apartheid

noun

1. (South-Africa, countable, historical, uncountable)The 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”

   “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.”

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

2. (broadly, countable, uncountable)Any 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.”

   “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 […] .”

   “Jim Crow miscegenation laws enforced apartheid in marriage.”

3. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A policy or situation of segregation based on some specified attribute.

   “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.”

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

verb

1. (transitive)To 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.”

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

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

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

   “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.”