What exactly was wrong with apartheid?

At root the act of defining people in arbitrary phoney ‘racial’ categories then allocating them special territories accordingly (‘homelands’).

Just as happens in some bookshops these days (HT Ed Driscoll):

What a great idea! Putting all the novels about black people in a single section! Why didn’t I think of that? But wait—wait—how many of the characters have to be black before the novel does go into that section? Does just one black character make the whole novel black or is there a special section for mulatto novels with characters of both colors?

And if all the novels about black people are in the black section, does that make the Literature section the white section? Why don’t we call it that then? I’m confused.

And hey, what about The Adventures of Augie March—do I find that in the Jewish section? No, don’t be an idiot. Important novels about Jews trying to find their place in America go in the Literature section, of course. What are you, an anti-semite?

Only important novels about blacks trying to find their place in America go in a special section of their own. Anything else would be hateful. 

Got it now?