Minority Groups in Society

Minorities are social groups whose members have less control over their fate than do members of dominant segments of society, who commonly hold minorities in low regard. Thus, minorities are defined with respect to their position within a society's hierarchy in terms of (a) power or control that group members have over their lives, (b) status or prestige afforded to group membership, or (c) both.

Frequently, minority groups are smaller than other groups in the society. African Americans in the United States and the French-speaking citizens of Canada are examples of numerically small minorities. Minorities, however, may be comparable in size to the rest of the society, as is the case with women in most societies. Or they can be more numerous than the rest of the society, as, for example, were Blacks in South Africa or Shiites in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime. Size in itself does not make a group a minority. Rather, it is the group's social position. Some groups with relatively few members may hold power or be high in status. Numerically small groups that exert disproportional power over the rest of the society (e.g., top military, political, or business leaders) or that enjoy high status (e.g., aristocracy in some European countries) constitute a separate social category that can be termed elites.

Salient characteristics shared by members of a minority group can be social, psychological, or physical. Thus, we may talk about racial, ethnic, gender, and religious minorities, as illustrated by the aforementioned examples. In addition, minority position may stem from political orientation (e.g., Libertarians), sexual orientation (e.g., gays), mental health (e.g., people with schizophrenia), physical health (e.g., AIDS patients), or physical disability (e.g., deaf people). For a minority to become a distinguishable social entity, most of its members must become aware of characteristics that distinguish them from the rest of the society and perceive that they are treated in the same, typically negative, manner by the dominant members of the society.

Disparity in power that distinguishes minorities from majorities leads to disparities in the distribution of positive and negative societal outcomes. Minority groups get a smaller share of benefits but a larger share of social and economic burdens. For example, members of minority groups have less access to education, health care, and well-paid jobs than do members of the dominant segments of a society. At the same time, they are more likely to be unemployed, in poorer health, and incarcerated. It is not uncommon for a minority group to be kept apart (e.g., Jewish ghettos) or even directly persecuted (e.g., the Holocaust).