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> the Igbo are clearly a merchant minority Do you actually have anything to back this up that isn't a cursory read of Wikipedia? Who exactly of the over four h

> the Igbo are clearly a merchant minority Do you actually have anything to back this up that isn't a cursory read of Wikipedia? Who exactly of the over four hundred ethnic groups in Nigeria do you think is the majority to the Igbo "minority"? How on earth are you classifying populations in diaspora to people who, again, are living in their own country? > they’ve clearly been subjects of mob mass killings, aka pogroms as well as government sponsored mass killings based on their ethnic identity Ethnic discrimination does not automatically equal "merchant minority" (or a minority at all, in fact). The ethnic discrimination against the Igbo in Nigeria is a more complex situation than "foreigners bad" or "minorities different"; it's rooted more in colonialism than in anything else. Which is understandably difficult for people in the West to understand, but it would probably be easier if they stopped trying to fit everything into the boxes they know and actually engaged with what was before them. > If you guessed the ethnic makeup of Nigerians based on US or British populations you’d think Igbo were at least half of the population, not a minority. And the other half would almost entirely be Yoruba, but I don't see you leaping to call the Yoruba a merchant minority.

barry-cotter 7y ago
The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist. I’m sure there are liminal groups who are Igbo enough to be discriminated against in Hausa or Fulani areas but different enough that in majority Igbo areas they wouldn’t be considered “real” Igbo. Having fuzzy boundaries doesn’t disqualify an ethnic group from existence or we wouldn’t have any. This consciousness marks them as different and in areas where they’re a minority that makes them a minority. They’re also clearly disproportionately involved in commerce. As you said > there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme. If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority. They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms but as I said previously Yankees are another example which were never subject to that experience. In Ireland the Protestant minority used to fill a similar role. > And the other half would almost entirely be Yoruba, but I don't see you leaping to call the Yoruba a merchant minority. If the Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba had been put into one state by the British, the Igbo had not abc there was enough inter-state hostility to prevent migration the Yoruba would be that *Nigeria’s merchant minority. The Yoruba are clearly more commercial than either of the other groups. But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority. Classification as a merchant minority is a matter of degrees. Protestants in Ireland, Yankees in the US, Germans along the historic borderlands with the Slavs, all of these groups were a lot more involved in trade than the majority popular but they also engaged heavily in primary production. Classic merchant minorities like Jews, Armenians or Parsis didn’t. Igbo are clearly closer to the first group than the second in those areas where they’re a majority.
- filleduchaos 7y ago
  Have you considered that looking up things on the Internet is not exactly a suitable proxy for actually having experience with a situation? When I mentioned Western arrogance, I wasn't anticipating that I was going to run full-tilt into it immediately. > The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist. I don't quite see how that has anything in the slightest to do with what I said - I mentioned nothing about fuzzy boundaries, and what you are "sure of" unfortunately (or fortunately) has no actual bearing on what is real. The barest real knowledge of Nigerian history would have informed you that the Igbo have been in the north of the country for less than a hundred years, which is pretty much no time at all when talking about ethnic groups. > As you said >> there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme. If you did not understand what I said, you might as well have said so rather than go on a Wikipedia binge to seem knowledgeable. That statement was referring to the society-wide master-apprentice system that the Igbo have, undeniably capitalist but inherently prioritizing the success of the collective over the success of the individual. > If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority. They are not a minority, but I am rather tired of trying to explain that to somebody who apparently thinks US/European-type demographics are the only kind that exists. How, exactly, do you call one of three major groups that each make up twenty-something percent of a population a minority without falling over the cognitive dissonance? > They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms They were not subject to pogroms because they were a "minority", jesus christ. The '66 pogroms in Northern Nigeria were part of a countercoup in disproportionate response to a coup d'etat earlier the same year which had ended the lives of (amongst others) two especially beloved Northern political leaders - Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the Northern premier/Sokoto's crown prince Ahmadu Bello - and placed Easterners in power instead. The pogroms and the ensuing civil war, which Western Nigeria took opportunistic advantage of, were largely an attempt to reconsolidate power in the North. Oh actually never mind me, it was just "'minorities' bad" and not a complex political situation in a newly independent country. > But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority. Or consider that of the Igbo are not among the ethnic groups in Nigeria that could possibly be called merchant minorities - but that would actually require knowing more than a quick Google about the country. For example, it's rather clear that you're unaware of the history between the Yoruba and the Hausa both prior to and during the colonial era, or that the Fulani are an actual minority ethnic group both in Northern Nigeria and in the country as a whole and would actually be fairly classifiable as a "merchant minority" if we cared to apply political labels made for populations in diaspora to people living in their own country - the Fulɓe are semi-sedentary, widely dispersed, tend to live in ethnic enclaves, and have formed several ethnic subgroups throughout West Africa due to integration with clear majority populations.

