BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Racial segregation is separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Segregation itself is defined by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as "the act by which a (natural or legal) person separates other persons on the basis of one of the enumerated grounds without an objective and reasonable justification, in conformity with the proposed definition of discrimination. As a result, the voluntary act of separating oneself from other persons on the basis of one of the enumerated grounds does not constitute segregation".According to the UN Forum on Minority Issues, "The creation and development of classes and schools providing education in minority languages should not be considered impermissible segregation, if the assignment to such classes and schools is of a voluntary nature".
Racial segregation is generally outlawed, but may exist through social norms, even when there is no strong individual preference for it, as suggested by Thomas Schelling's models of segregation and subsequent work. Segregation may be maintained by means ranging from discrimination in hiring and in the rental and sale of housing to certain races to vigilante violence (such as lynchings, e.g.) Generally, 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. In the United States, legal segregation was required in some states and came with "anti-miscegenation laws" (prohibitions against interracial marriage). 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 mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by people of different races.
gluck writes that in 2002 small businesses in black neighborhoods still received fewer loans, even after accounting for businesses density, businesses size, industrial mix, neighborhood income, and the credit quality of local businesses. Gregory D. Squires wrote in 2003 that it is clear that race has long affected and continues to affect the policies and practices of the insurance industry. Workers living in American inner-cities have a harder time finding jobs than suburban workers.
Following a dispute over the terms for the granting of full sovereignty, the British self-governing colony of Rhodesia, governed by a predominantly white minority government, unilaterally declared independence in 1965. Led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, it endured as an unrecognized state under white rule for the next 14 years, with majority rule coming in 1979 with the Internal Settlement between Smith's government and moderate black nationalists, the associated multiracial elections and the reconstitution of the country as Zimbabwe Rhodesia, with Bishop Abel Muzorewa at the helm of a coalition cabinet comprising 12 blacks and five whites. This new order also failed to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the world, and British control returned to the country in December 1979, following the Lancaster House Agreement. New elections were held in 1980, and Zimbabwe gained recognized independence in April 1980, with Robert Mugabe as prime minister.
Laws enforcing segregation had been around before 1965, although many institutions simply ignored them. One highly publicized legal battle occurred in 1960 involving the opening of a new theatre that was to be open to all races; the proposed unsegregated public toilets at the newly built Reps Theatre in 1959 caused an argument called "The Battle of the Toilets".
South Africa
South Africa under apartheid
The apartheid system enacted a nation-wide social policy "separate development" with the National Party victory in 1948, following the "colour bar"-discriminatory legislation dating back to the beginning of the Union of South Africa and the Boer republics before which, while repressive to black South Africans along with other minorities, had not gone nearly so far.
Apartheid laws can be generally divided into following acts. Firstly, the Population Registration Act in 1950 classified residents in South Africa into four racial groups: "black", "white", "Coloured", and "Indian" and noted their racial identities on their identifications. Secondly, the Group Areas Act in 1950 assigned different regions according to different races. People were forced to live in their corresponding regions and the action of passing the boundaries without a permit was made illegal, extending pass laws that had already curtailed black movement. Thirdly, under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act in 1953, amenities in public area, like hospitals, universities and parks, were labeled separately according to particular races. In addition, the Bantu Education Act in 1953 segregated national education in South Africa as well.
Uprisings and protests against apartheid appeared immediately when apartheid arose. As early as 1949, the youth wing of the African National Congress (ANC) advocated the ending of apartheid and suggested fighting against racial segregation by various methods. During the following decades, hundreds of anti-apartheid actions occurred, including those of the Black Consciousness Movement, students’ protests, labor strikes, and church group activism etc. In 1991, the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act was passed, repealing laws enforcing racial segregation, including the Group Areas Act. In 1994, Nelson Mandela won in the first multiracial democratic election in South Africa. His success fulfilled the ending of apartheid in South African history.
United States
Racial segregation in the United States
After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, 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 legislation that mandated segregation lasted to the mid-1960s.
While the U.S. Supreme Court majority in 1896 Plessy explicitly 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. Feelings between whites and blacks were so tense, even the jails were segregated."
Institutionalized racial segregation was ended as an official practice by the efforts of such civil rights activists as Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., 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 B. Johnson. Many of their efforts were acts of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the enforcement of 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.
