apartheid

plural apartheids

1. South AfricacountablehistoricaluncountableThe policy of racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.

   She don't care about the rest at all / She's got a system they call apartheid / It keeps a brother in a subjection

   1988, Eddy Grant, “Gimme Hope Jo'anna”

   2 more examples

   The premise of apartheid was that whites were superior to Africans, Coloureds and Indians, and the function of it was to entrench white supremacy forever.

   1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, pages 127-128

   The reality, however, is a disquieting and entirely white town, littered with old apartheid flags and monuments to the architects of segregation.

   2019 October 24, Dennis Webster, “'An indictment of South Africa': whites-only town Orania is booming”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 29 Mar 2022

   Synonyms: plural relations

2. broadlycountableuncountableAny similar policy of racial segregation or separation and discrimination, particularly when in favor of a minority rule.

   The 1973 Apartheid Convention conferred universal jurisdiction to the state signatories to prosecute those who commit apartheid.

   2 more examples

   When the doors of a business are open to the public, they must be open to all regardless of race if apartheid is not to become engrained in our public […] .

   1963, Justice William O. Douglas, concurring, Lombard v. Louisiana (373 U.S. 267)

   Jim Crow miscegenation laws enforced apartheid in marriage.

   2006 March 3, Leslie Feinberg, “Civil rights leaders were gay-baited, red-baited”, in Workers World

3. broadlycountableuncountableA policy or situation of segregation based on some specified attribute.

   In these annual reports, the religious apartheid practices in India are not mentioned at all.

   2009, Moorthy Muthuswamy, Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War, →ISBN, page 120

   1 more example

   Fifteen minutes drive to the Brown Trout was guaranteed to satisfy my appetite because there, as with other clubs and hotel bars, a form of sex apartheid was practised. The males assembled in the region of the bar and the opposite gender either sat discreetly detached or strayed outside to gossip gaily among themselves.

   2008, Peter Hewitt, Kenya Cowboy: A Police Officer's Account of the Mau Mau Emergency, →ISBN, page 64

present singular third person apartheids · participle present apartheiding · participle past apartheided · past apartheided

1. transitiveTo impose a policy of segregation of groups of people, especially one based on race.

   Yes, apartheiding the apartheiders, is what the rest of the world is doing.

   1986, Stanlake John Thompson Samkange, On Trial for that U.D.I.: A Novel, page 79

   4 more examples

   Whatever the reason the blacks have for "apartheiding" Boston, whites should be all for it.

   1989, Instauration - Volumes 15-16, page 36

   The most deadly of all ghosts are wandering over Britain and medicine, apartheiding people into superiors and nonentities.

   2003, Mayur K. Lakhani, A Celebration of General Practice, →ISBN, page 183

   Speaking of the resulting apartheiding of British Columbia, Cole Harris observed, "racism was built into the landscape of settlement."

   2009, Shirley R. Steinberg, Diversity and Multiculturalism: A Reader, →ISBN, page 151

   By 1922, the apartheiding of British Columbia was cemented into a public and private English-language discourse that took for granted how and where one racialized body was placed in relation to another, and in turn how each related to the state system.

   2011, Timothy J. Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy, →ISBN, page 64