Racial politics or race politics is the use of race, as a human categorization or hierarchical identifier, in political discourse, campaigns, or within the societal and cultural climate created by such practice. The phenomenon can involve the activity of political actors exploiting the issue of race to forward an agenda. North America In Canada Rosemary Brown has been described as one of the earliest politicians to attempt to challenge the divisive racial politics of Canada during the 1975 New Democratic Party leadership election. In 2015, Jagmeet Singh campaigned against police carding, in what Maclean's described was "racial politics were at the crux" of the policy. Ahead of the 2019 Canadian federal election, while describing them as "conditional multiculturalists", a National Observer analysis stated that white Canadians didn't easily engage in racial politics. In United States One of the uses of the term Racial politics in the United States is to describe racially charged political actions by Abigail Thernstrom, the vice-chairman of the U.S. commission on civil rights. The practice has been a major part of American government since its creation, and often divides the Republican and Democratic parties. The United States Government has since the time of its creation been divided, and in many ways developed based upon issues of race. In 1861 the Civil War between the Northern and Southern states of the nation was fought primarily over the Confederacy's practice of enslaving African Americans based solely on their race. Furthermore, the tension between the Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats continued for many years after as the South created Jim Crow laws and continued the segregation of individuals of color. The racial divide in the nation continued. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the, "separate but equal", doctrine was constitutional in the case Plessy v. Ferguson. Segregation was legal, so long as the segregated schools and facilities provided to whites and blacks were equal. Plaintiff Homer Plessy, tested the law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads. In 1954, the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court determined that the establishment of separate schools for whites and blacks was inherently unequal and unconstitutional. This was a major success for civil rights advocates, including the NAACP. In 1967, California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act as reaction to