By 1968 all forms of segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and by 1970 support for formal legal segregation had dissolved. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954 outlawed segregation in public schools. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, administered and enforced by the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, prohibited discrimination in the sale and rental of housing on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. Formal racial discrimination was illegal in school systems, businesses, the American military, other civil services and the government. Separate bathrooms, water fountains and schools all disappeared and the civil rights movement had the public's support.
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has no legally sanctioned system of racial segregation and has a substantial list of laws that demand racial equality. However, due to many cultural differences between the pre-existing system of passively co-existing communities, segregation along racial lines has emerged in parts of the United Kingdom, with minority communities being left "marooned outside the mainstream”.
The affected and ‘ghettoised’ communities are often largely representative of Pakistanis, Indians and other Sub-Continentals as well as Afro-Caribbeans and other blacks, with skin colour often being a determinant, although the percentage of the United Kingdom's working and poorer class is predominantly white. Such racial segregation has widely been thought to be the basis of growing ethnic tensions, a measurable deterioration in race relations in poorer areas, a deterioration of the standard of living, and levels of education and employment among ethnic minorities in poorer areas. In addition to this, it [racial segregation] is considered by some as being a main precursor to the recent race riots. Most British commentators claim it is false that the riots were due to a breakdown of multiculturalism alone, and instead claim that it is more likely to have been caused by other factors such as disillusioned youth, high unemployment and a growing attraction to 'gangsta' culture by a sizeable proportion of the youth, across all ethnicities, of the United Kingdom.
There may be some indication that such segregation, particularly in residential terms, seems to be the result of the unilateral ‘steering’ of ethnic groups into particular areas as well as a culture of vendor discrimination and distrust of ethnic minority clients by some estate agents and other property professionals.[81] This may be indicative of a market preference amongst the more wealthy to reside in areas of less ethnic mixture; less ethnic mixture being perceived as increasing the value and desirability of a residential area. This is likely as other theories such as “ethnic self segregation” have sometimes been shown to be baseless, and a majority of ethnic respondents to a few surveys on the matter have been in favour of wider social and residential integration.[80]
United States of America
De facto segregation in the United States has increased since the civil rights era in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) that de facto racial segregation was acceptable, as long as schools were not actively making policies for racial exclusion; since then, schools have been segregated due to myriad indirect factors.
Redlining is the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The most devastating form of redlining, and the most common use of the term, refers to mortgage discrimination. Over the next twenty years, a succession of further court decisions and federal laws, including the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and measure to end mortgage discrimination in 1975, would completely invalidate de jure racial segregation and discrimination in the U.S., although de facto segregation and discrimination have proven more resilient. According to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the actual de facto desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked in the late 1980s; since that time, the schools have, in fact, become more segregated mainly due to the ethnic segregation of the nation with whites dominating the suburbs and minorities the urban centers. According to Rajiv Sethi, an economist at Columbia University, black-white segregation in housing is slowly declining for most metropolitan areas in the US Racial segregation or separation can lead to social, economic and political tensions. Thirty years (the year 2000) after the civil rights era, the United States remained in many areas a residentially segregated society, in which blacks, whites and Hispanics inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.
Dan Immer
The desire of many whites to avoid having their children attend integrated schools has been a factor in white flight to the suburbs. A 2007 study in San Francisco showed that groups of homeowners of all races tended to self-segregate in order to be with people of the same education level and race. By 1990, the legal barriers enforcing segregation had been mostly replaced by decentralized racism, where whites pay more than blacks to live in predominantly white areas. Today, many whites are willing, and are able, to pay a premium to live in a predominantly white neighborhood. Equivalent housing in white areas commands a higher rent. These higher rents are largely attributable to exclusionary zoning policies that restrict the supply of housing. Regulations ensure that all housing units are expensive enough to prevent access by undesirable groups. By bidding up the price of housing, many white neighborhoods effectively shut out blacks, because blacks are unwilling, or unable, to pay the premium to buy entry into these expensive neighborhoods. Conversely, equivalent housing in black neighborhoods is far more affordable to those who are unable or unwilling to pay a premium to live in white neighborhoods. Through the 1990s, residential segregation remained at its extreme and has been called "hyper segregation" by some sociologists or "American Apartheid"
In February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. California 543 U.S. 499 (2005) 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.
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