chapter twelve dominant-minority relations in cross-national perspective © pine forge press, an...

Chapter Twelve

Dominant-Minority Relations in Cross-National Perspective

© Pine Forge Press, an imprint of Sage Publications, 2003

Cross-National Applicability? If our theoretical concepts apply to dominant-minority situations in other

societies, we will have some assurance that the dynamics of intergroup relations in the United States are not unique and that our conclusions have some general applicability.

We will focus on “trouble spots” or societies with dominant-minority group conflicts that have been widely publicized.

For comparison, we will also examine several societies in which group relations are thought to be generally peaceful.

The conclusions reached in this chapter will not be the final word on the subject.


Cross-National Applicability?


A Brief Review of Major Analytical Themes

When the contact situation between two groups is characterized by high levels of:

– Ethnocentrism

– Competition

– Power Differentials

some form of racial/ethnic inequality will develop.



The fates of minority groups created by colonization and conquest are very different from those created by immigration.

Repeatedly in U.S. history, colonized or conquered minority groups are subjected to greater rejection, discrimination, and inequality and become more completely mired in their minority status.

Positive change is more difficult to accomplish for conquered or colonized groups, especially when the group is racially or physically different from the dominant group.



Dominant-minority relationships tend to change most rapidly and dramatically when the level of development or the basic subsistence technology of the larger society changes.

For example, industrialization revolutionized not only technology and modes of production, it transformed group relationships in Europe, in the United States, and eventually, around the globe.



In the United States, the industrial revolution led to a transition from paternalistic to rigid competitive group relations starting in the 19th century, and in the latter half of the 20th century, continuing modernization resulted in the emergence of fluid competitive relations between groups.

The blatant racism and overt discrimination of the past have moderated into milder, more ambiguous forms that are more difficult to identify and measure, and this evolution to less repressive forms of group relations has been propelled by the protest activities of minority group members and their allies.


A Global Tour

The most obvious difference between the U.S. and Canada is that the major minority issue in Canada is cultural and linguistic, not racial.

For more than two centuries, Canadian society has been divided into two major language groups, French speaking and English speaking.

Nationally, French speakers are about 25% of the population, but in Quebec they constitute about 80% of the population.


A Global Tour

Some Francophones want complete separation between Quebec and English-speaking Canada, with their goal being to make Quebec an independent nation.

Others would be satisfied with guarantees of more autonomy for Quebec and national recognition of the right of the French-speaking residents of Quebec to maintain their language and culture.

English-speaking Canadians have shown little support for separation or pluralism.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

Canada faces a number of other minority group issues, most of which would be familiar to citizens of the United States.

– Canada reformed its restrictive immigration laws in the 1960s and has seen a steady and large influx of newcomers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.

– Native peoples of Canada on “reserves” share many problems and inequities with Native Americans in the United States.

In conclusion, Canada’s problems of group relations can be analyzed in similar terms that confront U.S. society: questions of unity and diversity, fairness and equality, assimilation and pluralism.


A Global Tour

In Northern Ireland, the bitter, violent conflict between Protestants and Catholics has roots that lie in armed hostilities between England and Ireland that began centuries ago.

Over the centuries, Protestants in Northern Ireland have consolidated their position and power and separated themselves from the native Catholic population in the school system, in residential areas, and in most other areas of society that at its height, came to resemble Jim Crow segregation.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

The Catholics of Northern Ireland began a civil rights movement in the late 1960s.

Protestants resisted attempts at reform, and the confrontation escalated into terrorism and violence.

In 1998, lengthy and difficult negotiations resulted in the “Good Friday Agreement.”

This accord established a new power-sharing arrangement for both Protestants and Catholics, which has survived several difficult crises and may eventually lead to a peaceful resolution to this ancient rivalry.


A Global Tour

Note that in Northern Ireland and Quebec, both the dominant and the minority group are of the same race and that divisions that separate groups are mainly ethnic (English vs. non-English) and religious (Protestant vs. Catholic).

In both nations, these divisions are highly correlated with social class position, access to education and jobs, and political power.

