"Minority" as Conflicted Identity

"Minority" has become a term of identity in this country, a term of greater import and irony because the "minority" population (or populations) has become the majority.

The term "minority" in one sense is a derogatory term, one that implies weakness or marginalization.

The conflict theory of sociology has instigated this fluffed-up contradiction of identity and opposition, a metaphysical conceit which has engendered more problems, real and imagined, than matter of property and privation alone would have created.

An individual has defined as "minority" must inevitably face off against a "majority", a notion which suggests a power differential, as if the truth of one's being and bearing must withstand the shocks of the masses.

A man is more than the sum of his color and his culture, yet the "minority" movement has permitted politicians to wield undue power over others, terming them a "minority" who needs help from the government, who needs more protection because of the distinct status of not being the majority group.

The core of democratic government, majority rule and minority rights, falls apart to the degree that the minority can claim, by virtue of diminished status, that they need more protection. "Minority" rights applies to the element of a society that is out of power at any given time in a nation's political concourse, yet one group that is forever "minority" will forever resort to a set of "rights" and "grievances" which will never shift to another group.

This dynamic is faltering beneath the growing population shifts in this country, where "minority" as defined by race and culture is shifting toward the majority population, and where "minority" as the diminished political opposition is destined to remain in the secondary status without end.

"Minority" as identity has undone the framework of compromise and reasonable discourse in this country. The time has come where pundits and intellects must do away with this term, since its former salience, even then inconsistent yet inconsequential, has lost all value, and at great peril to a framework of limited government which protects the rights of all.