Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of different kinds of humans (like black and white people) into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a bath room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Segregation is generally outlawed, but may exist through social norms, even when there is no strong individual preference for it, as suggested by Thomas Schelling's models of segregation and subsequent work. 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, e.g.) 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, legal segregation was required in some states and came with "anti-miscegenation laws" (prohibitions against interracial marriage). There were laws passed against segregation in the USA in the 1960s.

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/or mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by people of different races.

Historical cases
Historically various conquerors—among them Asian Manchus, African Bantu, and American Aztecs—have practiced discrimination involving the segregation of subject races. Racial segregation has appeared in all parts of the world where there are multiracial communities.

India
3,000–8,000 years ago, Indo-European-speaking nomadic groups from Europe, the Near East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus migrated to India. According to 19th century British historians, it was these "Aryans" who and established the    caste system, an elitist act of social organization that (according to the British) separated the "light-skinned" Indo-Aryan conquerors from the "conquered dark-skinned" indigenous Dravidian tribes through enforcement of "racial endogamy". This claim was used by the British, defining themselves as "purely Aryan", to justify British Rule in India. Much of this was simply conjecture, fueled by British imperialism British policies of divide and rule as well as enumeration of the population into rigid categories during the tenure of British rule in India contributed towards the hardening of these segregated caste identities. Since the independence of India from British rule, the British fantasy of an "Aryan Invasion and subjugation of the dark skinned Dravidians in India" has become a staple polemic in South Asian geopolitics, including the propaganda of Indophobia in Pakistan. There is no decisive theory as to the origins of the caste system in India, and globally renown historians and archaeologists like Jim Shaffer, J.P. Mallory, Edwin Bryant, and others, have disputed the claim of "Aryan Invasion".

Some researchers from India, Europe and the U.S. claim that genetic similarities to Europeans were more common in members of the higher ranks. Their findings, published in Genome Research, claimed the idea that members of higher castes are more closely related to Europeans than are the lower castes. However, other researchers have criticized and contradicted this claim. A study by Joanna L. Mountain et al. of Stanford University had concluded that there was "no clear separation into three genetically distinct groups along caste lines", although "an inferred tree revealed some clustering according to caste affiliation". A 2006 study by Ismail Thanseem et al. of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (India) concluded that the "lower caste groups might have originated with the hierarchical divisions that arose within the tribal groups with the spread of Neolithic agriculturalists, much earlier than the arrival of Aryan speakers", and "the Indo-Europeans established themselves as upper castes among this already developed caste-like class structure within the tribes." A 2006 genetic study by the National Institute of Biologicals in India, testing a sample of men from 32 tribal and 45 caste groups, concluded that the Indians have acquired very few genes from Indo-European speakers. More recent studies have also debunked the British claims that so-called "Aryans" and "Dravidians" have a "racial divide". A study conducted by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2009 (in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT) analyzed half a million genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 ethnic groups from 13 states in India across multiple caste groups. The study establishes, based on the impossibility of identifying any genetic indicators across caste lines, that castes in South Asia grew out of traditional tribal organizations during the formation of Indian society, and was not the product of any mythical "Aryan Invasion" and "subjugation" of Dravidian people, unlike what British racial-revanchist and revisionist claims would have one believe.

England
Segregation may have existed in early Anglo-Saxon England, restricting intermarriage and resulting in the displacement of the native British population by Germanic incomers. According to research led by the University College London, Anglo-Saxon settlers enjoyed substantial social and economic advantages over Celtic Britons. However, Stephen Oppenheimer and Bryan Sykes argue that there was no population displacement, as the Anglo-Saxons had relatively little genetic impact on England. In 2002, the BBC used the headline "English and Welsh are races apart" to report a genetic survey of test subjects from market towns in England and Wales.

The Statutes of Kilkenny were a series of thirty-five acts passed at Kilkenny in 1366. They forbad the intermarriage between the native Irish and the English settlers in Ireland, the English fostering of Irish children, the English adoption of Irish children and use of Irish names and dress.

