AGENCE GLOBAL
Released: 1/Sept/2009
There is no state in the modern world without "minorities." Or to put it another way, there is in every state some group that is socially defined as the high status group, whether this is defined by race, religion, language, ethnicity, or some combination of these attributes. And there are always others who do not share these attributes. The "minorities" almost always have less access to economic, political, and socio-cultural rights. They are in that elementary sense oppressed and feel that they are oppressed. Usually they seek in one way or another to obtain the equal status to which they feel they are entitled as citizens of the state. A minority is not a numerical concept. There are some "minorities" that constitute the majority of the citizenry.
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Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).