These minority groups have been victimized by intense, systematic, persistent discrimination and prejudice, and group clashes are so intractable because they also concern the distribution societal resources.


A Global Tour

Like most highly developed nations, Germany has become a highly desirable destination for immigrants who come to satisfy the demand for both unskilled, cheap labor and “high-tech” professionals.

In addition, birth rates are low throughout Western Europe and Germany has responded to the threat of population loss by instituting a new immigration policy that recognizes that the society needs immigrant workers to fill the gaps in the labor force and continue to prosper.

The experience of Germany confirms the idea that immigration is in large measure a flow of labor from areas of lower opportunity (less developed nations) to areas of higher opportunity.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

Unfortunately, it is easy to find hate crimes and violent attacks against immigrants and other minority group members in Germany (and other European nations) in recent years, by skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups.

These phenomena seem to have similar causes: high rates of immigration combined with economic uncertainty for working-class, less educated males and strong traditions of racism and intolerance.

Still, the memory of the Holocaust gives special resonance to attacks on minority groups in Germany.


A Global Tour

Some societies are generally peaceful and conflict minimal.

Swiss society incorporates three major and distinct language and cultural groups: French speakers, German speakers, and Italian speakers.

Each language group resides in a particular region of the country and enjoys considerable control of its local affairs—a pluralistic society in which the groups are separate both culturally and structurally.

Perhaps the key to the success of the Swiss in combining diversity and unity is that none of the three major groups were forced to join the nation by military con-quest or coercion.


A Global Tour

Switzerland indicates that peaceful and prosperous pluralistic societies can be created, but it is not typical of multigroup societies.

When Yugoslavia was created in 1918, at the end of World War I, the nation encompassed a variety of ethnic groups, each with its own language, religion, history, and memories of grievances against other groups—Roman Catholic Croatians, Eastern Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim and Christian Bosnians were the major groups.

During World War II, Yugoslavia was one of the bloody battlegrounds, with Croatian/Serbian hostilities growing to new heights by the end of the war.


A Global Tour

After WWII, Josip Broz Tito became the chief architect of the modern nation of Yugoslavia that incorporated many of the same elements that made Switzerland a successful pluralistic society.

Postwar Yugoslavia comprised several different subnations, or republics, each of which was associated with a particular ethnic group, and whose power at the national level was allocated proportionately, with each region having considerable autonomy in the conduct of its affairs.

However, whereas Switzerland was formed on a voluntary basis, Yugoslavia was first created by post–WWI diplomatic negotiations and then re-created at the end of WWII by the authoritarian regime of Tito.


A Global Tour

After Tito’s death in 1980, little remained to preserve the integrity of the Yugoslavian experiment in nation building and the separate republics began to secede from the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s.

Self-serving political and military leaders in Serbia and in the other former Yugoslavian states inflamed prejudices and antipathies, with the worst violence occurring in Bosnia where Serbs began a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” that was reciprocal among the different groups.

Many of the patterns of vicious brutality reappeared in the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo that began in 1999 and was ended by the armed intervention of the United States and its NATO allies.


A Global Tour

In the spring of 1994, a long history of mutual enmity and hatred between Rwanda’s two ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, reached new heights of brutality when perhaps 800,000 people or more were murdered and millions fled to neighboring nations because of civil war (Gourevitch, 1999, p. 133).

The roots of conflict lie in Rwanda’s history of European colonization.

European colonizers attempted to ease the difficulty of administering and controlling Rwanda by placing the Tutsis in position to govern the Hutus, a move that perpetuated and intensified hostilities by maintaining political and economic differentials between the tribes.


A Global Tour

In the early 1960s, the era of direct European political colonialism ended, and two nations were created in the region: Rwanda was dominated by the Hutus and neighboring Burundi by the Tutsis.

In the early 1990s, a rebel force led by exiled Tutsis invaded Rwanda with the intention of overthrowing the Hutu-dominated government.

The conflict continued until the spring of 1994, when the Hutus seeking revenge for the death of their president attempted to eliminate their Tutsi rivals.

