Separate but equal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Part of a series of articles on |
  |
|
Isolationism Segregation in the US |
- For the film about the Brown v. Board of Education case, see Separate But Equal (film).
Separate but equal is a phrase used to describe a system of segregation that justifies giving different groups of people separate facilities or services with the claim that each group still receives equal quality of treatment.
The phrase has also recently been used in debate over same-sex partnerships.
Contents |
[edit] United States
After the American Civil War (1861–1865) brought about the end of slavery in the U.S., separate but equal laws became the de-facto standard throughout the Southern United States and represented the institutionalization of the segregation period. African-Americans and European-Americans would receive the same services (schools, hospitals, water fountains, bathrooms), but there would be distinct facilities for each race. The legitimacy of such laws was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537. In practice, the services and facilities reserved for African-Americans were frequently of lower quality than those reserved for whites; for example, many African-American schools received less public funding per student than nearby white schools.
The repeal of "separate but equal" laws was a key focus of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), attorneys for the NAACP referred to the phrase "equal but separate" used in Plessy v. Ferguson as a custom de jure racial segregation enacted into law. The NAACP, led by later Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, was successful in challenging the constitutional viability of the separate but equal doctrine, and the court voted to overturn sixty years of law that had developed under Plessy. The Supreme Court outlawed segregated public education facilities for blacks and whites at the state level. The companion case of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 outlawed such practices at the Federal level in the District of Columbia. In 1967 under Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
[edit] South Africa
The phrase was used in apartheid South Africa, where officials claimed that services for blacks were as good as services for whites.[citation needed]
[edit] Same-sex unions and same-sex marriage
The phrase has come into use more recently in debate surrounding same-sex civil unions vs. same-sex marriage, with some claiming that civil unions giving gays the same rights as straight marriages as another example of separate but equal treatment.
