Ethnic & Racial Segregation

In explaining spatial regularities, geographers look for patterns of spatial interaction. A distinctive feature of ethnic relations in the United States and South Africa has been the strong discouragement of spatial interaction among some groups in the past through legal means. Although segregation laws are no longer in effect, their legacy remains fundamental to understanding the geography of ethnicity in both countries.

United States: “Separate but Equal”

The concept of “separate but equal” was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. Louisiana had enacted a law that required black and white passengers to ride in separate train cars. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court stated that Louisiana’s law was constitutional because it provided separate, allegedly equal, treatment of blacks and whites, and equality did not mean that whites had to mix socially with blacks.

Once the Supreme Court permitted “separate but equal” treatment of races, southern states enacted a comprehensive set of laws to segregate blacks from whites as much as possible (Figure 7-30). These were called “Jim Crow” laws, named for a nineteenth-century song-and-dance act that depicted blacks offensively. Blacks had to sit in the backs of buses, and shops, restaurants, and hotels could choose to serve only whites. Separate schools were established for blacks and whites. This was equal, white southerners argued, because the bus got blacks sitting in the rear to the destination at the same time as the whites in the front, blacks could patronize commercial establishments that served only blacks, and they could send their children to all-black schools.

Segregation In The United States

Until the 1960s in the U.S. South, whites and blacks had to use separate drinking fountains as well as separate restrooms, bus seats, hotel rooms, and other public facilities.

Throughout the country, not just in the South, house deeds contained restrictive covenants that prevented the owners from selling to blacks, as well as to Roman Catholics or Jews in some places. Restrictive covenants also kept blacks from moving into all-white neighborhoods. And because schools, especially at the elementary level, were located to serve individual neighborhoods, most were segregated in practice, even if not by legal mandate.

The Red Summer

The “Red Summer” of 1919 marked the culmination of steadily growing tensions surrounding the great migration of African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North that took place during World War I. When the war ended in late 1918, thousands of servicemen returned home from fighting in Europe to find that their jobs in factories, warehouses and mills had been filled by newly arrived Southern Black people or immigrants. Amid financial insecurity, racial and ethnic prejudices ran rampant. Meanwhile, African-American veterans who had risked their lives fighting for the causes of freedom and democracy found themselves denied basic rights such as adequate housing and equality under the law, leading them to become increasingly militant.

Red Summer is the period from late winter through early autumn of 1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the United States, as well as in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence which had occurred that summer.

In most instances, attacks consisted of white-on-black violence. However, numerous African Americans also fought back, notably in the Chicago and Washington, D.C. race riots, which resulted in 38 and 15 deaths, respectively, along with even more injuries, and extensive property damage in Chicago.^[3] Still, the highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where an estimated 100–240 black people and five white people were killed—an event now known as the Elaine massacre.

The anti-black riots developed from a variety of post-World War I social tensions, generally related to the demobilization of both black and white members of the United States Armed Forces following World War I; an economic slump; and increased competition in the job and housing markets between ethnic European Americans and African Americans.^[4] The time would also be marked by labor unrest, for which certain industrialists used black people as strikebreakers, further inflaming the resentment of white workers.

The riots and killings were extensively documented by the press, which, along with the federal government, feared socialist and communist influence on the black civil rights movement of the time following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They also feared foreign anarchists, who had bombed the homes and businesses of prominent figures and government leaders.

U.S. Civil Rights Movement

The landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in 1954, found that having separate schools for blacks and whites was unconstitutional because no matter how equivalent the facilities, racial separation branded minority children as inferior and therefore was inherently unequal. A year later, the Supreme Court further ruled that schools had to be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.”

A nationwide movement in favor of civil rights forced elimination of U.S. segregation laws during the 1950s and 1960s (Figure 7-31). Civil Rights Acts during the 1960s outlawed racial discrimination. The civil rights movement continues through Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 after several unarmed African American men were killed. The objectives of Black Lives Matter include campaigning against violence and perceived racism toward black people and educating others about the challenges that African Americans continue to face in the United States.

Civil Rights March, Boston, April 23, 1965

In 1965 at the University of Cambridge, two of the foremost American intellectuals were challenged with the question: ‘Has the American Dream been achieved at the expense of the American Negro?’ From William F Buckley’s highly stylised posturing and pointing, to James Baldwin’s melodious rhetorical flourishes and memorable scowls, what’s become known as the ‘Baldwin-Buckley Debate’ now stands as one of the archetypal articulations of the dividing line between US progressives and conservatives on questions of race, justice and history. Baldwin, the famed African-American writer, whose reputation as a progressive social critic and visionary Civil Rights activist has only risen in the intervening decades, argues that the very foundation of US society is built on the dehumanisation of its African-American population. Meanwhile, Buckley, the leading US conservative intellectual of the period, argues that African Americans would be best served by exploiting their country’s many freedoms and opportunities, rather than pointing a collective finger at discriminatory structures and institutions. In both cases, their positions presage contemporary divisive debates in the US, though one wonders whether such an event could happen in today’s political environment.

