GC: n
S: DAH – https://goo.gl/txYldg (last access: 20 October 2016); BR – http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm (last access: 23 October 2016).
N: 1. racial (adj): 1862, from race + -ial. Related: Racially.
race (n): people of common descent,” a word from the 16th century, from Middle French race, earlier razza “race, breed, lineage, family” (16c.), possibly from Italian razza, of unknown origin (cognate with Spanish and Portuguese raza). Etymologists say no connection with Latin radix “root,” though they admit this might have influenced the “tribe, nation” sense.
-ial: variant of -al (suffix forming adjectives from nouns or other adjectives, “of, like, related to, pertaining to,” Middle English -al, -el, from French or directly from Latin -alis).
segregation (n): 1550s, “act of segregating,” from Late Latin segregationem (nominative segregatio), noun of action from past participle stem of segregare. Meaning “state of being segregated” is from 1660s. Specific U.S. sense of “enforced separation of races” is attested from 1883.
2. Segregation may be de jure (Latin, meaning “by law”), mandated by law, or de facto (also Latin, meaning “in fact”); de facto segregation may even exist illegally. De facto segregation can occur when members of different races strongly prefer to associate and do business with members of their own race, though a segregationist regime may be maintained by means ranging from racial discrimination in hiring and in the rental and sale of housing, to vigilante violence such as lynchings.
3. Slavery’s abolition meant that racial subordination could persist only with new kinds of support. Informal practices of racial segregation soon sprang up throughout the South, particularly in railroads and other places generally open to the public. In response, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which made discrimination in places of public accommodation illegal. The Supreme Court held the act unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from denying equal protection of the law, did not authorize Congress to adopt laws dealing with private discrimination.
4. After Reconstruction, whites sought to reinforce patterns of racial hierarchy. Many southern states adopted laws expressly requiring racial segregation in transportation, schools, and elsewhere. The Supreme Court upheld such laws in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination only in connection with civil and political rights but not in connection with social rights such as were involved in education and transportation. The Court’s doctrine indicated that states could require racial segregation only if the facilities provided the races were actually equal, but no state took the requirement of equality seriously, and the segregated schools and railroad cars available to African Americans were, typically, substantially worse than those available to whites. The Supreme Court’s approval of segregation spurred southern legislatures to extend the Jim Crow system much more substantially to include separate seating in courtrooms; separate water fountains from which to drink; separate Bibles for swearing oaths in court; and separate swimming pools, parks, and golf courses.
5. apartheid: An Afrikaans word meaning “apartness”, the state of being separate or segregated. It is the name given by the Afrikaner Nationalist Party, in office in South Africa after 1948, to the policies that govern relations between the country’s 3,000,000 white inhabitants and its 12,000,000 nonwhite, mainly African, inhabitants. It is also used to describe the long-term objective of the territorial separation of races that is advocated by Afrikaner church and intellectual circles.
In the view of the United Nations and many other member nations, the apartheid policy “is regarded as a rationalization for maintaining racial discrimination”. For example, many reference books use the expressions “apartheid” and “racial separation” or “segregation” together. This extended sense shows how international the apartheid question has become.
6. Cultural Interrelation: We can mention the novels To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Go, Set a Watchman (2015) written by Nelle Harper Lee (1926-2016)
S: 1. OED – https://goo.gl/NFBuQx; https://goo.gl/7DduRD (last access: 22 October 2016). 2. NWE – http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Racial_segregation (last access: 21 October 2016). 3 & 4. DAH – https://goo.gl/txYldg (last access: 21 October 2016). 5. TERMIUM PLUS – https://goo.gl/rUaWyj
(last access: 21 October 2016). 6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/05/books.usa (last access: 21 October 2016).
SYN: 1. racial separation. 2. apartheid (context).
S: 1. TERMIUM PLUS – https://goo.gl/rUaWyj (last access: 21 October 2016). 2. NWD – http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Racial_segregation (last access: 21 October 2016); TERMIUM PLUS – https://goo.gl/rUaWyj (last access: 21 October 2016).
CR: apartheid, integration, race, racial discrimination, racism, slave, slavery.
