Racial Separatism vs Racial Supremacy

Many people feel that Racial Separatism and Racial Supremacy is often confused. Many White Separatists often emphisize this distinction, because of being accused of racism. They assert tha racism is equivalent to racial supremacy and not separatism.

Racial Supremacy

See also: Racism, White Supremacy and Black Supremacy

People with racist beliefs might hate certain groups of people according to their racial groups. In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or get preferential treatment. The term racism usually denotes race-based prejudice, violence, discrimination, or oppression. The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.
Racism also usually involves the idea that one racial group has the right to dominate others.

Racial Separatism

This is the belief that all cultures are equal and all races and ethnic groups have the right to develop their own culture separately. No race should dominate another and no race is inherantly superior to another. Racial differences, however, should be respected and miscegenation is strongly opposed, because it is seen as a main threat to a specific group of people's culture. Likewise, it opposes racism and sees separation as the best way for the different racial groups to live in harmony with each other.

Two forms of racial separatism exist:

Segregation

See also: Racial Segregation

Racial segregation is characterized by separation of different racial groups in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Racial segregation is enforced by the goverment of a multicultural nation, which seeks to preserve the different cultures within the borders of the same state.

Homeland Separatism

See also: White Separatism and Black separatism

This policy firmly supports the idea that all different ethnic or racial groups have the right to self-determination in their own homeland. No cultural group should govern over another and different cultures should live in peace and harmony with each other by developing separately in their own nation-state.

The Apartheid question

Many scholars disagree on which of the above categories Apartheid is to be placed. Opponents of the system claim that Apartheid was a form of legalized racism, based on white superiority. However, supporters of Apartheid generally affirm that Apartheid was a form of separatism. The question remains, however, weither Apartheid was a segregationist or a homeland-separatist policy. Some white separatists often claim that Apartheid was in essence a form of Homeland Separatism and a foreign policy, which merely tolerated segregationism in its implementation.

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