What were the major differences between South African apartheid and American segregation?

Question

Moreover, why wasn’t the United States blackballed on a global scale for segregation the way South Africa was for apartheid?

In: 212

Answer 1

There are a few key differences:

1. The US in the 1950s was 89% white and 10% black. South Africa was 68% black and 19% white. So the US was dominated by whites both politically and demographically, while South Africa had a black supermajority but a minority white ruling class.
2. The US civil rights movement was nearly entirely internal. Pressure came from the black community and its white allies. Slaves had been freed in 1865 due to the Civil War and the Northern victory that imposed changes to the Constitution. A century later, people realized that Jim Crow had destroyed a lot of the gains, and pushed for real political change. The same was true of the women’s rights movement and the gay rights movement. Europeans or any other external force had little impact on the American Civil Rights movements for blacks, women, or gays. Change came predominantly from within. At the same, the UK and France were faced with devolving their colonial empires, so they weren’t in position to lecture the US about racial equality.

South Africa faced pressure externally from the global community. Not to downplay the work of native South Africans, but they had a lot of external allies that was isolating South Africa and costing them economically and in prestige, such as being banned from the Olympics.

3) The timing also mattered. By the 1980s, people had begun to realize that racial inequality was unjust. Most of Africa had cast off its European colonial rulers. While South Africa was independent, it was still governed by whites descended from Dutch and English colonial rulers. Whereas the US civil rights movement began in the 1950s, when racial equality was a relatively novel concept around the world.

So, South Africa was blacklisted because it was the 1980s and the world saw a small white ruling class imposing its will on a black majority. The US wasn’t blacklisted because it was the 1950s and the nation was predominantly white with a small black minority, so few other countries even noticed or cared about racial equality in the US.