“I’m Nobody’s ‘Minority'”

A Discriminating (which is to say, DISCRIMINATIONS) reader thought, correctly, that I would be interested in the following anecdote:

I was standing on line to get into the Supreme Court yesterday, and the gentleman next to me introduced himself as a civil litigator from Puerto Rico in town on vacation. At some point affirmative action and race came up, and he said (and I’m paraphrasing) “I have a bachelor’s, master’s, and law degree. I speak two languages fluently. I’m nobody’s ‘minority.'” He also noted he got his degrees without relying on racial preferences.

What is obvious here is the resentment many “minorities” (quotes, because of the speaker’s rejection of the term) feel at the widespread suspicion they encounter that they do not deserve what they’ve earned, that their accomplishments result only from preferences they’ve received. We’ve talked about this before.

What is less obvious, but perhaps more striking, is hidden but implicit in the comment, “I’m nobody’s ‘minority'”: the troubling evidence that the very term ‘minority’ has come to be associated with receiving undeserved, preferential benefits. Some would say that’s progress because it’s better than “minority” connoting “victim of discrimination.”

Some wouldn’t.

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  1. Laura December 2, 2003 at 6:44 pm | | Reply

    “Minor” also connotes a child under 18 (or 21, depending); someone who can’t be expected to stand on his own two feet, make his own decisions, solve his own problems. I’d hate to have the “minority” label stuck on me for life. (I could say “woman” is bad enough, except that that one has changed tremendously and for the better during my lifetime.)

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