Racial segregation.

Essay by cyndyfunHigh School, 12th grade December 2003

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RACIAL SEGREGATION

Racial segregation is a kind of formalized or institutionalized discrimination on the basis or race, characterized by their 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. Societies have practiced racial segregation throughout human history. Racial segregation in the United States compares to Apartheid and the Caste system in India.

In the United States of America, racial discrimination was regulated by the Jim Crow laws from the Civil War, especially in the Southern States where blacks were many. The Jim Crow laws imposed segregation or legal separation of the races, in hotels, hospitals, schools, and other public places. African Americans were made to sit at the back of public buses and also they had to quit their seats for a white person. 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 front of the bus (Rosa Parks), or holding sit-ins at all-white diners.

Black Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jnr and Malcom X protested against racial segregation. On January 26, 1948 president Harry S Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States. Although racial equality is granted to all citizens in USA today, USA Patriots Act is seen as an attempt for convert racial segregation of noncitizens by some. Arabs and Pakistanis, which have similar skin color, are segregated at the airports and have to go through humiliating procedure, solely on the basis of their national origin. Thus in the United States, as in Europe, democracy remains a goal rather than a reality for many citizens.

Apartheid In South Africa compares to segregation in the U.S...