Sociologists define a minority by power, not by headcount
In everyday speech a minority is simply the smaller group. Academics mean something else: a group at a disadvantage relative to a dominant one. Under apartheid, black South Africans vastly outnumbered white South Africans, yet they were the minority group in the scholarly sense because nearly all power sat with the whites.
The word has drifted a long way. In the nineteenth century it mostly described political parties in legislatures. It could mean the educated and prosperous, who feared being swamped as voting rights widened; historian Jenifer Hart put it as those who have feeling threatened by those who want. It also meant the losing side in a two-party contest, or third parties of workers, farmers and socialists who won many votes but few seats.
The modern sense emerged at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to 1920, which applied minority to ethnic, national, linguistic and religious groups making up less than half a state's population, and is credited with launching the idea of minority rights. The League of Nations Minorities Commission defined members in 1919 as nationals belonging to racial, religious or linguistic minorities.
Sociologists refined the idea. Louis Wirth described people singled out for unequal treatment because of physical or cultural traits, who therefore see themselves as targets of collective discrimination, a definition mixing objective and subjective tests. Joe Feagin listed five features: subordination, traits the dominant group disapproves of, a shared identity and burden, social rules about who belongs, and a tendency to marry within the group. Intersectionality recognises that one person can belong to several minorities, or to a minority in one respect and a dominant group in another.
Not everyone likes the vocabulary. Harris Mylonas proposed non-core group for any population the ruling elite sees as unassimilated, reserving minority for groups granted formal minority rights. Other sociologists argue the minority and majority split ignores shifting identities and ties across borders, and some prefer historically excluded groups to stress the legacy of oppression. Every country contains some diversity, including immigrant, indigenous and nomadic communities.
Source: Minority group
