Racial segregation
Racial segregation is characterized by separation of people of different
races in daily life when both are doing equal tasks, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Segregation may be
de jure (
Latin, meaning "by law")—mandated by law—or
de facto (also Latin, meaning "in fact");
de facto segregation may exist even illegally. A
de facto a segregationist regime may be maintained by means ranging from
racial discrimination in hiring and in the rental and sale of housing to
vigilante violence such as
lynchings; a situation that arises when members of different races mutually prefer to associate and do business with members of their own race would usually be described as
separation or
de facto separation of the races rather than
segregation.
Both
South Africa in the
apartheid era and the
United States—both during the
slavery era (through 1865) and after the 1876 end of the
Reconstruction that followed the
United States Civil War—passed laws requiring or permitting segregation of the
races in daily life. In 1896, the
U.S. Supreme Court upheld, in
Plessy v. Ferguson the right of
U.S. states and localities to mandate racial segregation. In 1913, President
Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of the federal
Civil Service[
1]. In 1948, President
Harry S. Truman ordered the
desegregation of the U.S. military; in 1954 the Court, in
Brown v. Board of Education, largely reversed
Plessy; over the next eleven years, a succession of further court decisions and federal laws would completely invalidate
de jure racial segregation and discrimination in the U.S., although
de facto segregation and discrimination have proven more resilient.
De jure segregation in both South Africa and the U.S. came with "
miscegenation laws" (prohibitions against
interracial marriage) and laws against hiring people of the race that is the object of discrimination in any but menial positions. Segregation in hiring practices contributed to
economic imbalance between the races. Segregation, however, often allowed close contact in
hierarchical situations, such as allowing a person of one race to work as a servant for a member of another race. Segregation can involve
spatial separation of the races, and/or mandatory use of different institutions, such as
schools and hospitals by people of different races.
Even though many societies throughout history have practiced racial segregation, it was by no means universal, and some multiracial societies such as the
Roman Empire were notable for their rejection of racial segregation. Few modern societies officially practice racial segregation, and most officially frown upon racial discrimination. However, anxieties about racial, religious and cultural differences still find expression in other forms of political and social controversy, either as an official pretext for culturally accepted discrimination, or as a socially acceptable way to discuss cultural, religious and economic friction that results from racial discrimination. For example,
immigration and religious controversies often mask concerns about the culture or racial composition of the immigrants. Issues of race relations also appear in seemingly race-neutral disputes, over such issues as poverty, healthcare, taxation, religion, enforcement of a particular set of cultural norms, and even fashion.
Racial segregation differs from racial discrimination in a number of ways. Discrimination ranges from individual actions, to socially enforced discriminatory behavior, to legally mandated differences in status between members of different races. Segregation has, typically, harshly reinforced discrimination: if people of different races live in separate neighborhoods, attend different schools, receive different social services, etc., then people of the favored races can be largely insulated from societal neglect of people of other races.
An example of miscegenation laws was the
Nuremberg Laws enacted by the
Nazis in
Germany against the large German
Jewish community during the
1930s. The laws prohibited marriages between Jews (deemed as
Untermenschen - "sub-humans") and German "
Aryans" (deemed the
Herrenrasse - "master race"). Many interfaith and intermarried couples committed suicide when these laws came into effect.
Under the
General Government of occupied
Poland in
1940, the population was divided into different groups, each with different rights, food rations, allowed strips in the cities, public transportation, and assigned
*
Ukrainians,
*Highlanders (
Goralenvolk) - an attempt to split the Polish nation by using local collaborators
*
Kashubians (
Kaschobenvolk) - similar attempt like with Goralenvolk, but less successful
*
Poles,
*
Jews (eventually sentenced to extermination as a category).
*
HomosexualsDuring the
1930s and
40s, Jews in Nazi-controlled states were forced to wear yellow ribbons or stars of David, and were, along with
Romas (Gypsies) discriminated against by the racial laws. Jewish doctors and professors were not allowed to treat Aryan (effectively,
gentile) patients or teach Aryan pupils, respectively. The Jews were also not allowed to use any public transportation, besides the ferry, and would only be able to shop from 3-5 in Jewish stores. After
Kristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass"), the Jews were fined 1,000,000
marks for damages done by the Nazi troops and
SS members.
 |
Sign for "Colored waiting room", Georgia, 1943 |
After the
Emancipation Proclamation abolished
slavery in the
South, racial discrimination became regulated by the so-called
Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of the races. Though such laws were instituted shortly after fighting ended in many cases, they only became formalized after the end of
Republican-enforced
Reconstruction in the
1870s and
80s during a period known as the
nadir of American race relations. This legalized segregation lasted up to the
1960s, primarily through the deep and extensive power of the
Democratic Party.
