Dominant minority

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A dominant minority is a minority group that has overwhelming political, economic or cultural dominance in a country despite representing a small fraction of the overall population (a demographic minority). Dominant minorities are also known as alien elites if they are recent immigrants.

The term is most commonly used to refer to an ethnic group which is defined along racial, national, religious or cultural lines and that holds a disproportionate amount of power. A notable example is South Africa before 1994, where White South Africans – or Afrikaners more specifically – wielded predominant control of the country despite never composing more than 20% of the population. African American-descended nationals in Liberia, Sunni Arabs in Ba'athist Iraq, the Alawite minority in Syria (since 1970 under the rule of the Alawite Assad family), and the Tutsi in Rwanda since the 1990s have also been cited as current or recent examples.

Examples

Current:

• Alawites in Syria^[1]
• Muhajirs (Urdu-speakers) in Pakistan^[2][3]
• East Bankers in Jordan
• Sunni Muslims in Bahrain^[4][5][6]

Historical:

• Afro-Guyanese in Guyana
• Ahom Tribe in erstwhile Ahom Kingdom now modern-day Assam, India ^[7]
• Americo-Liberians in Liberia ^[8][9][10]
• Anglophones in Quebec prior and up until the Quiet Revolution
• Anglo-Burmese, Burmese Indians, Chinese Burmese and Burmese Christians in British Burma (modern-day Myanmar)
• Arabs in the Zanzibar Sultanate
• Austrians in the Austrian Empire
• Austrians and Hungarians in Austria-Hungary
• Brahmins in the caste system in India
• Caldoches in New Caledonia
• Catholics in French colonial Vietnam then divided as the three separate protectorates of Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin
• Catholics in South Vietnam
• Chagatai in the Mughal Empire, India
• Dutch and Indo people in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia)
• French Lusignans in medieval Cyprus
• Germans in what is now Baltic States during the Order, subsequent local German states, Swedish rule in Estonia and later the Russian Empire
• Greeks in Alexandrian Empire
• Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt
• Greeks in Seleucid Empire
• Indian Muslims in Islamic Empires in India during the Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent
• Japanese in Taiwan during Japanese colonial rule
• Japanese in Korea during Japanese colonial rule
• Japanese in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo
• Krios in Sierra Leone
• Lebanese Christians before the Lebanese Civil War
• Mainland Chinese in Taiwan (Republic of China) during the martial law period
• Manchurians in the Qing Dynasty, China
• Mongolians in the Yuan Dynasty, China
• Norman French in the Norman Dynasty of England
• Peninsulares in the New World, modern-day Mexico, Colombia, Philippines, Cuba, and other nations of the former Spanish Empire
• Pieds-Noirs in French Algeria
• The Protestant Ascendancy in British-ruled Ireland
• Sudanese Arabs in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (modern-day Sudan and South Sudan)
• Arab Sunni Muslims in Saddam Hussein-era Iraq
• Turks in the Ottoman Empire
• Walloons in Belgium before World War II
• White Namibians in South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia)
• White South Africans in South Africa under apartheid
• White Zimbabweans in Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe)
• Sunni Muslim Arabs in Ba'athist Iraq

See also

• Middleman minority
• Minoritarianism
• Model minority
• World on Fire, a book that introduces the concept of "market-dominant minority"
• We are the 99%

Footnotes

References

• Barzilai, Gad. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). ISBN 978-0-472-03079-8
• Gibson, Richard. African Liberation Movements: Contemporary Struggles against White Minority Rule (Institute of Race Relations: Oxford University Press, London, 1972). ISBN 0-19-218402-4
• Russell, Margo and Martin. Afrikaners of the Kalahari: White Minority in a Black State ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979). ISBN 0-521-21897-7
• Johnson, Howard and Watson, Karl (eds.). The white minority in the Caribbean (Wiener Publishing, Princeton, NJ, 1998). ISBN 976-8123-10-9, ISBN 1-55876-161-6
• Chua, Amy. World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (Doubleday, New York, 2003). ISBN 0-385-50302-4
• Haviland, William. Cultural Anthropology. (Vermont: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993). p. 250-252. ISBN 0-15-508550-6.