As many as half of the Tutsis in Rwanda died in the confrontation, and millions more fled for their lives.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

As recently as the late 1980s, the end of state-supported racism and race privilege in South Africa is one of the more stunning surprises of recent times.

Europeans first came into contact with the area that became the nation of South Africa in the 1600s.

In some ways, this contact period resembled that between European Americans and Native Americans, and in other ways, it resembled the early days of the establishment of black slavery in North America.

In the 1800s, South Africa became a British colony, and the new governing group attempted to grant more privileges to blacks.


A Global Tour

In 1899, British and Dutch factions fought each other in the Boer War, a bitter and intense struggle that widened and solidified the divisions between the two white communities.

Generally, the descendants of the Dutch have been more opposed to racial change than have British descendants.

In 1948, the National Party, the primary political vehicle of the Dutch Afrikaans, and under their leadership, apartheid was constructed to firmly establish white superiority that resembled the Jim Crow system of segregation in the United States except it was even more repressive, elaborate, and unequal..


A Global Tour

Note that the coming of apartheid reverses the relationship between modernization and control of minority groups we observed in the United States.

In South Africa after 1948, group relations became more rigid and the structures of control became stronger and more oppressive.

Although South Africans of British descent tended to be more liberal in matters of race than those of Dutch descent, there was little internal opposition among South African whites to the creation of apartheid.


A Global Tour

Furthermore, South African blacks in the late 1940s were comparatively more powerless than blacks in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s—clandestine protest.

A final difference between the two situations has to do with the black majority in South Africa.

The difference in group size helped to contribute to what has been described as a “fortress” mentality among some white South Africans: the feeling that they were defending a small (but luxurious) outpost surrounded and besieged by savage hordes who threatened their immediate and total destruction.


A Global Tour

Through the 1970s and 1980s, changes within South Africa and in the world in general built up pressure against the system.

Internally, protests against apartheid by blacks began in the 1960s and continued to build in intensity, with thousands dying in the confrontations with police and the army.

Growing industrialization allowed some black South Africans slowly to rise to positions of greater affluence and personal freedom even as the system attempted to coerce and repress the group as a whole.


A Global Tour

Internationally, pressure on South Africa to end apartheid was significant; trade embargoes, organized boycotts of South African goods, banned from Olympics and other international competitions.

In 1990, F.W. de Klerk, National Party leader and prime minister, lifted the ban on many outlawed black African protest organizations and released Nelson Mandela from prison, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC).

Together, de Klerk and Mandela helped to ease South Africa through a period of rapid racial change that saw the franchise being extended to blacks, the first open election in South African history, and Mandela’s election to a 5-year term as president.


A Global Tour

Although the majority black population now has considerable political power, much of the wealth of the nation remains in white hands.

In addition, tribal affiliations, language differences, and political loyalties split black South Africans, and unified action is often problematical for the minority group.

This experiment in racial reform might still fail, but this dramatic transition away from massive racism and institutionalized discrimination could also provide a model of change for other racially divided societies.


A Global Tour

The present-day Middle East conflict between Jews and Arabs has its origins in military conquest.

Following WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust, European Jews began to push for the establishment of a Jewish state in their traditional homeland, and was strongly supported by the United Nations and by the United States.

The Jewish homeland was established in 1948, by taking land that was occupied by Arabs (Palestinians) who also regarded it as their rightful homeland, thus beginning the dominant (Israelis)–minority (Palestinians) situation that continues today.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

A major difference between this and other intergroup struggles is the scale of time involved.

Although the modern state of Israel encompasses the traditional Jewish homeland, few Jews have lived in this area for the past 2,000 years.

The Middle East has been Arab land for most of the past thousand years, and when Jews began to immigrate to the area after World War II, they found a well-entrenched Arab society of more than one million Palestinian Arabs on what they considered to be “their” land.


A Global Tour

After its establishment, warfare and violent confrontations have been nearly continuous.

Israel was victorious in full-scale wars that were fought in 1948, 1967 (the famous Six-Day War), and again in 1973, and claimed additional territory from its Arab neighbors to reduce the threat and provide a buffer zone.