While the majority in 1896
Plessy overtly upheld only "separate but equal" facilities (specifically, transportation facilities), Justice
John Marshall Harlan in his
dissent protested that the decision was an expression of
white supremacy; he predicted that segregation would "stimulate aggressions … upon the admitted rights of colored citizens," "arouse race hate" and "perpetuate a feeling of distrust between [the] races."[
2]
In the post-Civil War South, Democrats used the race issue to solidify their hold on Southern politics, playing on
white resentment of black political power. Democrats were the agents in passing segregation laws, as well as laws disenfranchising blacks (and sometimes poor whites) politically. In 1913, President
Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of the federal
Civil Service[
3]. White and
black people would sometimes be required to eat separately and use separate schools, public toilets, park benches, train and restaurant seating, etc. In some locales, in addition to segregated seating, it could be forbidden for stores or restaurants to serve different races under the same roof.
Segregation was also pervasive in housing. State constitutions (for example, that of
California) had clauses giving local jurisdictions the right to regulate where members of certain races could live. White landowners often included
restrictive covenants in deeds through which they prevented blacks or
Asians from ever purchasing their property from any subsequent owner. In the
1948 case of
Shelley v. Kraemer, the
U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that such covenants were unenforceable in a court of law. However, residential segregation patterns had already become established in most American cities, and have often persisted up to the present (see
white flight).
With the
migration up north of many black workers at the turn of the
twentieth century, and the friction that occurred with white and black workers during this time, segregation was and continues to be a pheneomen in northeren cities as well as in the south. Whites generally allocate
tenements as housing for poor blacks. [
4]
"
Miscegenation" laws prohibited people of different races from marrying. As one of many examples of such state laws,
Utah's marriage law had an anti-miscegenation component that was passed in
1899 and repealed in
1963. It prohibited marriage between a white and anyone considered a Negro, mulatto (half Negro), quadroon (one-quarter Negro), octoroon (one-eighth Negro),
Mongolian, or member of the Malay race (presumably a Polynesian or Melanesian). No restrictions were placed on marriages between people that were not "white persons." (Utah Code, 40-1-2, C. L. 17, §2967 as amended by L. 39, C. 50; L. 41, Ch. 35.).
In
World War I, blacks served in the
United States Armed Forces in segregated units. Black soldiers were often poorly trained and equipped. Still, the 93rd Division, fought alongside the
French . The 369th Infantry (formerly 15th New York National Guard) Regiment distinguished themselves, and were known as the "
Harlem Hellfighters". [
5] [
6]
World War II saw the first black military pilots in the U.S., the Tuskegee Airmen, 99th Fighter Squadron, [
7], and also saw the segregated 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion participate in the liberation of Jewish survivors at Buchenwald [
8].
During
World War II, people of
Japanese,
Italian, and
German descent (whether citizens or not) were placed in
internment camps, on the basis of their race. However, the German Americans were not sent to internment camps to the same extent as the Japanese. See
Japanese American internment.
Pressure to end racial segregation in the
government grew among
African Americans and progressives after the end of World War II. On
January 26,
1948 President Harry S. Truman signed
Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
|
A segregated facility in Dallas, Texas. Note the sign "Colored Waiting Room" at the top. |
Institutionalized racial segregation was ended as an official practice by the efforts of such
civil rights activists as
Rosa Parks and
Martin Luther King Jr., working during the period from the end of World War II through the passage of the
Voting Rights Act and the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 supported by President
Lyndon Johnson. Many of their efforts were acts of
civil disobedience aimed at violating the racial segregation rules and laws, such as refusing to give up a seat in the black part of the bus to a white person (Rosa Parks), or holding
sit-ins at all-white
diners.
