Since the Caste System was based on ranking, the higher castes misused it to overpower the lower ones.

It went to such intolerable levels as to the creation of the idea of 'untouchables' - those who were considered substandard humans.

A caste system is a type of social structure which divides people on the basis of inherited social status. Even though many societies could be described in this way, within a caste system, people are rigidly expected to marry and interact with people of the same social class. India has a well known example of a caste system, although various forms of caste systems can be found in many other cultures as well.

The South African Apartheid

Whites Asian South Africans coloured South African

Until 1994 South Africa was ruled by a white minority government which was so determined to hang onto power. The white government which came to power in 1948 enforcing a separation of races with its policy called apartheid; it was a case of legal segregation. The government poisoned and bombed opponents and encouraged trouble in neighbouring countries. One of these opponents being Nelson Mandela who was jailed for 27 years for campaigning against the apartheid. Once release Mandela was awarded a noble peace prize (1993) and just 5 months later for the first time in South Africa's history, all races voted in democratic and he was elected the president of South Africa.

Slavery In America

Slavery in the United States was a form of free labour which existed as a legal organization in North America for more than a century before the beginning of the United States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Although other people, both white and Native American, have been held as slaves in North America. African people would still be captured by outsiders in there villages which were mostly in west Africa then they would sell you to somebody else. Half of the people captured died of hunger or sickness on the journey to north America. When they got to North America, they would be sold a few weeks later so they could get healthier. Most people went to southern states like Mississippi to pick cotton, though a few people went further north, to the Carolinas, to plant and pick tobacco.

Slavery was abolished in America in 1865.