Of Swords and Parasols

Not too sure how it all worked in America but, from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_under_apartheid):

The government segregated education, medical care, and other public services, and provided black people with services greatly inferior to those of whites, and, to a lesser extent, to those of Indians and coloureds. The education system practised in 'black schools' was designed to prepare blacks for lives as a labouring class.

("Indian" here meaning South Asian). The situation in South Africa was much better known than the situation in America back when I was at school, probably because the South African segregation era was still at its height while America had been beginning to grow up since the `sixties (as far as I can tell).