I think part of the issue in showing the discrimination is that the only Faunus we spend any solid amount of time with is Blake and she's actively in the process of passing. Besides that we have like,one background character, Velvet and Sun; from what I recall, though I could be wrong, Velvet was originally only placed there to demonstrate what was apparently the 'norm' for human Faunus relations. As to Cardin, I don't feel him being a jerk undermines prejudice motivations to his bullying even if its just that he regards and treats Velvet with contempt because of her Faunus nature or makes reference to it as an insult.
This is actually really, really easy to fix if they'd thought ahead at all.
Have a scene in RWBY's dorm room with Blake watching a video on her Scroll (this can be an intro to any one of RWBY's other scenes, even!).
The corpses of two Faunus were found hanged today on Vale's lower-east side... and then she shuts it off in disgust. Or when Sun sneaks into Vale, have one of the cops stop, give Blake a second glance and then realize: 'Oh, it's just a bow, not actually cat ears,' before apologizing for his presumption and going after Sun. Or the White Fang rally, mention a few grievances, atrocities, whatever to get the new recruits riled up. Maybe one of the competitors in the Vytal Festival makes a racist remark to Sun. Or a discussion between RWBY about why Blake wants to pass for human.
Showing discrimination isn't that hard.
If it takes someone like Cardin to show discrimination, then it isn't widespread. If he's the only one that does anything about it and everyone around him disapproves, then you can't really argue any form of widespread discrimination.
Beyond that I feel its important to remember we're at Beacon pretty much all the time, Opzin apparently wants to make it a egalitarian place and there aren't many Faunus to begin with, so its hard to display prejudice. However, I think one can also take the lack of presence as indicative of something, there's barely any Faunus at Beacon, seemingly none in positions of influence, fame, or authority qithin Vale, and we see few in well off areas in the background save maybe Tukson who can actually pass for human. That is to say, if a motivator to fight is born of economic and a lack of representation, and according to Weiss and Blake, shitty working conditions for presumably Faunus labourers in the SDC mines, then its not going to be somehting as obvious as different drinking fountains. Though according to Blake stores could get away with denying Faunus service just due to them being Faunus, said stores also got fire bombed so I guess we know how that worked out.
You can't argue ignorance due to setting limitations in the first paragraph and then bring it up in your support in the second. We know four of Beacon's faculty: Ozpin, Glynda, Port and Oobleck. We know
zero external politicians or political figures. We don't know the other two headmasters (aside from Ironwood) are human or faunus. We don't know anyone outside RWBY, CFVY, JNPR, SSN, Cinder's group and the aforementioned other than Yang and Ruby's or Weiss' relatives. All of those groups (except JNPR and STRQ have faunus in them or, in the case of relatives, are same race) We don't even know the proportion of human to faunus, if it's 100:1 then they're actually massively over represented! If it's 100:13 (such as blacks in the US) then they're slightly over represented.
You have to either concede the first point or concede the second to remain consistent.
I sort of tried to go into this awhile ago and had some interesting discussions from it. Basically, we know there was a Faunus Rights Revolution sometime in ancient enough history that its not 'common knowledge' but recent enough that its effects are still very clearly felt today such as with the existence of the White Fang.
Now, we don't know what the exact situation of the Faunus was but we do know the human Governments were trying to force many, if not all of them to Menagerie, an island far away from all the other kingdoms and given they were forcing it and the Faunus didn't want to go despite their own issues with humans chances are its not exactly a nice or safe place. Mass deportation and having to fight a war to stop it can implicitly, I feel, say a lot about who hold the power in a society and how they regard the "others".
The Faunus Rights Revolution could've been over a hundred years ago, maybe more! Mass deportation
feels a lot more compatible with the authoritarian Anti-Individuality movement that ended in the Great Colour War that was nearly 80 years ago. The free love society established after the revolution seems profoundly less likely to use military force to destroy or deport a minority group.
What I
think happened was that the Faunus Rights Revolution occurred before the Colour War. It fits more with the regime's fascist undertones, perhaps they needed scapegoats for problems near the end? The event we're talking about now is as distant to modern Remnant as WWI is to us, if not more.
While those events do shape the modern form of Remnant, that's still a lot of time we're talking about. Things could've gotten better for Faunus in that enormous stretch of time and it would be strange if they hadn't.
So, given the decision to deport the Faunus was made, and it didn't go down well with the Faunus and the war was called 'Faunus Rights Revolution' one can assume they didn't have many rights and presumably little to no power or influence within the society, which often ends up relating to a lack of job opportunities, comfortable or stable living arrangements, being able to provide or receive a decent education and so on which basically becomes a feedback loop over the course of generations that won't just disappear because some laws got changed and one or two Faunus got lucky or were just plain to amazing to be passed over.
With that in mind I tend to assume many of the issues faced by Faunus are tied to lack of education and job opportunities which also creates a situation where arguing against discrimination, such as bullying or being denied service, extremely difficult to say the least. Now if we add in a lack of economic opportunities it becomes hard to supports one's self or one's family, loop ETC, which has the end result of a lot of poor disenfranchised, and angry people who know they are in the 'ave nots' category and that the situation was caused by previous generations screwing over their ancestors and who are still implicitly screwing them over, or just not fixing the issues their ancestors caused, today.
So how have they gotten such a complex logistical base if they're marginalized? Clearing out Mountain Glen was not a small achievement, it was something Vale
failed to do. Constructing bombs, guns, trains, gathering Dust, air craft, training Hunters, all of that requires a lot of resources and education. None of that is something easy to come by in a death world where everything is trying to kill you. Even if they stole a lot of their equipment, it still requires a lot of knowledge, money and education to manage and organize, repair and retrain, propagandize and infiltrate. There's a reason things like the CRM, Communist Revolutions, Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, etc. are centered around a highly educated figurehead (some of them ironically trained in the West) and managed by effective bureaucracy. The only way to be a successful social movement is to organize effectively.
For Remnant, all of those concerns would be magnified. Given the self-contained nature of the kingdoms, everyone has to make do with less. The White Fang is doing really well if they can steal/misappropriate or acquire in donation as much as they do. (Seriously, they had an entire air force to move Grimm into the city.)
Also, if you're worried about low SEC and equivalent opportunity
why are you genociding everyone indiscriminately!? The Grimm aren't going to care whether they're killing humans or Faunus and the White Fang was going to let them into the middle of downtown with the Breach. You don't argue for a larger share of the pie by burning the house down! Especially in a world where the act of burning the house down attracts more soulless abominations intent on kill everyone.
Adam might have decided to go through with the plan, but that couldn't have occurred without those beneath him supporting him. The White Fang were literally willing to kill innocent Faunus for whatever they're fighting for.
