Purpose

• Segregation is a legal system that restricts groups of people to certain geographical areas or facilities. Its purpose is to separate people according to race or caste and to maintain the social and economic dominance of the group in power. It is not new in history; among others, Asian Mongols and American Aztecs both used systems of segregation to control people they had conquered. In some societies, such as the caste system in India, it can be a mutual agreement based on shared beliefs.
  
  

Segregation in America

• In the United States, laws separating blacks and whites were made legal by the Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. This decision declared that the races could be "separate but equal" and that blacks could still receive equal protection under the law while being separated from whites. It did not require racial zoning, but in practice, blacks had separate schools, churches, neighborhoods and public facilities. This resulted in inferior education, wages and housing. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally put at least a legal end to segregation, although the effects of it are still felt.
  
  

Japanese-American Internment

• An instance of temporary racial segregation happened during World War II, when 120,000 American citizens of Japanese descent were taken from their homes and forced to live in internment camps. Because the United States was at war with Japan, they were suspected of having possible divided loyalties and so kept under guard until the war was over. They were eventually paid reparations, but at a rate of less than ten cents on the dollar for their lost property.
  
  

Apartheid in South Africa

• The most recent example of government-mandated segregation was apartheid in South Africa. Instituted in 1948, these laws divided the population into white, black or colored -- the last group including Asians and Indians as well as those of mixed race. Blacks were sent to designated "homelands," lost all political rights in South African proper and had to carry pass books any time they entered white territory. Decades of bloodshed resulted, until the South African government bowed to international political pressure and did away with apartheid in the 1990s.