Are You Still Struggling with the Word “Minority”?
I couldn’t tell you how old I was when I first heard the word minority, as a reference to Black people. I was probably in high school. And at the time, it made sense. There are less Black people in this country than there are white people, therefore, we are the minority. It was clear cut in my more naïve youth. But over the years, as I have lived and gained experience and witnessed the joys and horrors of being alive, let alone being alive in the Unites States, I think something about the word, minority, began to nag at me in my sub-conscious. Not enough to vocalize, but enough for a semi-permanent question mark to register in my mind surrounding the subject.
Minority has got many definitions, but there are two that are most important.
- Minority: the smaller in number of two groups constituting a whole. This is what I refer to as the naïve or mathematic definition.
- Minority: a part of a population thought of as differing from the rest of the population in some characteristics and often subjected to differential treatment. This is what I refer to as the definition you use when your eyes are open, and you realize you’re knee deep in shit.
Essentially, minority means less.
So not only is it problematic for Black people in this country, who are the historically…
