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Concept
Minority group
Summary
The term 'minority group' has different usages, depending on the context. According to its common usage, the term minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half, is a 'minority’. Usually a minority group is disempowered relative to the majority, and that characteristic lends itself to different applications of the term minority.
In terms of sociology, economics, and politics, a demographic that takes up the smallest fraction of the population is not necessarily labelled the 'minority’ if it wields dominant power. In the academic context, the terms 'Minority' and 'majority' are used in terms of hierarchical power structures. For example, in South Africa, during Apartheid, white Europeans held virtually all social, economic, and political power over black Africans. For this reason, black Africans are the 'minority group’, despite the fact that they outnumber white Europeans in South Africa. This is why academics more frequently use the term 'minority group' to refer to a category of people that experience relative disadvantage, as compared to members of a dominant social group. To address this ambiguity, Harris Mylonas has proposed the term 'non-core group’, instead of 'minority group’, to refer to any aggregation of individuals that is perceived as an unassimilated ethnic group (on a linguistic, religious, physical, or ideological basis) by the ruling political elite of a country" and reserves the term 'minority' only for groups that have been granted minority rights by their state of residence.
Minority group membership is typically based on differences in observable characteristics or practices, such as: ethnicity (ethnic minority), race (racial minority), religion (religious minority), sexual orientation (sexual minority), or disability. The framework of intersectionality can be used to recognize that an individual may simultaneously hold membership in multiple minority groups (e.g.
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