In what ways is apartheid similar to the treatment African Americans received in the United States?

The apertheid and the US racial segregation were similar systems which, essentially, had the same goal: to keep the white population in power. The apartheid was a system that was designed to keep the majority of the population, which was black and asian, under the power of the government, which was white. In South Africa, the white population was the minority, and in this case the minority oppressed the majority to ensure that all races were unequal before the law.
In the US, racial segregation started when the majority of the population, which was white, wanted to ensure that the newly-freed men and women (after the abolition of slavery), who were black, couldn't share the same social, economic, or political status as white people—or have the same civil rights. The American Constitution guaranteed equality for all free people; however, it failed to include the African American population in that context. In this case, we have a majority oppressing a minority to ensure that all people were equal before the law, except for black people.