Apartheid in South Africa and the United States?: A Tale of Two Countries

Fareeda McClinton, University of Pennsylvania
Tukufu Zuberi, University of Pennsylvania

In American Apartheid (Massey and Denton, 1993), the authors assert that residential segregation of blacks in the United States is comparable to South African apartheid. In this paper, we present a critical analysis of Massey and Denton’s (1993) hypothesis. We compare the historical context of segregation in the United States and South Africa. Next, we compare the impact of racial residential segregation of blacks from whites in the US and in South Africa. We question the comparison of residential segregation of blacks in the US with that of blacks in South Africa. We provide a more historically nuanced comparison of segregation in the two nations.