Jewish segregation
Jews in Europe generally were forced, by decree or by informal pressure, to live in highly segregated ghettos and shtetls. In 1204 the papacy required Jews to segregate themselves from Christians and to wear distinctive clothing. Forced segregation of Jews spread throughout Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. In the Russian Empire, Jews were restricted to the so-called Pale of Settlement, the Western frontier of the Russian Empire corresponding roughly to the modern-day countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. By the early 20th century, the majority of European Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement.

Jewish population were confined to mellahs in Morocco beginning from the 15th century. In cities, a mellah was surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway. In contrast, rural mellahs were separate villages inhabited solely by the Jews.

In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews: "'…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town…; for they are considered as unclean creatures… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt… For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans…  If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults.  The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him… unmercifully…  If a Jew enters a shop for anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods… Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them... Sometimes the Persians intrude into the dwellings of the Jews and take possession of whatever please them. Should the owner make the least opposition in defense of his property, he incurs the danger of atoning for it with his life... If... a Jew shows himself in the street during the three days of the Katel (Muharram)…, he is sure to be murdered.'"

Tang dynasty China
Several laws enforcing racial segregation of foreigners from Chinese were passed by the Han chinese during the Tang dynasty. In 779 the Tang dynasty issued an edict which forced Uighurs to wear their ethnic dress, stopped them from marrying Chinese females, and banned them from pretending to be Chinese. Chinese disliked Uighurs because they practiced usury. The magristrate who issued the orders may have wanted to protect "purity" in Chinese custom. In 836 Lu Chun was appointed as governor of Canton, he was disgusted to find Chinese living with foreigners and intermarriage between Chinese and foreigners. Lu enforced separation, banning interracial marriages, and made it illegal for foreigners to property. Lu Chun believed his principles were just and upright. The 836 law specifically banned Chinese from forming relationships with "Dark peoples" or "People of colour", which was used to describe foreigners, such as "Iranians, Sogdians, Arabs, Indians, Malays, Sumatrans", etc.

Qing dynasty China
Following their conquest of China and establishment of the Qing dynasty in 1644, the Manchus were keenly aware of their minority status. During the early eras of their reign, they implemented a strict policy of racial segregation between the Manchus and Mongols on the one hand and the Han Chinese on the other. This ethnic segregation had cultural and economic reasons: intermarriage was forbidden to keep up the Manchurian heritage and minimize sinicization. In addition, in 1668 all Han Chinese were banned from settling in Manchuria (see Willow Palisade). Since the beginning of the Qing dynasty in 1644, Han and Hui men in China had been required to wear a queue as a sign of submission to the ruling Manchus. The penalty for refusal was death.

The policy of segregation applied directly to the banner garrisons, most of which occupied a separate walled zone within the cities in which they were stationed. (The Eight Banners formed the basic framework for the Manchu military organization.) Examples as in cities where there were limitations of space, such as in Qingzhou (青州), a new fortified town was purposely erected to house the Banner garrison and their families. While the Manchus followed the governmental structure of the preceding Ming dynasty, their ethnic policy dictated that appointments were split between Manchu noblemen and Han officials who had passed the highest levels of the state examinations.

Latin America
Spanish colonists created caste systems in Latin American countries based on classification by race and race mixture. An entire nomenclature developed, including the familiar terms "mulatto", "mestizo", and "zambo" (the latter the origin of "sambo"). The Spanish had practiced a form of caste system in Hispania prior to their expulsion of the Jews and Muslims. While many Latin American countries have long since rendered the system officially illegal through legislation, usually at the time of independence, prejudice based on degrees of perceived racial distance from European ancestry combined with one's socioeconomic status remain, an echo of the colonial caste system.

Germany
In the early 14th century, some guilds in the cities of North-East Germany introduced statutes, under which persons of Wendish, i.e. Slavic, origin were forbidden from joining the guild. According to Wilhelm Raabe, "down into the eighteenth century no German guild accepted a Wend."

The ban of interracial marriage was part of the Nuremberg Laws enacted by the Nazis in Germany against the German Jewish community during the 1930s. The laws prohibited marriages between Jews and Aryan Germans, which were classified as different races.

