people became more and more accepting of Faunus, so while some Faunus still face racism, it still comes from a minority of people nowadays.

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So basically, there was discrimination long ago, then there wasn't except from the minority of humans. The WF revived the issue, and now it's esentially a Idea-based Cold War, except that the anti-Faunus side is not as omnipresent as before, even if it's slowly growing due to the WF.

It's based on how many questionable ideas, especially those based on race and gender, are slowly dying nowadays. New people are more open-minded or pay attention to things previously ignored, and new ideas overcome the old ones. For example: 13 years ago, a woman punching a man around like a sandbag was funny. Now it's more likely to raise eyebrows.