How Long can a Segregated Society Last?

[snerfuplz]

I would say forever, remember the Democratic Party or more importantly the Dixiecrats were the party of White Supremacy since the Civil War, provided economic stability is more or less there. A Great Depression or Great Recession like event could spark a wave of revolution leading to a segregated United States. That being said while segregation was not as cruel as South Africa it still would repress violent insurrections with much carnage

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by snerfuplz

I would say forever, remember the Democratic Party or more importantly the Dixiecrats were the party of White Supremacy since the Civil War, provided economic stability is more or less there.

Hrm. On the other hand, you had black power groups in OTL's America.

I can see this getting much, much worse.

[LongVin]

Originally Posted by Wolfpaw

If you make it so that segregation is considered to be a state (rather than Federal) issue, it can last longer.

Keeping blacks a rural, mostly Deep Southern population will also prolong it; it was, after all, World War II that accelerated the flow of blacks to Northern and Western cities that far surpassed the first of the Great Migrations.

This. When those interstate commerce cases came to the Supreme Court dealing with segragated establishments have the decisions go the opposite way even if it 5/4 stating that it is intrastate and therefore legal.

[phx1138]

IDK if WW2 made the diff, but I've heard it said the Holocaust was a big influence: it made racism pretty clearly wrong...

[Wolfpaw]

Originally Posted by phx1138

IDK if WW2 made the diff, but I've heard it said the Holocaust was a big influence: it made racism pretty clearly wrong...

But it didn't because most defenders of segregation didn't care a whole lot about some dead Jews in Europe, though I presume they would use a less polite term for Jews.

And while the Holocaust did show the bankrupt insanity of racism, institutionalized racism remained the norm in much of the world until the '70s.

[MalcontentRex]

If you want to be very anal about this, a number of apartheid-type societies exist to this very day in one form or another--look at Mauritania/Sudan (white Arabs vs. sub-Saharan Africans), North Korea (CP insiders vs. everybody else vs. death-camp inmates), Egypt (Islamic majority vs. Copts), etc. So, if a state is willing to be sufficiently totalitarian as to completely deny all power and recourse to the oppressed racial/ethnic/political/religious groups, segregation can continue indefinitely.

[Thande]

While not as likely as OTL, I don't see it being ASB that black rights groups could take an "anti-hypocrisy" rather than "anti-segregation" tone. I.e. accept the idea of "separate but equal" but criticise and protest the fact that it's a lie and demand a society in which separation continues but blacks get equal treatment and facilities just as good as whites. Like having state assemblies with one black house and one white house elected by a franchise based on ethnic identity, and they both have to agree on any law for it to be passed, and divvying up a state's congressmen and senators based on a proportionate number being elected only by the white population and the rest elected only by the blacks. A bit like the Maori franchise in New Zealand that continues to this day.

The main problem with such an idea is that there are already examples of US states that have a fair few blacks but don't segregate them (e.g. New York) to point to as models. So this could probably only happen in a setting where for whatever reason the idea that the South is 'intrinsically different' to the northern states (as believed by many segregationists of course) is widely accepted by everyone and so any solution to the problem of inequality has to be addressed within that 'unique paradigm' rather than being derived from other parts of the USA or elsewhere.