barry-cotter 7y ago

The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist. I’m sure there are liminal groups who are Igbo enough to be discriminated against in Hausa or Fulani areas but different enough that in majority Igbo areas they wouldn’t be considered “real” Igbo. Having fuzzy boundaries doesn’t disqualify an ethnic group from existence or we wouldn’t have any. This consciousness marks them as different and in areas where they’re a minority that makes them a minority. They’re also clearly disproportionately involved in commerce. As you said > there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme. If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority. They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms but as I said previously Yankees are another example which were never subject to that experience. In Ireland the Protestant minority used to fill a similar role. > And the other half would almost entirely be Yoruba, but I don't see you leaping to call the Yoruba a merchant minority. If the Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba had been put into one state by the British, the Igbo had not abc there was enough inter-state hostility to prevent migration the Yoruba would be that *Nigeria’s merchant minority. The Yoruba are clearly more commercial than either of the other groups. But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority. Classification as a merchant minority is a matter of degrees. Protestants in Ireland, Yankees in the US, Germans along the historic borderlands with the Slavs, all of these groups were a lot more involved in trade than the majority popular but they also engaged heavily in primary production. Classic merchant minorities like Jews, Armenians or Parsis didn’t. Igbo are clearly closer to the first group than the second in those areas where they’re a majority.

filleduchaos 7y ago
Have you considered that looking up things on the Internet is not exactly a suitable proxy for actually having experience with a situation? When I mentioned Western arrogance, I wasn't anticipating that I was going to run full-tilt into it immediately. > The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist. I don't quite see how that has anything in the slightest to do with what I said - I mentioned nothing about fuzzy boundaries, and what you are "sure of" unfortunately (or fortunately) has no actual bearing on what is real. The barest real knowledge of Nigerian history would have informed you that the Igbo have been in the north of the country for less than a hundred years, which is pretty much no time at all when talking about ethnic groups. > As you said >> there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme. If you did not understand what I said, you might as well have said so rather than go on a Wikipedia binge to seem knowledgeable. That statement was referring to the society-wide master-apprentice system that the Igbo have, undeniably capitalist but inherently prioritizing the success of the collective over the success of the individual. > If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority. They are not a minority, but I am rather tired of trying to explain that to somebody who apparently thinks US/European-type demographics are the only kind that exists. How, exactly, do you call one of three major groups that each make up twenty-something percent of a population a minority without falling over the cognitive dissonance? > They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms They were not subject to pogroms because they were a "minority", jesus christ. The '66 pogroms in Northern Nigeria were part of a countercoup in disproportionate response to a coup d'etat earlier the same year which had ended the lives of (amongst others) two especially beloved Northern political leaders - Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the Northern premier/Sokoto's crown prince Ahmadu Bello - and placed Easterners in power instead. The pogroms and the ensuing civil war, which Western Nigeria took opportunistic advantage of, were largely an attempt to reconsolidate power in the North. Oh actually never mind me, it was just "'minorities' bad" and not a complex political situation in a newly independent country. > But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority. Or consider that of the Igbo are not among the ethnic groups in Nigeria that could possibly be called merchant minorities - but that would actually require knowing more than a quick Google about the country. For example, it's rather clear that you're unaware of the history between the Yoruba and the Hausa both prior to and during the colonial era, or that the Fulani are an actual minority ethnic group both in Northern Nigeria and in the country as a whole and would actually be fairly classifiable as a "merchant minority" if we cared to apply political labels made for populations in diaspora to people living in their own country - the Fulɓe are semi-sedentary, widely dispersed, tend to live in ethnic enclaves, and have formed several ethnic subgroups throughout West Africa due to integration with clear majority populations.