Racial segregation
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Racial segregation is a kind of formalized or institutionalized discrimination on the basis of race, characterized by the races' separation from each other. The separation may be geographical, but is usually supported by providing services through separate institutions (such as schools) and through similar legal and social structures. See also: racism.
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Introduction
Although 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. Most modern societies reject racism (at least officially). However, anxieties about racial issues tend to be phrased in coded form as issues relating to immigration.
In general, rationales for racial segregation can be divided into two classes:
- an attempt by a majority group to oppress or expel a minority group, or vice-versa
- an attempt at self-determination by the minority group itself, or vice-versa
Nazi Germany
An example of miscegenation laws was the racist and anti-Semitic 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 - "lower people") and German "Aryans" (deemed the Übermenschen - "higher people"). 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 ratios, allowed strips in the cities, public transportation, and assigned restaurants. Listed from the most privilaged to the least:
- Germans from Germany (Reichsdeutsche)
- Germans from outside, active ethnic Germans, Volksliste category 1 and 2 (see Volksdeutsche)
- Germans from outside, passive Germans and members of families (this group included also many ethnic Poles), Volksliste category 3 and 4,
- Ukrainians,
- Highlanders (Goralenvolk) - an attempt to split Polish nation by using local collaborators
- Poles,
- Jews (eventually sentenced to extermination as a category).
During the 1930s and 40s, Jews and Roma were forced to wear yellow ribbons, and were discriminated against by the racial laws. Jewish doctors and professors were not allowed to teach Aryan pupils or treat Aryan patients. Later, during WWII, Jews and Roma were sent to the concentration camps, solely on the basis of their race.
USA
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Racial discrimination was long regulated by the so-called Jim Crow laws. These restrictive rules against African descendants were instituted at the close of the Reconstruction period several decades following the Civil War, primarily in the U.S. Southern States. Such legalized segregation lasted up to the 1960s. White and black people would sometimes be required to 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.
"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 (one-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 to some degree or another, including in the Army where segregated units were created. However, they were often poorly trained, equipped, and led, and low expectations meant low performance. Still, the 93rd Division, serving alongside the French (who needed troops, and with their use of Algerian, Moroccan, etc soldiers saw nothing wrong with black soldiers), performed well, with the 369th Infantry (formerly 15th New York National Guard) Regiment distinguished themselves, and were known as the "Harlem Hellfighters".
During World War II, people of Japanese descent (whether citizens or not) were excluded from the West Coast and placed in internment camps, on the basis of their race.
Advocation to end government racial segregation grew among African Americans and progressives after the end of the World War. 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 in 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 insisting on sitting at the white part of the bus (Rosa Parks), or holding sit-ins at all-white diners.
Although racial equality is, at least in theory, granted to all citizens in the US today, some see the USA Patriot Act as an attempt at covert racial segregation or discrimination against non-citizens. Arabs and Pakistanis, who have similar skin color, are allegedly subjected to different procedures that do not apply to others. However, the US has strict rules against racial profiling to prevent such segregation.
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." [1] (http://www.legislature.state.al.us/CodeOfAlabama/Constitution/1901/CA-245806.htm) A proposal to repeal this provision was narrowly defeated in 2004.
South Africa
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 increasing in dominancy under the rule of Prime minister Verwoerd and remained the law until 1990. Examples of apartheid policy introduced are the prohibition of mixed marriages act, 1951 which made it illegal for marriage between races. It 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.
Rhodesia
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.
Israel
Israel's policies towards the Palestinians have come in for repeated international criticism for racial bias and being an apartheid state: the most visible manifestation of which is the so-called Apartheid Wall running through the Occupied Territories behind which Palestinians are fenced off in their towns and villagers across the West Bank.
Israel's advocates respond that within Israel's pre-1967 borders, Arabs and other minorities are given freedom of religion, culture and political organization, although they acknowledge that Palestinian citizens of Israel do not share many of the same basic rights as Jewish citizens, such as equal property rights.
Several Arab political parties have elected members ito the Knesset. Arabs are typically not conscripted into the Israeli military (though they are accepted as volunteers), so they will generally never have to fight their own peoples. However, this can deny them job opportunities, as some jobs in Israel require previous military service.
Arab world
Jordan forbids Jews from becoming citizens. Saudi Arabia forbids Jews from entering the country and forbids all non-muslims from entering the city of Mecca.
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 (http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/1yr_arc_Articles.asp?Article=87912&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=27131|)] "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.
Fiji
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 businesspeople, 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 offices 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.
