But not overtly so. It seems ill-intentioned to some of us today, but consider the people who were in favour of it:

"We are not mistreating them! We are treating them equally. We are keeping the races separate because [whatever reason], but nobody is being mistreated. We are being well-intentioned and everyone can still have equality."

The people who believed and supported separate-but-equal were genuinely thinking they were well-intentioned. They thought it was a good and necessary thing.

>The people who believed and supported separate-but-equal were genuinely thinking they were well-intentioned.

Many still do about a small subset of life. Separate bathrooms, separate living quarters, separate locker rooms, etc.