The wars also created a large group of refugees in the Arab countries neighboring Israel, and Arabs who remained in Israel tended to be a subordinate group, although some eventually became Israeli citizens.


A Global Tour

Part of the complexity and the intensity of this situation stems from the fact that the groups involved are separated along so many different lines: religion, language, ethnicity, history, and social class.

In addition, because of the huge oil reserves in the region, the Israeli-Arab conflict has political and international dimensions that directly involve the rest of the world.

There are some indications that a solution to these enmities is not impossible, however, as of this writing, there is little indication that they will lead to peace in the region soon.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

Hawaii first came into contact with Europeans in 1788, but early relations between the islanders and Europeans were organized around trade and commerce—not agriculture.

Thus, the contact situation did not lead to competition over the control of land or labor.

Also, Hawaiian society was highly developed and had sufficient military strength to protect itself from the relatively few Europeans who came to the islands in these early days.


A Global Tour

The initial contact did bring other consequences, including smallpox and other diseases to which native Hawaiians had no immunity.

As relations developed in the mid-1800s, white planters established sugar plantations that have often been associated with systems of enforced labor and slavery (Curtin, 1990).

By that time, however, there were not enough native Hawaiians to fill the demand for labor, and the planters began to recruit abroad, mostly from China, Portugal, Japan, Korea, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.


A Global Tour

The white plantation owners came to dominate the island economy and political structure, however, other groups were not excluded from secondary structural assimilation by laws banning entire groups from public institutions.

Rates of intermarriage among the various groups are much higher than on the mainland, reflecting an openness to intimacy across group lines that has characterized Hawaii since contact.

Yet, all is not perfect and a protest movement of native Hawaiians stressing self-determination and the return of illegally taken land has been in existence since at least the 1960s.


A Global Tour


A Global Tour

The racial histories of Brazil and the United States run parallel in many ways, yet there are also some important differences that make race relations in Brazil less problematical and confrontational than in the United States.

At the time Brazil was established, Portugal had had a long acquaintance with African cultures and peoples.

Thus, darker skin and other African “racial” features were familiar to the Portuguese and not, in and of themselves, regarded as a stigma or an indication of inferiority.


A Global Tour

The relative absence of skin color prejudice also may be reflected in the high rates of intermarriage between Portuguese, Africans, and natives that produced a large class of mulattos or people of mixed race.

Brazilian slaves were freed at a much higher rate than British American slaves were, and there was a large class of free blacks and mulattos filling virtually every job and position available in the society.

Compared with the U.S. experience, slavery lasted longer in Brazil (until 1888) but ended more gradually and with less opposition.


A Global Tour

These differences in U.S. and Brazil race relations helped to sustain a way of thinking about race that is sharply different from North American practices.

– In Brazil, race is seen as a series of categories that have ambiguous, indeterminate boundaries and no hard or sharp borders mark the end of one group and the start of another.

After the end of slavery, Brazil did not go through a period of legalized racial segregation like the Jim Crow system or apartheid.

– Such a system would be difficult to construct or enforce when race is seen as a set of open-ended categories that gradually fade into one another.


A Global Tour

Brazil is not a racial utopia, as is sometimes claimed.

Still, differences in the contact period and in the development of race relations over time have resulted in a notably different and somewhat milder form of group relations today.


Analyzing Group Relations

Problems of dominant-minority relations are extremely common.

Dominant-minority problems are highly variable in their form and their intensity.

The most intense, violent, and seemingly intractable problems of group relations almost always have their origins in contact situations in which one group is conquered or colonized by another.

The impact of modernization and industrialization on racial and ethnic relations is variable.


Analyzing Group Relations

It seems unlikely that even the most sophisticated and modern of nations will outgrow the power of ethnic loyalties at any point in the near future.

Ethnic and racial group conflicts are especially intense when they coincide with class divisions and patterns of inequality.

With respect to the intensity and nature of dominant-minority problems, the United States is hardly in a unique or unusual position.

Our tour of the globe shows that even the multi-group societies with the most glowing reputations for tolerance are not immune from conflict, inequality, discrimination, and racism.


chapter twelve dominant-minority relations in cross-national perspective © pine forge press, an...

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