Under the General Government of occupied Poland in 1940, the Nazis divided the population into different groups, each with different rights, food rations, allowed housing strips in the cities, public transportation, etc. In an effort to split Polish identity they attempted to establish ethnic divisions of Kashubians (Kaschobenvolk), Highlanders (Goralenvolk), based on their alleged 'Germanic' component.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Jews in Nazi-controlled states were made to wear yellow ribbons or stars of David, and were, along with Romas (Gypsies), discriminated against by the racial laws. Jewish doctors and professors were not allowed to treat Aryan (effectively, gentile) patients or teach Aryan pupils, respectively. The Jews were not allowed to use any public transportation, besides the ferry, and were able to shop only from 3-5 pm in Jewish stores. After Kristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass"), the Jews were fined 1,000,000 marks for damages done by the Nazi troops and SS members.

Jews and Roma were subjected to genocide as "undesirable" "racial" groups in the Holocaust. The Nazis established ghettos to confine Jews and sometimes Romas into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe, turning them into de-facto concentration camps. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of these ghettos, with 400,000 people. The Ghetto Litzmannstadt was the second largest, holding about 160,000.

Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for forced labour (in all, about 12 million forced laborers were employed in the German war economy inside the Nazi Germany). Although Nazi Germany also used forced laborers from Western Europe, Poles, along with other Eastern Europeans viewed as racially inferior, were subject to deeper discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying red tags with "P"s sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew, and banned from public transportation.

While the treatment of factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Polish laborers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than Western Europeans — in many cities, they were forced to live in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden, and sexual relations ("racial defilement") were punishable by death.

Italy
In 1938, the fascist regime led by Benito Mussolini introduced a series of laws instituting an official segregationist policy in the Italian Empire, especially aimed against the Jews. This policy enforced various segregationist norms, like the prohibition for Jews to teach or study in ordinary schools and universities, to own industries reputed of major national interest, to work as journalists, to enter the military, and to wed non-Jews. Some of the immediate consequences of the introduction of the 'provvedimenti per la difesa della razza' (norms for the defence of the race) included many of the best Italian scientists leaving their job, or even Italy. Amongst these, world-renowned physicists Emilio Segrè, Enrico Fermi (whose wife was Jewish), Bruno Pontecorvo, Bruno Rossi, Tullio Levi-Civita, mathematicians Federigo Enriques and Guido Fubini and even the fascist propaganda director, art critic and journalist Margherita Sarfatti, who was one of Mussolini's mistresses. Rita Levi-Montalcini, who would successively win the Nobel Prize for medicine, was forbidden to work at the university. Albert Einstein, upon approval of the racial law, resigned from honorary membership of the Accademia dei Lincei.

Later, Fascist Italy participated actively in the persecution of the Italian Jews, arresting and handing over tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi Germany. The persecution of the Jews ended in southern Italy (controlled by the Kingdom of Italy) after the armistice with the Allies (September 8, 1943), while in central and northern Italy (controlled by the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany led by Mussolini) the persecution continued until the definitive fall of Mussolini's regime (April 25, 1945).

Rhodesia
The British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), under Ian Smith, leader of the white minority government, declared unilateral independence in 1965. For the next 15 years, Rhodesia operated under white minority rule until international sanctions forced Smith to hold multiracial elections, after a brief period of re-established British rule in 1979.

Laws enforcing segregation had been around before 1965, although many institutions simply ignored them. One highly publicized legal battle occurred in 1960 involving the opening of a new Theatre that was to be open to all races, this incident was nicknamed "The Battle of the Toilets".

Canada
Racial Segregation in Canada, particularly British Columbia, was widespread during colonial times and continued through the 1950s. Early workplaces were often segregated, with different groups being allowed certain jobs and rates of pay. Fish canneries & coal mines were both highly segregated. In coal mining operations - such as the one at Cumberland in Vancouver Island - had separate China Towns, "Jap" Towns and white towns. Fish canneries were segregated as well - with separate living areas and jobs for Whites, Japanese, Chinese and First Nations ('Indians'). Non-whites were usually paid less and segregation served to prevent labour solidarity. Following the internment of the Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, the Japanese were removed from these systems and more First Nations were hired. In some locations there were whites-only bathrooms and water fountains. At Namu Cannery this system existed - though the Japanese were considered 'honourary whites' and allowed to use white bathrooms. In the case of Namu - it was desegregated when a group of First Nations women removed the 'whites-only' signs and took them to the cannery manager in the mid-20th century.

