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Racial segregation

separation of humans based on race

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation is generally outlawed, but may exist de facto through social norms, even when there is no strong individual preference for it. 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). 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, segregation was mandated by law 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.

In effect, it means that two sets of everything from schools to insane asylums to penitentiaries to playgrounds have to be maintained.
~ John Gunther

Quotes

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  • In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes... in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches,—one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and street cars.
  • The economic cost of segregation is of course preposterous and staggering. It is a cardinal reason why the South is so poor. In effect, it means that two sets of everything from schools to insane asylums to penitentiaries to playgrounds have to be maintained.
  • There are 55,000 Negro college graduates in the United States. Most Southern whites have never seen one.
    • John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (1947), p. 682
  • Not long ago, but before World War II was over, a young Negro girl was asked how she would punish Hitler. Answer: "Paint him black and bring him over here."
    • John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (1947), p. 683
  • We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
  • A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. ... Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.
    • Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963); cf. Thomas Aquinas
  • Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
  • While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community.
  • There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
  • This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
    • Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream" speech, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. (August 28, 1963)
  • Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.
  • I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all, I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.
    • J. R. R. Tolkien, "Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford" (June 5, 1959), reprinted in Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Monsters and the Critics (London: Harper Collins, 2006), p. 238. A native of South Africa, Tolkien had been a professor at Oxford since 1925. Earlier in his address he explained his objection to what he considered the "false" separation of "Language" and "Literature" in the study of English.
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