Dominant minority

For other uses, see Minority (disambiguation).

A dominant minority, also called elite dominance 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, cultural or tribal lines and that holds a disproportionate amount of power. A notable example is South Africa during the apartheid regime, where White South Africans, or Afrikaners more specifically, wielded predominant control of the country, despite never composing more than 22 per cent 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.

In Brazil, despite the majority of its population be racial Black African or Pardo, those groups nevertheless live impoverished, have a high illiteracy rate, and are most likely to live in Favelas (a Brazilian Portuguese slang for a slum), in contrast, the white minority population in the country has more easy access to a better education, job opportunities, high wages, etc. Besides, a white person in Brazil is most likely to belong to the middle or upper-class when compared to a dark-skinned individual.

See also

• Colonialism, particularly exploitation colonialism and plantation colonies
• Elitism
• Middleman minority
• Minoritarianism
• Minority influence
• Model minority
• Neocolonialism
• Pseudo-secularism
• Tyranny of the majority
• World on Fire, a book that introduces the concept of "market-dominant minority"

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.