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Racial Segregation
Racial segregation is the separation, either by law or by action, of people of different races in all manner of daily activities, such as education, housing, and the use of public facilities. Thus, it is a form of institutional racism. Racial segregation laws have existed in many countries, notably the United States, Nazi Germany, and South Africa during the Apartheid era. While no longer considered acceptable in most countries, racial segregation still exists in many communities through the individual actions of their members. Nevertheless, as the world advances toward the understanding that all people belong to one human family, such practices have become less prevalent, and an increasing number of communities have broken down the barriers dividing the races.
Definition
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 restroom, 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 even exist illegally. De facto segregation can occur when members of different races strongly prefer to associate and do business with members of their own race, though 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.
United States
After the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in the Southern United States, 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 1880s, 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 southern Democratic Party. While the majority, in 1896, Plessy vs. Ferguson overtly upheld only "separate but equal" facilities (specifically, transportation facilities), Justice John Marshall Harlan in his dissenting opinion 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 Sign for "Colored waiting room," Georgia, 1943
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. The 369th Infantry, however, (formerly 15th New York National Guard) Regiment distinguished themselves, and were known as the "Harlem Hellfighters."[4] World War II saw the first black military pilots in the U.S., the Tuskegee Airmen, 99th Fighter Squadron,[5] and also saw the segregated 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion participate in the liberation of Jewish survivors at Buchenwald.[6] 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. 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. Institutionalized racial segregation was ended as an official practice by the efforts of such American Civil Rights Movement 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."[7] 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—which California claimed was for inmate safety (gangs in California, as throughout the U.S., usually organize on racial lines)—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,"[8] 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
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."[9]
