Meanings
- rareuncountableSegregationism; the support or practice of segregating racial, ethnic, or religious groups.
Disharmony, disunity and segregationalism reign supreme in the society of the "Brahmanic" Hindus at the expense of unity, integration and harmony.
1944, Ishwara Topa, Facts about India, page 1285 more examples
As opposed to settler segregationalism they manifested an 'assimilationist' attitude, although of a paternalist kind, based on the idea of universal rights.
1986, Jarle Simensen, Finn Fuglestad, Norwegian Missions in African HistoryFrom the beginning, Muslim segregationalism thus stood in explicit opposition to King's hope that American society was headed toward a future where people would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
2000, Frank Kelleter, Con/Tradition, page 18The second Zadokite period differs from the first in that while the priesthood remained the structural centre of Jewish society, the passage was made from universalism to segregationalism and the Covenant was seen as having been made between God and the people through the priests and the lay leaders.
2004, Paolo Sacchi, The History of the Second Temple Period, →ISBN, page 145Such a conception of history works to legitimate the Acadians' segregationalism along similar lines to those expressed by Robin Cohen: "[t]he more ancient and venerable the [diasporic] myth, the more useful it is as a form of social distancing from other ethnic groups...even in the teeth of dispossession and discrimination".
2005, Jennifer Blair, Recalling Early Canada, →ISBN, page 85His argument is that people are generally motivated towards give and take relationships along discrete co-ethnic lines and that ethnic segregationalism serves to erode the potential for societal redistribution and for the building of solidarities that are the essential glue of any welfare system.
2010, Charlotte Williams, Race and Ethnicity in a Welfare Society, →ISBN, page 29 - broadlyuncountableThe isolation of a person or group of people to achieve a specific end.
Problems arise when such deliberate self-segregationalism becomes an end in and of itself rather than a means to an end.
2014, Sunday A Aigbe, A Template for Life, →ISBN, page 1184 more examples
Segregationalism is being much carried out. Patient having passed through pneumonic deliriums, is now comatic and in articulo mortis.
1911, The Windsor Magazine - Volume 34, page 70Instinct in capitalist individualism are the notions of economic segregationalism and consequent psychological emphasis upon the right to privacy.
1940, Ludwig Teller, The law governing labor disputes and collective bargainingMedieval studies comprises its own clerisy. The overcoming of this institutional segregationalism is an ongoing effort, one directed not just at non-medievalists but at conservative or recalcitrant persons inside the field.
1998, James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, Sylvia Tomasch, The Performance of Middle English Culture, →ISBN, page 4It centres around segregationalism, at one end of the spectrum, perhaps typified by the growth of large, selfcontained retirement communities or villages, and integration at the other, illustrated by the development of 'Lifetime Homes'.
2002, Keith Sumner, Our Homes, Our Lives - uncountablehuman sciencesThe stance that linguistic signs act (or approach acting) as fixed codes with invariant pairings of form and meaning.
The point of criticism under scrutiny squares with a possible reading of Roy Harris (e.g. 1996); every attempt to posit an abstract language amounts to 'segregationalism', isolating verbal language from other phenomena with which it may turn out to have essential links.
2004, Per Linell, The Written Language Bias in Linguistics, →ISBN2 more examples
Segregationalism, as opposed to an integrationist view of communication and the linguistic sign, separates or hypostasizes as a separable entity a linguistic sign, which leads an independent existence, has an ontic place independent of the actual and contextual circumstances of the particular act of communication, where "context" is understood as the relevant and salient perceptions of the communicants at a given moment in an act of communication.
2005, Nils Langer, Winifred Davies, Linguistic Purism in the Germanic Languages, →ISBN, page 191The essence of segregationalism lies in its initial assumption that a clear, generally valid line of demarcation can be drawn between linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena and in the consequent attempt to identify and systematise a realm of properly and purely linguistic structures and meanings independently of the actual situated practices of communicative interchange in their empirical complexity.
2009, Michael Huspek, Oppositional Discourses and Democracies, →ISBN, page 32 - broadlyuncountableThe conflation of sign and meaning.
1 more example
Sam's error is to conflate appearance and identity, to presume that a silver coat, black stilettos and red hair signify the person (Allie) he recognises from that collection of signs. Whilst discussing the tacit segregationalism of Allie, a single white female, placing an advertisement specifying that she is 'seeking the same', Lynda Hart comments how she also 'pays an exorbitant price for failing to recognise the terrors of sameness.
2012, Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and identity in the movies, →ISBN, page 143
Origin
Cite this entry
segregationalism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/segregationalism
“segregationalism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/segregationalism. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “segregationalism,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/segregationalism.
Source: segregationalism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.