Middleman minority

Template:Short description A middleman minority is a minority population whose main occupations link producers and consumers: traders, money-lenders, etc. A middleman minority, while possibly suffering discrimination and bullying, does not hold an "extreme subordinate" status in society. The "middleman minority" concept was developed by sociologists Hubert Blalock and Edna Bonacich in the 1960s and by following political scientists and economists.

Overview

There are numerous examples of such groups gaining eventual prosperity in their adopted country despite discrimination. Often, they will take on roles between producer and consumer, such as trading and moneylending. Famous examples such as Jews throughout Europe even at times when discrimination against them was high, Chinese throughout Southeast Asia and North America, Muslims and Parsis in India, Igbos in Nigeria, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, and many others.

Middleman minorities usually provide an economic benefit to communities and nations and often start new industries. However, their economic aptitude, financial success and clannishness, combined with social prejudices by other groups against businesses and moneylending, can cause resentment among the native population of a country, sometimes called the magic fallacy when the ends of their production are not easily visible to the eyes of their detractors. Middleman minorities can be victims of racist violence, terrorists, bullying, genocide, racialist policy, or other forms of repression. Other ethnic groups often accuse them of plotting conspiracies against their nation or of stealing wealth from the native population.

Examples

In Africa

• Indians in East Africa
• Igbos in Nigeria
• Syrians and Lebanese in West Africa

In South Asia

• Kashmiri Pandits in India
• Gujaratis in India
• Marwaris in India
• Parsis in India
• Bohras in India

In North America

• Jewish Americans
• Armenian Americans
• Indian Americans
• Japanese Americans
• Korean Americans
• Chinese Americans
• Greek Americans
• Lebanese Americans

In South America

• Japanese in South America
• Lebanese in South America
• The majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries Middle Eastern immigrants to Brazil (Lebanese, Syrians, etc., collectively called "arabes" or "turcos", the latter term because they came from the Ottoman Empire) were peddlers, merchants and other types of non-"producers".

In West Asia

• Ottoman Greeks
• Arab Christians in the Arab world
• Hadhramis
• Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
• Armenians in Baku during the Russian Empire
• Persian Armenians in Safavid dynasty
• Azerbaijanis during the Imperial era of Iran (16th–20th centuries) and in contemporary Iran
• Azerbaijanis in the Tsardom of Russia, in the Russian Empire and in contemporary Russia
• Ottoman Jews
• Radhanite Jews

Elsewhere

• Chinese in Southeast Asia
• Indians in Southeast Asia.
• European Jews

See also

• Colonialism, particularly exploitation colonialism and plantation colonies
• Dominant minority
• Market-dominant minority
• Minoritarianism
• Model minority
• Neocolonialism
• World on Fire (book)
• Yuri Slezkine's book The Jewish Century (2004) discussed the concept of "Mercurian" people "specializ[ing] exclusively in providing services to the surrounding food-producing societies," which are characterized as "Apollonians"

Further reading

• Silverman, Robert Mark. 2000. Doing Business in Minority Markets: Black and Korean Entrepreneurs in Chicago’s Ethnic Beauty Aids Industry. New York: Garland Publishing.
• Pál Nyíri, Chinese in Eastern Europe and Russia: A Middleman Minority in a Transnational Era, 2007, Template:ISBN