The Persecution of Successful Minorities

Some people find it concerning when a minority group becomes too successful. The false belief that different groups would be equally represented and successful in all human endeavors if it were not for some form of injustice fuels envy and conspiracies to justify persecuting minorities. This phenomenon has occurred against many different groups throughout the world. Peter Bauer (1976) writes that in the past, resentment toward minorities has led to “…the persecution and expulsion of ethnic minorities, particularly those which have achieved prosperity from poverty—[such as the] Jews in Europe, Levantines and Indians in Africa, Chinese in South-east Asia” (p. 158). Walter E. Williams (2011) points to a relatively recent example of this envy toward successful minorities which resulted in “…the expulsion en masse of some 50,000 Asians from Uganda” in 1972 by the dictator Idi Amin (p. 12). When minority groups are disproportionately successful in some industry or endeavor, they are described as “controlling” that industry and taking more than their fair share of prosperity. Thomas Sowell (2002) writes that the Chinese have long faced persecution in countries like Indonesia because, despite being a small percentage of the population, they “controlled” most of the nation’s industries. But the Chinese didn’t come in and take over these industries from the native population; they created these industries in the first place, and they would likely not exist otherwise. Sowell writes that “It is no more strange that most of the capital in…[Indonesia] belongs to the Chinese than it is that most of the feathers in the world belong to birds. That is where feathers originate” (p. 63)

References

Peter Bauer (1976). Dissent on Development. Harvard University Press.

Thomas Sowell (2002). Controversial Essays. Hoover Institution Press.

Walter E. Williams (2011). Race & Economics: How Much can be Blamed on Discrimination? Hoover Institution Press.