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Most Children Younger Than Age 1 Are Minorities, Census Bureau Reports

2 points by setra 10y ago

danieltillett 10y ago
Might be time to come up with a new euphemism - hard to be a minority when you are a member of the majority.
- phaemon 10y ago
  Not exactly: if you have 10 groups, each of whom comprise 6% of the population, then you have a majority of minorities!
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Of course, but when you group them all together you have a majority. It really is a lazy categorisation of people.
- dalke 10y ago
  Minority in power != minority in population. Look at apartheid era South Africa, for example, for a case where the white minority population had the large majority of power. I agree that the ambiguity is confusing. FWIW, it's also part of the traditional colonial structure. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism : > Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.[6] While the British were the minority of the population in India, they had the majority of power during colonial rule. To make it more confusing, depending on which definition of 'minority' you use, women are also a minority. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group#Gender_and_sexuality_minorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group#Gender_and_sexu... .
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    It really is abusing the term minority to label women as a minority. In every society a small minority has the majority of the power. Apartheid might be history, but the vast majority of people in South Africa have no power.
    - dalke 10y ago
      Now you're just being argumentative by deciding to use your personal ideas of what majority/minority means, then complaining when others use a different definition. Certainly the members of the Althing are a minority of the people of Iceland, and have the majority of the legislative power. But if that's your definition then it's a pretty useless one.
      - danieltillett 10y ago
        I am not the one trying to argue that minority means anything other than minority. It really is an abuse of the English language to define that a group is a minority even though they are a majority and that a former majority is still a majority because some minority of people have power. The whole point of my original post is that we need a new euphemism. Let's come up with something that is at least numerically consistent.
        dalke 10y ago
        You are trying to define it so it only applies to population size. That's not what it means. It's a shorthand for "social minority", as the top of the Wikipedia page I pointed out clearly says. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group > Minority group is a term referring to a category of people differentiated from the social majority, i.e., those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society, and may be defined by law. Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, "minority group" refers to the above-described. The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics, including: ethnicity, race, religion, caste, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular mis-association with a numerical, statistical minority.

2 points by setra 10y ago

danieltillett 10y ago

Might be time to come up with a new euphemism - hard to be a minority when you are a member of the majority.

phaemon 10y ago
Not exactly: if you have 10 groups, each of whom comprise 6% of the population, then you have a majority of minorities!
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Of course, but when you group them all together you have a majority. It really is a lazy categorisation of people.
dalke 10y ago
Minority in power != minority in population. Look at apartheid era South Africa, for example, for a case where the white minority population had the large majority of power. I agree that the ambiguity is confusing. FWIW, it's also part of the traditional colonial structure. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism : > Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.[6] While the British were the minority of the population in India, they had the majority of power during colonial rule. To make it more confusing, depending on which definition of 'minority' you use, women are also a minority. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group#Gender_and_sexuality_minorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group#Gender_and_sexu... .
- danieltillett 10y ago
  It really is abusing the term minority to label women as a minority. In every society a small minority has the majority of the power. Apartheid might be history, but the vast majority of people in South Africa have no power.
  - dalke 10y ago
    Now you're just being argumentative by deciding to use your personal ideas of what majority/minority means, then complaining when others use a different definition. Certainly the members of the Althing are a minority of the people of Iceland, and have the majority of the legislative power. But if that's your definition then it's a pretty useless one.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      I am not the one trying to argue that minority means anything other than minority. It really is an abuse of the English language to define that a group is a minority even though they are a majority and that a former majority is still a majority because some minority of people have power. The whole point of my original post is that we need a new euphemism. Let's come up with something that is at least numerically consistent.
      - dalke 10y ago
        You are trying to define it so it only applies to population size. That's not what it means. It's a shorthand for "social minority", as the top of the Wikipedia page I pointed out clearly says. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group > Minority group is a term referring to a category of people differentiated from the social majority, i.e., those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society, and may be defined by law. Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, "minority group" refers to the above-described. The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics, including: ethnicity, race, religion, caste, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular mis-association with a numerical, statistical minority.