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Saturday, May 22, 2004

World Majority

[via bOING bOING] Cory Doctorow points to this "Great NYT correction": "An article last Wednesday about South Africa's wine industry referred incorrectly to Thabani Cellars, a winery there. It is not minority-owned. (As a black man, the owner, Jabulani Ntshangase, belongs to the country's majority.)" It is because of this sort of thing, writes Doctorow, that he prefers the term "world-majority" over "minority" when referencing people of color. Suits me. And while we're at it, it doesn't hurt to remember that women also represent a marginal majority of the population, and so the commonplace "women and other minorities" is likewise a misnomer. It really is clear as daylight that the whole language of "minority" ascription largely amounts to the "language of a minority" -- namely, privileged white guys -- who deploy it first and formost to cloak themselves in a majoritarian mantle that claims to speak for humanity, but is in fact a wizened, provincial, and narrowly self-interested line of bull.

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