First Nations ('Indian' people) were also prohibited from using the same facilities in transportation - rail cars, accommodations on steamships are two examples. Both First Nations, and Asians were restricted from some professions in the early 20th Century. Indians were also prohibited from entering pool halls or bars, and owning logging licences (required to log). The right to vote was granted to Indians in 1960 for federal elections. Other non-white groups acquired voting rights earlier - shortly after World War Two.

Schools were segregated. The last segregated black school (Merlin, Ontario) was closed in 1965. The last Canadian segregated black school (Guysborough, Nova Scotia) was closed in 1983.

South Africa
Apartheid was a system which existed in South Africa for over forty years, although the term itself had a history going back to the 1910s and unofficially before that for many years. It was formalized in the years following the victory of the National Party in the all-white national election of 1948, increased in dominancy under the rule of Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd and remained law until 1994. Examples of apartheid policy introduced are the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1951, which made marriage between races illegal.

Apartheid was abolished following a rapid change in public perception of racial segregation throughout the world, and an economic boycott against South Africa which had crippled and threatened to destroy its economy.

United States
After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, racial discrimination became regulated by the so called Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of the races. Though such laws were instituted shortly after fighting ended in many cases, they only became formalized after the end of Republican-enforced Reconstruction in the 1870s and 80s during a period known as the nadir of American race relations. This legalized segregation lasted up to the mid 1960s, primarily through the deep and extensive power of Southern Democrats.

While the U.S. Supreme Court majority in 1896 Plessy explicitly upheld only "separate but equal" facilities (specifically, transportation facilities), Justice John Marshall Harlan in his dissent protested that the decision was an expression of white supremacy; he predicted that segregation would "stimulate aggressions … upon the admitted rights of colored citizens," "arouse race hate" and "perpetuate a feeling of distrust between [the] races. Feelings between whites and blacks were so tense, even the jails were segregated."

Institutionalized racial segregation was ended as an official practice by the efforts of such civil rights activists as Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., working during the period from the end of World War II through the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Many of their efforts were acts of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the enforcement of racial segregation rules and laws, such as refusing to give up a seat in the black part of the bus to a white person (Rosa Parks), or holding sit-ins at all-white diners.

By 1968 all forms of segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and by 1970, support for formal legal segregation had dissolved. Formal racial discrimination was illegal in school systems, businesses, the American military, other civil services and the government. Separate bathrooms, water fountains and schools all disappeared and the civil rights movement had the public's support.

Since then, African-Americans have played a significant role as mayors, governors, and state officials in both Southern and Northern states and on the national level have been on the Supreme Court, in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in presidential cabinets, as head of the joint chiefs of staff, and in 2009, the first black President of the United States.

Redlining is the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The most devastating form of redlining, and the most common use of the term, refers to mortgage discrimination. Over the next twenty years, a succession of further court decisions and federal laws, including the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and measure to end mortgage discrimination in 1975, would completely invalidate de jure racial segregation and discrimination in the U.S., although de facto segregation and discrimination have proven more resilient. According to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the actual de facto desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked in the late 1980s; since that time, the schools have, in fact, become more segregated mainly due to the ethnic segregation of the nation with whites dominating the suburbs and minorities the urban centers.

The Supreme Court Cases: Dred Scott v. Sandford -- 1857, slaves considered not citizens but property

Plessy v. Ferguson -- 1896, segregation allowed if equal but separate

Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia -- 1946, segregation of races not allowed on motor carriers

Sweatt v. Painter -- 1950, a university cannot exclude a student due to race

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas -- 1954, segregation outlawed in public schools

Green v. County School Board of New Kent County -- 1968, parents cannot choose a previous all-white or all-black school for children

Canada
In Canada, the Mohawk tribe of Kahnawake has been criticized for evicting non-Mohawks from the Mohawk reserve. Mohawks who marry outside of their race lose their right to live in their homelands. The Mohawk government claims that its policy of racially exclusive membership is for the preservation of its identity, but there is no exemption for those who adopt Mohawk language or culture. The policy is based on a 1981 moratorium which was made law in 1984. All interracial couples are sent eviction notices regardless of how long they have lived on the reserve. The only exemption is for interracial couples married before the 1981 moratorium.

