Thus, sociologists frequently use the term ‘minority’ in a non-literal way to refer to a group’s subordinate position within society, rather than its numerical representation. There are many cases in which a ‘minority’ is in fact in the majority! In some geographical areas such as inner cities, ethnic minority groups may make up the majority of the population, but are nonetheless referred to as ‘minorities’. This is because the term ‘minority’ captures their disadvantaged positions. Women are sometimes described as a minority group, while in many countries of the world they form the numerical majority. Yet women tend to be disadvantaged in comparison with men (the ‘majority’), the term is applied to them as well.

Members of minority groups often tend to see themselves as a people apart from the majority. They are usually physically and socially isolated from the larger community. They tend to be concentrated in certain neighbourhoods, cities or regions of a country. There is little intermarriage between those in the majority and members of the minority group, or between minority groups. People within the minority sometimes actively promote endogamy (marriage within the group) in order to keep alive their cultural distinctiveness.

Some scholars have favoured speaking of ‘minorities’ to refer collectively to groups that have experienced prejudice at the hands of the ‘majority’ society. The term ‘minorities’ draws attention to the pervasiveness of discrimination by highlighting the commonalities between experiences of various subordinate groups within society. For example, different minority groups share many features in common and reveal how oppression against different groups can take similar forms. At the same time, however, speaking collectively of ‘minorities’ can result in generalizations about discrimination and oppression that do not accurately reflect the experiences of individual groups.

Many minorities may be both ethnically and physically distinct from the rest of the population. Indeed, ethnic distinctions are rarely neutral, but are commonly associated with inequalities of wealth and power, as well as with antagonisms between groups.

Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice refers to opinions or attitudes held by members of one group towards another. A prejudiced person’s preconceived views are often based on hearsay rather than on direct evidence, and are resistant to change even in the face of new information. People may harbour favourable prejudices about groups with which they identify and negative prejudices against others. Someone who is prejudiced against a particular group will refuse to give it a fair hearing.

Prejudices are often grounded in stereotypes, fixed and inflexible characterizations of a group of people. Stereotypes are often applied to ethnic minority groups, such as the notion that all whites are intellectually superior to the blacks; men are intellectually superior to women, and so on. We all know that racial superiority is a myth. Some stereotypes are highly over-exaggerated; others are simply a mechanism of displacement, in which feelings of hostility or anger are directed against objects that are not the real origin of those feelings. Stereotypes become embedded in cultural understandings and are difficult to erode, even when they are gross distortions of reality. The belief that unemployed youth are dependent on welfare and refuse to work is an example of a persistent stereotype that lacks basis in fact. A great number of unemployed youth prefer to work hard but have no access to gainful employment opportunities in countries such as India.