Not all racial segregation laws have been repealed in the United States, although Supreme Court rulings have rendered them unenforceable. For instance, the
Alabama Constitution still mandates that
Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race. [
9] A proposal to repeal this provision was narrowly defeated in
2004. However, in a different arena, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February
2005 in
Johnson v. California (125 S. Ct. 1141) that the California Department of Corrections' unwritten practice of racially segregating prisoners in its prison reception centers â€" which California claimed was for inmate safety (gangs in California, as throughout the U.S., usually organize on racial lines)â€" is to be subject to
strict scrutiny, the highest level of constitutional review. Although the high court
remanded the case back to the lower courts, it is likely that their decision will have the impact of forcing California to alter its practice of segregating by race in its reception centers.
A
law need not stipulate
de jure segregation in order to have the effect of
de facto segregation. For example, the
eagle feather law, which governs the possession and
religious use of
eagle feathers, was officially written to protect then dwindling
eagle populations while still protecting traditional
Native American spiritual and
religious customs, of which the use of eagles are central. The
eagle feather law later met charges of promoting racial segregation due to the law's provision authorizing the possession of eagle feathers to members of only one
ethnic group, Native Americans, and forbidding Native Americans from including non-Native Americans in indigenous customs involving eagle feathersâ€"a common modern practice dating back to the early 1500s.
Despite all of the legal changes of the past half-century, the United States remains a segregated society, with housing patterns, school enrollment, church membership, employment opportunities, and even college admissions all reflecting significant
de facto segregation. Supporters of
affirmative action argue that the persistence of such disparities reflects either racial discrimination or the persistence of its effects.
According to the Civil Rights Project at
Harvard University, the actual desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked in
1988; since that time the schools have, in fact, become more segregated. As of 2005, the present proportion of Black students at majority white schools "a level lower than in any year since 1968." [
10]
Apartheid was a system which existed in
South Africa for over forty years, although the term itself had a history going back to the
1910s. It was formalized in the years following the victory of the
National Party in the all-white national election of
1948, increased in dominancy under the rule of Prime Minister
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd and remained law until
1990. Examples of apartheid policy introduced are the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act,
1951, which made it illegal for marriage between races. Apartheid was abolished following a rapid change in public perception of racial segregation throughout the
world, and an economic
boycott against South Africa which had crippled and threatened to destroy its economy.
The British
colony of
Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe), under
Ian Smith, leader of the white minority government, declared unilateral independence in 1965. For the next 15 years, Rhodesia operated under white minority rule until international sanctions forced Smith to hold multiracial elections, after a brief period of British rule in 1979.
Laws enforcing segregation had been around before 1965, although many institutions simply ignored them. One highly publicised legal battle occurred in
1960 involving the opening of a new
Theatre that was to be open to all races, this incident was nicknamed
"The Battle of the Toilets".
After municipal elections in
Bahrain in 2002 brought
Islamist opposition party
Al Wefaq Islamic Action to power in the capital
Manama, its newly installed mayor,
Murthader Bader called for the introduction of racial segregation with the removal from the city of all non-Bahraini South Asian inhabitants and for the creation of a new township to house them.
Mr Bader told the English language
Gulf Daily News "It would cost a lot and we would have to find an area to accept them," he said. "A big question is where to build any new accommodation."
The government rejected the proposals.
Two military coups in
Fiji in
1987 removed from power a government that was led by an
ethnic Fijian, but was supported principally by the
Indo-Fijian (ethnic Indian) electorate, which then made up approximately half of the population. A new constitution was promulgated in
1990, establishing Fiji as a republic, with the offices of
President,
Prime Minister, two-thirds of the
Senate, and a clear majority of the
House of Representatives reserved for ethnic Fijians, despite the fact that ethnic Fijians then comprised less than half the population. Ethnic Fijian ownership of the land (which was worked principally by Indo-Fijians) was also entrenched in the constitution.
World-wide condemnation of the
1990 constitution, and a
brain-drain of many Indo-Fijian professionals and business owners, caused the Fijian government to revise the
constitution in
1997. Amendments deleted most of the discriminatory provisions, and subsequent elections in
1999 brought a new government to power, with
Mahendra Chaudhry as the country's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister.
Another coup followed in 2000, with
George Speight, supported by sympathetic officers in the Army and police force, seizing power, with the aim of ending Indo-Fijian influence in politics. Democracy, and the moderate
1997 constitution, were eventually restored, however.