Although some concerned Mohawk citizens have contested the racially-exclusive membership policy, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that the Mohawk government may adopt policies it deems necessary to ensure the survival of its people.

A long standing practice of segregation has also been imposed upon the commercial salmon fishery in British Columbia since 1992 when separate commercial fisheries were created for select aboriginal groups on three B.C. river systems. Canadians of other races who fish in the separate fisheries have been arrested, jailed and prosecuted. Although the fishermen who were prosecuted were successful at trial (see the decision in R. v. Kapp, the decision was overturned on appeal. On final appeal, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the program on the grounds that segregation of this workplace is a step towards equality in Canada. Affirmative action programs in Canada are protected from equality rights challenges by s. 15(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The segregation continues today though more than 35 percent of the fishermen in the B.C. commercial fishery are of aboriginal ancestry, yet Canadians of aboriginal ancestry comprise less than 4 percent of B.C.'s population.

Middle East
There is considerable racial segregation in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where there are areas that house large numbers of South Asian migrant workers (primarily from Nepal and Pakistan, but also from India and Bangladesh). After municipal elections in Bahrain in 2002 brought Islamist opposition party Al Wefaq Islamic Action to power in the capital Manama, its newly installed mayor, Murthader Bader called for the introduction of racial segregation with the removal from the city of all non-Bahraini South Asian inhabitants and for the creation of a new township to house them. In 2004, the head of Manama City Council, Al Wefaq’s Murthader Bader, called for the introduction of racial segregation in the city with the removal of South Asian nationals to other parts of the country.In 2006, the call was reiterated by Al Wefaq councillor Sadiq Rahma who said Asians 'make the neighbourhood dirty'. The move has been criticised by Bahraini human rights groups as a 'a violation of basic human rights'. After 2006’s elections, the party’s Abdullah Al A’ali used his parliamentary platform to call for legislation to restrict expatriate labour away from Bahraini families, saying "Labourers who now live in neighbourhoods with Bahraini families should be given a grace period to relocate before they face legal action."

Fiji
Two military coups in Fiji in 1987 removed from power a government that was led by an ethnic Fijian, but was supported principally by the Indo-Fijian (ethnic Indian) electorate. A new constitution was promulgated in 1990, establishing Fiji as a republic, with the offices of President, Prime Minister, two-thirds of the Senate, and a clear majority of the House of Representatives reserved for ethnic Fijians, Ethnic Fijian ownership of the land was also entrenched in the constitution.

Fiji's case is a situation of de facto ethnic segregation. Fiji has a long complex history with more than 3500 years as a divided Tribal nation. Unification under the British rule as a Colony for 96 years brought other racial groups, particularly immigrants from the Indian sub-continent.

India
Some activists consider that the Indian caste system is a form of racial discrimination. The participants of the United Nations Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in March 2001, condemned discrimination due to the caste system, and tried to pass a resolution declaring that caste as a basis for the segregation and oppression of peoples in terms of their descent and occupation is a form of apartheid. However, no formal resolution was passed to that effect

India's treatment of Dalits has been described by some authors as "India's hidden apartheid".

Such allegations have also been rejected by many sociologists such as Andre Béteille, who writes that treating caste as a form of racism is "politically mischievous" and worse, "scientifically nonsense" since there is no discernible difference in the racial characteristics between Brahmins and Scheduled Castes. He writes that "Every social group cannot be regarded as a race simply because we want to protect it against prejudice and discrimination".

Pakistani-American sociologist Ayesha Jalal also rejects these allegations. In her book, "Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia", she writes that "As for Hinduism, the hierarchical principles of the Brahmanical social order have always been contested from within Hindu society, suggesting that equality has been and continues to be both valued and practiced."