Related issues
Although not all advocates concede the validity of the concept of "race" as applied to human divisions, discrimination on color or other ethnic characteristics is often labelled "racist" (see race, racism).
White separatism
White separatism is the belief that those who are of white or Caucasian race should have separate institutions or even separate societies, territories, governments, and should not "breed" with those considered to be of non-white races. White separatists often label themselves as racialists rather than racists. [[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_separatism#Controversial_Groups)] White separatism is one among many forms of separatism.
Many white separatists believe in white supremacy, but some do not. Some consider the segregationists of the Southern United States and the advocates of apartheid in South Africa as being white separatists as these advocates of segregationism and apartheid used the same language of separatism and denied that they were "White supremacists" despite evidence to the contrary. Both groups also had advanced a belief in the inherent "inferiority" of non-whites, whom they claimed are incapable of properly either governing themselves or any other races. Some segragationists put forward the proposition that "separation" doesn't necessarily mean superiority and thus endorsed the "separate but equal" proposition for educational segregation that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in the case of Brown v. Board of Education.
see separate article White separatism
Black separatism
Parallel to the white separatism, there also exists, particularly in the United States, a similarly politically marginal black separatist movement. Black separatists generally hold that whites are racist oppressors of blacks and that there can be no remedy for black advancement within contemporary white-dominated society. They believe that the only solution for blacks is to break away and to create a separate, segregated black society.
The more specific goals were historically in flux and varied from group to group. Martin Delaney in the 19th century and Marcus Garvey in the 1920s outspokenly called for African Americans to return to Africa, by moving to Liberia. The Nation of Islam calls, much more quietly, for an independent black state on American soil. Much more mainstream views within black separatism hold that blacks would be better served by exclusively black schools and businesses, as well as by black local politicians and police.
The mainstream black separatism is sharply opposed by anti-segregationists and integrationists within the African American community. They generally hold that blacks can and should advance within the larger American society and call on them to work to achieve that through personal improvement, educational achievement, business involvement, and political action. Martin Luther King, who led the political effort to overthrow segregation in 1960s, and Malcolm X, a contemporary black separatist from the Nation of Islam may personify the opposition between the two views.
Latino separatism
Some of the political groups among Latinos, or Americans of Mexican descent, in 1960s advocated racial separatism for the bronze race or the Chicanos. Some of them wanted to create an independent Chicano state in the south-west of United States, on the territories that were won by America from Mexico after the Mexican-American War in 1848. Some of these views were reflected in the Plan Espiritual de Aztlan document which inspired Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, MEChA.
See also
- Apartheid
- Jim Crow
- National Alliance
- Race
- Racism
- White supremacy
- Xenophobia
- Anti-semitism
- Nation of Islam
- MEChA
- Plan Espiritual de Aztlan
- Separate but equal
References
- 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.
External links
- A white separatist FAQ (http://www.crusader.net/resources/election.html)
- U.S. Segregation over several decades (http://mumford1.dyndns.org)
- Constitutional Law and Race-Conscious Policies in K-12 Education (http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-2/race.html)
Material regarding Israel
- Israeli Schools Separate, Not Equal (http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/12/SecondClass1205.htm)
- Amnesty International report 2002 Israel and the occupied territories (http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2002.nsf/mde/israel+and+the+occupied+territories+!Open)
- Item on the history of Jerusalem (http://www.afsc.org/middleeast/peace/jerusalem/jeruhistory.htm) from the American Friends Service Committee
- LAW paper: "Israel's brand of apartheid: The Nakba continues" (http://www.lawsociety.org/Apartheid/dibook.html)
- "Apartheid In the Holy Land" (http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq11.html): full text of a paper presented by Nafeez Ahmed of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, at the 2001 UN Conference Against Racism in Durban
- Islamic Human Rights Commission (http://www.ihrc.org/)
- ADL statement on the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic outcry at Durban (http://www.adl.org/durban/durban_083001.asp)
- Full text of Interview with Shimon Peres (http://www.israelnewsagency.com/mfa10.23.html)
- Alon Liel, former director general of the Israel Foreign Ministry, on the question of apartheid (http://www.bitterlemons.org/previous/bl120802ed30.html)
- Anti-Semitism - past and Present (http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/An_Old_Story_Anti-Semitism3_Past_and_Present.asp). Claims anti-Semitic motives in some of the individuals who accuse Israel of Apartheid.
- ADL statement on the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic outcry at Durban (http://www.adl.org/durban/durban_083001.asp)
- Haaretz article about interreligious marriages in Israel (http://oznik.com/words/021212.html) (omitted in the official English edition)de:Rassentrennung