The Problem of Segregation

Abstract

According to Webster's Intercollegiate Dictionary , segregation is “the separation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social intercourse, by separate educational facilities, or by other discriminatory means.” And a segregationist is one who favors such separation. Although the separation may be voluntary, the compilers assume that it is ordinarily not. The words “enforced”, “barriers”, and “other discriminatory means” all imply inequality and deprivation imposed and maintained by force. Moreover, according to common usage, a segregated society is one whose institutions, mores, and beliefs are literally permeated by wholesale discrimination. An American reader, at least, would recognize this definition as useful and accurate. Embodied in those few words is the tortured experience of the reader's own country. In the Oxford English Dictionary , the relevant “S” volume of which was compiled between 1908 and 1914, we find that this definition of segregation is comparatively recent. Several citations are given, some going back as far as the seventeenth century. But they refer mainly to religion or to the natural sciences. Even in the case of a reference to the British Medical Journal of 1904– “Manson has also declared segregation to be the first law of hygiene for the European in the tropics” – the reader must supply the missing social and historical context.