Malaysia
Malaysia has an article in its constitution which distinctly segregates the ethnic Malays and indigenous peoples of Malaysia—i.e. bumiputra—from the non-Bumiputra such as the Chinese and the East Indians under the social contract, of which by law would guarantee the former certain special rights and privileges. To question these rights and privileges however is strictly prohibited under the Internal Security Act, legalised by the 10th Article(IV) of the Constitution of Malaysia. The privileges mentioned herein covers—few of which—the economical and education aspects of Malaysians, e.g. the Malaysian New Economic Policy; an economic policy recently criticised by Thierry Rommel—who headed a European Commission's delegation to Malaysia—as an excuse for "significant protectionism" and a quota maintaining higher access of Malays into public universities. This system of segregation, seen as a form of apartheid by its opponent.

Mauritania
Slavery in Mauritania was finally criminalized in August 2007 It was already abolished in 1980 though it was still affecting the descendants of black Africans abducted into slavery before generations, who live now in Mauritania as "black Moors" or haratin and who partially still serve the "white Moors", or bidhan (the name means literally white-skinned people), as slaves. The number of slaves in the country was not known exactly, but is was estimated to be up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population.

For centuries, the so-called Haratin lower class, mostly poor black Africans living in rural areas, have been considered natural slaves by white Moors of Arab/Berber ancestry. Many descendants of the Arab and Berber tribes today still adhere to the supremacist ideology of their ancestors. This ideology has led to oppression, discrimination and even enslavement of other groups in the region of Sudan and Western Sahara. In certain villages in Mauritania there are mosques for lighter-skinned nobles and mosques for black slaves, who are still buried in separate cemeteries.

Yemen

 * See also Castes in Yemen

In Yemen, the Arab elite practices an unofficial form of discrimination against the lower class Akhdam people.

United States
Rajiv Sethi, economist at Columbia University, writes that Black-white segregation is declining fairly consistently for most metropolitan areas in the US. Despite these pervasive patterns, many changes for individual areas are small. Racial segregation or separation can lead to social, economic and political tensions. Thirty years (the year 2000) after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which Blacks, Whites and Hispanics inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.

Dan Immergluck writes that in 2002 small businesses in black neighborhoods still received fewer loans, even after accounting for businesses density, businesses size, industrial mix, neighborhood income, and the credit quality of local businesses. Gregory D. Squires wrote in 2003 that it is clear that race has long affected and continues to affect the policies and practices of the insurance industry. Workers living in American inner-cities have a harder time finding jobs than suburban workers.

The desire of many whites to avoid having their children attend integrated schools has been a factor in white flight to the suburbs. Recent studies in San Francisco showed that groups of homeowners of all races tended to self-segregate in order to be with people of the same education level and race. By 1990, the legal barriers enforcing segregation had been mostly replaced by decentralized racism, where whites pay more than blacks to live in predominantly white areas. Today, many whites are willing, and are able, to pay a premium to live in a predominantly white neighborhood. Equivalent housing in white areas commands a higher rent. By bidding up the price of housing, many white neighborhoods effectively shut out blacks, because blacks are unwilling, or unable, to pay the premium to buy entry into these expensive neighborhoods. Conversely, equivalent housing in black neighborhoods is far more affordable to those who are unable or unwilling to pay a premium to live in white neighborhoods. Through the 1990s, residential segregation remained at its extreme and has been called "hypersegregation" by some sociologists or "American Apartheid"

In February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. California that the California Department of Corrections' unwritten practice of racially segregating prisoners in its prison reception centers — which California claimed was for inmate safety (gangs in California, as throughout the U.S., usually organize on racial lines)— is to be subject to strict scrutiny, the highest level of constitutional review.

Sociologists in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s long studied the impact of racial segregation in California, the nation's most populous and racially diverse state not known for customary segregation the Southeast US was infamous. (See also Demographics of California). A socially liberal, but racially divided state can have softer prevalent forms of racial segregated communities populated of nearly all whites, blacks, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics (of any race, an ethnic designation) brought upon by economic changes, housing integration, white flight and immigration (in the case of Mexican and Latin American) in California. For examples, South L.A. and west Oakland are a majority (or plurally) black, East Los Angeles is predominantly Mexican American and San Francisco has strictly Chinese American neighborhoods.

There are 105 historically black colleges (HBCU) in the United States today, including public and private, two-year and four-year institutions, medical schools and community colleges. The 2009 "Stimulus Bill" would include more than $1.3 billion for HBCU campuses.