During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis made Jews wear yellow ribbons or stars of David with the word ""Jude"" ("Jew") on them. Racial laws discriminated against Jews and Roma people (Gypsies). For example, Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Aryan patients; Jewish professors were not allowed to teach Aryan students. Jews were not allowed to use any public transportation, besides the ferry; ride bicycles; or ride in cars. They were allowed to shop only from 3:00pm to 5:00pm, and only in stores owned by Jews. They could not go to theaters, swimming pools, or any other places for entertainment.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to kill all of the Jews and Roma in Europe. They also killed millions of Slavic people (including Ukrainian, Soviet, and Polish people), because they saw Slavs as an inferior race. First the Nazis forced Jews and Roma to live in ghettoes, apart from everyone else. Then they sent millions of Jews, Roma, and Slavs to concentration camps and death camps.
Also, between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish people were deported to Nazi Germany for forced labour. Nazi Germany also used forced laborers from Western Europe. However, Polish people and other Eastern Europeans who the Nazis viewed as racially inferior were treated much worse. They were forced to wear a cloth tag on their clothing with the letter "P" on it, which showed that they were Polish. They had to follow a curfew and could not use public transportation. Usually, they had to work longer hours, for lower pay, than Western Europeans. In many cities, they had to live in segregated barracks, behind barbed wire. They were not allowed to talk to Germans outside of work. If they had sexual relations with Germans, they would be executed.
During the Tang Dynasty, the Han Chinese passed several laws that segregated non-Chinese people from Chinese people. In 779, the Tang Dynasty made a rule which forced Uighurs to wear their traditional ethnic clothing, not Chinese clothing. It also banned them from 'pretending' to be Chinese, and from marrying Chinese women. The Han Chinese disliked the Uighurs because they loaned money for interest.
In 836, when Lu Chun was appointed governor of Canton, he was disgusted to find Chinese living with foreigners and marrying them. Lu made segregation the law. He made it illegal for non-Chinese people to marry Chinese people or to own property. The law specifically banned Chinese from forming relationships with "Dark peoples" or "People of color." This meant foreigners like "Iranians, Sogdians, Arabs, Indians, Malays, Sumatrans", and others.
In 1938, Italy was ruled by a fascist regime led by Benito Mussolini. The regime was allied with Nazi Germany. Under pressure from the Nazis, the regime passed several laws that said the Italian Empire would now practice segregation. They called these laws the 'provvedimenti per la difesa della razza' (norms for the defence of the race).
The laws especially targeted Jews. For example, Jews could not:
Because of these laws, Italy lost some of its best scientists. Some were fired. For example, Rita Levi-Montalcini, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was told she could no longer work at her university. Others left Italy because of the laws. For example, Enrico Fermi, who worked on the first nuclear reactor and won the Nobel Prize for Physics, left the country. (His wife was Jewish.) Many other well-known scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and other scholars lost their jobs or left Italy because of the race laws.
Albert Einstein resigned from his honorary membership at the Accademia dei Lincei, an Italian science academy, to protest the race laws.
After 1943, when Northern Italy was occupied by the Nazis, Italian Jews were taken to Nazi concentration camps and death camps.
For centuries, Jews in Europe were often forced to live in segregated ghettos and shtetls (small towns where mostly Jews lived). In 1204, the Pope ordered Jews to segregate themselves from Christians and to wear clothing that marked them as Jews. Forced segregation of Jews spread throughout Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries.
In the Russian Empire, starting in the 1790s, Jews were only allowed to live in the Pale of Settlement. This was the Western frontier of the Russian Empire, about where Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine are today. By the early 20th century, most European Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement.
In Morocco, beginning in the 15th century, Jewish people were segregated in "mellahs". In cities, a "mellah" was a separate area for Jews, surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway. Rural "mellahs" were separate villages where only Jews lived.
In the middle of the 19th century, historian J.J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews:
When Spanish people came to the Americas and made Latin American countries into colonies, they created a caste system based on race. They came up with fifteen different categories of people based on their race mixtures, including categories like "mulatto" and "mestizo". People who were "whiter" or more "Spanish" had a higher social status than people who were "darker" or more Native American. People who were "darker" were treated as inferior and faced discrimination for example, they had to pay higher taxes than "whiter" people.
Usually, when they won their independence from Spain, most Latin American countries made laws against caste systems. However, prejudice based on race remains.
Racial segregation in South Africa began when the country was a Dutch colony. The Dutch landed at Cape Town in 1652 and gradually took over more and more of the country. Segregation continued when the British Empire took over the Cape of Good Hope in 1795.
Slavery existed in South Africa until 1833. However, two years later, the government passed a law that changed slaves into indentured servants. This system was not very different from slavery. Throughout the rest of the 1800s, the South African colonies passed laws that limited these worker's rights and freedoms.
In 1894 and 1905, the government passed laws saying that "Indians" and 'blacks" had no right to vote. Other laws discriminated against non-whites, but were not as bad as the apartheid laws that would come within the next 50 years.
Apartheid in South Africa started in 1948. At that time, the National Party won control of the South African government. This political party was made up of Afrikaner people. Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the 1600s and 1700s. The National Party believed in Afrikaner nationalism.
The National Party passed apartheid laws to make racial segregation the law in South Africa. Some of the most important laws included:
Under these apartheid laws, between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million non-white South Africans were forced to leave their homes and move into segregated neighborhoods. This is one of the largest mass removals in modern history.
Other laws made it illegal for a person to marry or have sex with a person of a different race. Then, in 1969, the government took away "Coloured" people's right to vote. Since "Indians" and "blacks" had not been allowed to vote for decades, this meant that whites were the only people in South Africa who were allowed to vote.
In 1970, non-whites were banned from having representatives in the government. That same year, black people's South African citizenship was taken away.