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What's not compelling about the standard narrative of familiarity and education overcoming irrational, subconscious bias? (Though I apologize for wasting space if you were specifically trying to poll people who don't buy this narrative, just felt weird that no comments except the very bottom two seem to touch on it.) People have a very strong subconscious bias against the weird and unusual. People of a different race went from very obviously looking like nothing you've ever seen before to common familiarities in the street and on TV. Furthermore, education levels increased, giving more people the ability to overcome incorrect biases in their thinking. Once everyone realized that other races were 99.99% the same kind of humans, acceptance immediately followed.
I would even add another layer to this. In the past, following this same-race bias wasn't very costly. Excluding the one or two different-race/ethnicity/culture people you ever see from your group doesn't really matter. People used to be basically replaceable as far as skills and ability to contribute---one farmer or pre-modern or soldier isn't going to be dramatically different from any other. However, for whatever reason, this has completely changed in the modern day and some people have special skills that let them contribute an absurdly disproportionate amount. By the 20th century, excluding, for example, someone like von Neumann or Einstein because they're Jewish makes your civilization lose out and be destroyed.
The difference is even worse now---in all the most important fields that make a civilization powerful, the top performers contribute just so much more than the average performer. You really cannot exclude the 100x programmers/scientists/entrepreneurs because of their race---they are just too rare and too important. Non-acceptance of different races is just untenably for a society and any costs of cultural inhomogeneity pale in comparison. Literally, judge people by the content of their character (i.e. skills and abilities) instead of the color of their skin or be outcompeted and die.
Of course prevailing views always lag practical pressures by a bit, but it really should not be surprising that attitudes changed so much.
Jews weren't excluded in American society, including there were no laws banning marriage between Jews and non-Jews.
What about the other group which produces zero of Neumann tier scientists yet produces violent criminals at 10x rate?
Sorry, maybe the example wasn't so clear. The Nazis were the ones who excluded von Neumann and Einstein and were destroyed for it.
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