Question

What is the meaning of the separate-but-equal principle?

Answer 1

The meaning of the principle "separate but equal" is to separate blacks and whites but have them both be equal in what they do and what is available to them.

A well known example of the principle is the Brown vs. Board of Education case. This was where a young African American girl had to walk over a mile to get to her school, while there was just a white school a couple blocks away. When her father realized this, he brought it up and argued that this was not "separate but equal."

After this, a lot of action was taken against the "separate but equal" schools and after years of working towards stopping the racism, segregation in schools were finally outlawed in the United States. Although this took awhile for every school to comply, it eventually worked.

The principle of "separate but equal" was inherently unequal. Although it was just meant to separate the races, but keep equality, that was not what happened the majority of the time.

Answer 2

Separate but equal. The doctrine that racial segregation is constitutional as long as the facilities provided for blacks and whites are roughly equal.