Conducted in front of a large, almost entirely white and predominantly male audience at the Cambridge Union, the encounter offers a sense of campus intellectual life in the mid-1960s through the atmosphere in the room, the things that made people laugh, and the particular references made by the debaters. After the always eloquent Baldwin evokes his personal experience to describe a perpetually disorienting and demeaning existence for African Americans, Buckley responds with facts and figures – as well as an ad hominem shot at Baldwin’s speaking voice – to argue that there’s an American Dream available to all those who would pursue it. In the end, Baldwin prevailed, earning an ardent standing ovation and a landslide victory in the Union’s vote on the motion raised.

“Baldwin was proud of winning the Cambridge debate, but frustrated that Buckley, like so many other white Americans, had seemingly failed to understand what he was trying to say—almost like Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous proposition in Philosophical Investigations that “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him,” for it would be speaking a language and of a reality alien to our own. They each had different “systems of reality,” Baldwin said during the debate; they were two lions of their field who were able to spar, but unable to comprehend each other.“

Consequences of racial discrimination are still felt in the United States. Many African Americans, recent immigrants, and those of other ethnicities remain clustered in urban neighborhoods because of economic and cultural factors. In urban schools, black and other “minority” students are now often the majority as white residents have moved out.

A recent example of environmental racism is the contamination of the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. Flint’s residents, who are predominantly African American, have been exposed to a high concentration of lead in the drinking water because of insufficient treatment of the water source. Public officials have faced legal charges of negligence for endangering the health of the citizens of Flint in order to save money. Flint’s water supply was judged acceptable to drink in 2017, but residents were instructed to use bottled or filtered water until at least the year 2020.

Pause and Reflect 7.2.3

More than 50 years after the Civil Rights Acts, why might schools in cities like Baltimore and Detroit still be racially segregated

South Africa: Separate Development

Discrimination by race reached its peak in the late twentieth century in South Africa. The cornerstone of the South African policy was the creation of apartheid, which was the legal separation of races into different geographic areas. Under apartheid, a newborn baby was classified as being one of four government-designated races—black, white, colored (mixed white and black), or Asian (mostly Indian).

To ensure geographic isolation and separate development of these groups, the South African government designated 10 so-called homelands for blacks (Figure 7-32). The white minority government expected every black to become a citizen of one of the homelands and to move there. More than 99 percent of the population in the 10 homelands was black. The apartheid laws determined where different races could live, attend school, work, shop, travel, and own land (Figure 7-33). Blacks were restricted to certain occupations and were paid far lower wages than were whites for similar work. They could not vote or run for political office in national elections.

South Africa’s Apartheid Homelands

As part of its apartheid system, the government of South Africa designated 10 homelands, expecting that ultimately every black would become a citizen of one of them. South Africa declared 4 of these homelands to be independent countries, but no other country recognized the action. With the end of apartheid and the election of a black majority government, the homelands were abolished, and South Africa was reorganized into 9 provinces.

Apartheid In South Africa

Separate buses for black and whites, 1975.

History of Apartheid in South Africa

The apartheid system was created by descendants of whites who arrived in South Africa from the Netherlands in 1652 and settled in Cape Town, at the southern tip of the territory. They were known either as Boers, from the Dutch word for “farmer,” or Afrikaners, from the word “Afrikaans,” the name of their language, which is a dialect of Dutch. The British seized the Dutch colony in 1795 and controlled South Africa’s government until 1948, when the Afrikaner-dominated Nationalist Party won elections. The Afrikaners vowed to resist pressures to turn over South Africa’s government to blacks, and the Nationalist Party created the apartheid laws in the next few years to perpetuate white dominance of the country.

The white-minority government of South Africa repealed the apartheid laws in 1991. The principal anti-apartheid organization, the African National Congress, was legalized, and its leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from jail after more than 27 years of imprisonment. When all South Africans were permitted to vote in national elections for the first time, in 1994, Mandela was overwhelmingly elected the country’s first black president. According to the 2011 Census, 79 percent of South Africans were black, 9 percent each were colored and white, and 3 percent were Asian.

Though South Africa’s apartheid laws have been repealed, the legacy of apartheid will linger for many years (Figure 7-34). South Africa’s blacks have achieved political equality, but they are much poorer than white South Africans. For example, South Africa is a major producer of wine, but only a small number of wineries are owned by blacks.

Population Distribution By Most Numerous Ethnicity In South Africa, 2011

Segregation persists in contemporary South Africa. Most blacks live in eastern provinces and most coloreds in western ones. A population group is classified as dominant if it makes up more than 50 percent of the population in an area, or if it makes up more than 33 percent and no other group makes up more than 25 percent.