Minority Group - Minorities in Law and Government

Minorities in Law and Government

In the politics of some countries, a minority is an ethnic group that is recognized as such by respective laws of its country and therefore has some rights that other groups lack. Speakers of a legally-recognized minority language, for instance, might have the right to education or communication with the government in their mother tongue. Countries that have special provisions for minorities include Canada, China, Ethiopia, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Croatia, and the United Kingdom.

Differing minority groups often are not given identical treatment. Some groups are too small or too indistinct compared to the majority, that they either identify as part of the same nation as the members of the majority, or they identify as a separate nation but are ignored by the majority because of the costs or some other aspect of providing preferences. For example, a member of a particularly small ethnic group might be forced to check "Other" on a checklist of different backgrounds, and consequently might receive fewer privileges than a member of a more defined group.

Many contemporary governments prefer to assume the people they rule all belong to the same nationality rather than separate ones based on ethnicity. The United States asks for race and ethnicity on its official census forms, which thus breaks up and organizes its population into different sub-groups, but primarily on racial origin rather than national one. Spain does not divide its nationals by ethnic group, although it does maintain an official notion of minority languages.

Some minorities are so relatively large or historically or otherwise important that the system is set up in a way to guarantee them comprehensive protection and political representation. As an example, the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina recognizes the three main nations, none of which constitutes a numerical majority, as constitutive nations, see nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, other minorities such as Roma and Jews, are officially labelled as "others" and are excluded from many of these protections. For example, they may not be elected to a range of high political positions including the presidency.

The issue of establishing minority groups, and determining the extent of privileges they might derive from their status, is the subject of some debate. One view is that the application of special rights to minority groups may be inappropriate in some countries, for example newly established states in Africa or Latin America (not founded on the European nation-state model), where recognition and rights accorded to specific groups may interfere with the state's need to establish a cohesive identity, and hamper the ability of the minority to integrate itself into mainstream society - perhaps to the point at which the minority follows a path to separatism or supremacism. In Canada, some feel that the failure of the dominant English-speaking majority to integrate French Canadians has given rise to Quebec separatism. This position is countered by those that assert that members of minorities require specific provisions and rights to ensure that they are not marginalised within society (for example, bilingual education may be needed to allow linguistic minorities to fully integrate into the school system and hence compete on a level playing field in society), and that rights for minorities, far from weakening the nation-building project, actually strengthen it; where members of minorities see that their specific needs and ambitions have been acknowledged and catered for, they will commit themselves more willingly to accepting the legitimacy of the nation and their integration (as opposed to assimilation) within it.