By this time your first year, how many times had you heard the words multiculturalism and diversity? These words have become buzzwords around Grounds over the last decade, and the increased awareness of these ideas have brought about many positive changes to our University. However, far too often, the words are thrown about like talk of firing the football coach. Do we really examine what they mean?
Here are two questions to chew on: (1) What is the Minority Rights Coalition? and (2) What is a minority? We can answer the first question in two sentences, but the second, we could work on for years and not develop a solid answer. Sometimes we feel like a broken record:
"The Minority Rights Coalition is the umbrella organization which advocates on behalf of its constituent organizations and seeks to draw strength from the connections and common struggles of its members. It is composed of the Black Student Alliance (BSA), the Asian Student Union (ASU), the Latino Student Alliance (LSA), the Middle Eastern Leadership Council (MELC), the Queer Student Union (QSU), and Feminism is for Everyone (FIFE)."
And yet, by admitting that we can't begin to answer that second question perfectly, we realize that the MRC and its purpose will not be easy to characterize for anyone.
The definition of 'minority' is not an altogether unanswerable question, and yet defining it as it might be defined at first glance by a statistician is a narrow view of the meaning it holds in personal identity. The word 'minority' can obviously mean a group with fewer members than the majority. For instance, the Republican Party is currently the minority party in Congress. Numbers are important - just ask Mitch McConnell. And yet, the definition of the term 'minority' should not rest on numbers.
A constitution may define 'quorum' as "greater than fifty percent of eligible members." This definition makes it clear that if there are six of 13 members present, quorum has not been met. This kind of definition is contrived by the definer. More relevantly, if we choose to define 'minority' as "a group with fewer members than the majority," then it seems strange that the MRC, together, makes up a large majority of the student population at the University. Even FIFE alone, about whose membership we are frequently asked, would stand to claim to represent the interests of a majority of the student population here, since women compose more than half of the school's student body. The questions about why FIFE is a member organization of the MRC come most often from students who define 'minority' using the definition above. So, is this the way we choose to define 'minority'?
Instead, we need to ask what the term 'minority' has come to mean. It doesn't have to be this statistical measure of population size. For one thing, it is not necessarily as clear-cut as the crude statistical definition: "a group with fewer members than the majority." An immediate alternative is elusive and nebulous, but we have to remember that any term used as often as a descriptor of identity as 'minority' must inherently be dynamic and relative, since identity is certainly both. We need a definition that encompasses these qualities which seem so intuitive.
Secondly, the word 'minority' has come to have many more meanings than the one related to population size. But what are those meanings? To avoid writing a dissertation in this column, we will only list a few: groups of individuals targeted in bias incidents (e.g. keying a woman's car with derogatory slurs like "bitch" or "whore"), groups that struggle against institutional discrimination (e.g. refusing to provide a minimum amount of unpaid leave for care for a newborn child), or groups that cannot effectively voice their concerns for a variety of reasons (e.g. population size, educational limitations, language capabilities).
There are too many ways to define minority to touch on them all, but the point still stands: we need to think about 'minority' in a broader sense here at the University. There are so many individuals and so many groups who are marginalized in so many ways. Moreover, defending and advocating for the rights of minority student populations is a multifaceted purpose. It is not simply pushing for a new major, for a more diverse incoming class, or for more money. It is standing firm as a voice for any underserved or targeted population.
The purpose of grappling with the definition of 'minority' is not only to elucidate what the MRC is and does. It is important for the entire University, instead of seeking diversity for the sake of diversity and supporting multiculturalism for the sake of multiculturalism, to look harder at what these terms mean and why - or even if - they matter.
Neal Fox and Ronald Barba are Co-Chairs of the Minority Rights Coalition. Their column usually appears biweekly on Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily.
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