What is a minority? Why are specific ethnic groups referred to as minorities?
At the time of the last UK census (2011) statistics showed that 87% of the UK population identified themselves with the ethnic grouping ‘White’: hence (presumably) the tendency in the UK for anyone not identified as ‘White’ to be labelled as a minority. Is this appropriate? The current world population is somewhere above 7.6 billion people – with 1.2 billion in Africa, and 4.5 billion in Asia (including 1.3 billion in each of China and India) all of which have populations which are predominantly ‘Non-White’. Surely therefore any perception that ‘White’ people are a majority is purely parochial… and as such, perhaps we should question our criteria?
If a minority is a group which is different from a larger group of which it is a part, then by labelling a group as a minority we are assuming that they are of a similar ilk: are all ‘Whites’ the same and all ‘Asians’ the same? If a person’s ethnicity does not matter, then it should not be used as a criteria for evaluation – under any circumstance.
If we want to ensure equal regard for people of all types, then we should perhaps stop labelling them as minorities…
Can a man (or woman) wearing glasses class somebody else as “disabled”?
The reality is that we all have limitations, unless we have an I.Q. of heaven knows, Olympic athleticism, looks of (enter your own name here) and empathy of a sincere religious leader (some chance) we are all disabled.
Only 50% of us are above average in any particular sphere, except male drivers QED.
I think they are using the term in relation to UK population and it is helpful when we assess/measure population movement etc at census time. It is of course parochial, but only in terms of the UK being a parish.
But this is precisely the problem – the mindset is all wrong. Separating Britain off into its own little group allows it to justify the use of such parochial criteria – which in turn can support unfair treatment. By removing any semblance of empirical measurement – you open the door to bias.
It is only ‘parochial’ in the sense that we use/collect the data for use in the UK.
We use the collected data for empirical purposes, and would be open to major criticism if we ignored population movement, make up etc.
Your argument only reinforces my point surrounding the parochial nature of such thinking… the collection of data concerning ethnicity is not permitted in France and yet they somehow manage; in addition to which what justifies measuring data from just Britain? Does this include Jersey? Does it include the British Virgin Islands? If not, why not? If the scope of an ethnic group (say caucasians) can extend beyond a nation’s boundary, then so should the measurement – otherwise it suffers from a bias and is not empirical.
Does the phrase “divide and conquer” ring any bells?
Hence religion, race, colour (or color), sports generally (especially the Olympics), county, country or male/female are false barriers to harmony.
The reality is that as societies we create differences to justify wars, unfair funding and prejudice.
Newspapers highlight benefit fraud, foreigners and the unemployed to justify their own prejudices too.
The disabled are in this sense just another minority to be counted and then separated on their long road to being ignored by the selfish “born again” and thus now perfect, hypocrites.