Current prime minister
Laisenia Qarase has refused to adhere to the Constitution by not including members of the largely Indo-Fijian
Fiji Labour Party in the government.
From Australian federation up to the 1970s, what became known as the "White Australia Policy" officially discriminated against those who were not white and prevented them from immigrating to Australia, by deliberately making their immigration tests too hard to pass. The history of this form of racial discrimination is described in a government fact sheet [
11]. The various government laws and acts that made up the Policy were amended or replaced over a course of twenty or so years, from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies. See
White Australia Policy.
In the past, it was policy for
Aborigines to be taken to live on missions, the intention being for them to be "out of the way" for the expanding territory of the white settlers. In the early-to-mid 20th Century the official policy regarding half-Aboriginal children was one of
assimilation: they would be brought up on the missions to become part of white society and made to marry only white people, the intention being to "breed out" the Aboriginal traits by the third generation or so. Around the 1960s, the official policy regarding all indigenous Australians was changed to one of
integration: being able to live either in Western society, on missions or in traditional society.
Despite the official stance being integration, a large percentage of indigenous Australians live away from the urban areas in comparatively poor socio-economic conditions, leaving them somewhat segregated from the rest of Australian society. A number of commentators and civil rights groups have characterised the situation as apartheid [
12][
13][
14] - in fact, Australia's government policies are viewed by some as the original impetus for the apartheid system in South Africa. [
15][
16][
17]
Malaysia has an
article in its constitution which distinctly segregates the
Malays and other indigeneous peoples of Malaysia from the non-Malays, or
bumiputra under the
social contract, giving them special rights and privileges. This includes government-sponsored discounts and requiring even the
private sector of the economy to preferentially treat bumiputras with economic privileges and penalising companies who do not have a certain quota of bumiputra in employment. Furthermore, any discussion of abolishing the article is prohibited with the justification that it is
seditious. This form of state-sponsored racial segregation is claimed as apartheid to opponents of the article. Supporters of the policy maintain that this is
affirmative action for the bumiputra who had suffered during the colonial era of the
history of Malaysia, using the concept of the
Ketuanan Melayu that Malaysia belongs to the Malays.
In the Brown v. Board decision, Chief Justice
Earl Warren, writing for a unanimous court, said that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal... To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."
The decision made clear that the justices were influenced in part by studies by
Kenneth B. Clark showing that segregated education had a negative psychological effect upon black school children. Significant doubt was subsequently cast on these studies, especially Clark's "doll study." Black students in segregated schools were shown both black and white dolls and asked which one they liked better. A majority of black students preferred the white doll, which was believed by Clark to demonstrate lowered black self-esteem as a result of segregation. Clark, however, did not present to the court his own research which showed that black children in integrated schools were even more likely to choose the white doll than those in segregated schools. Furthermore, when Asian children were segregated around the turn of the century, they consistently outperformed white children.
*
Ethnic autonomous regions*
Al Wefaq*
Apartheid laws
*
Bantustan*
Eagle feather law*
Forsyth County, Georgia v. The Nationalist Movement*
Ghetto*
Group Areas Act*
India*
Jim Crow laws
*
Judenhut*
Ku Klux Klan*
National Alliance*
Nation of Islam*
Nuremberg laws*
Pass Law*
Religious segregation*
Second-class citizen*
Separate but equal*
Separatism*
Xenophobia*
Yellow badge*
Muslim Mosque, Inc.Compare*
Race,
racialism, and
racism*
Black supremacy,
Hispanic supremacy, and
White supremacy *
Black pride and
White pride*
Black Power and
White Power*
Black nationalism,
Chicano nationalism, and
White nationalism*Dobratz, Betty A. and Shanks-Meile, Stephanie L,
White Power, White Pride!: The White Separatist Movement in the United States, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 384 pages, ISBN 0801865379.
* Stokes, DaShanne. (In Press)
Legalized Segregation and the Denial of Religious Freedom*
A site dedicated to the life of MLK*
A study of segregation*
A white separatist FAQ*
Constitutional Law and Race-Conscious Policies in K-12 Education*
Religious Freedom with Raptors - details racism and segregation in Native American religious freedom.
*
Website of Bahraini Islamists Al-Wefaq (in Arabic)
