Socio-economic Mobility and Low-status Minorities

Slow roads to progress

Jacob Meerman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415775663
• eBook ISBN: 9781135972806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book concentrates on ethnic minorities such as former slaves, outcastes and indigenous peoples dispossessed of homeland. These groups are universally without power, usually undereducated, and always victims of their fellow citizens. The book asks why these socially excluded groups remain at the bottom of their social hierarchies as the poorest of the poor, even in nations long committed to equal opportunity.

Their slow progress has four causes: obviously discrimination and poor education, but also low economic growth and cultural heritage. Low growth limits revenues for schools as well as new job opportunities, and perpetuates traditional exploitative social relations and customs. Traumatic histories of enslavement or conquest may induce behaviours by victims that reduce upward mobility. Together these four interacting variables suggest a "mobility model" that explains the impasse. The book develops and applies this model to interpret and compare the mobility history of five stigmatized, low-status ethnic groups: U.S. African Americans, Japan's Burakumin, Afro-Cubans, India's Dalits (Untouchables) and Bolivia's Highland Indians. The book also compares actions by governments and the groups themselves to overcome barriers to progress, including job quotas, boycotts, mass protests, and the unique kangaroo courts of Japan's Burakumim.

Meerman's unusual cross-disciplinary approach and fascinating comparative studies of success and failure will appeal to scholars, development practitioners, and advocates working on issues of discrimination, poverty, equity and inequality in an ethnic context.

1 Introduction
Overview, organization, contribution

… every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity.

(Eleanor Roosevelt, 1958)¹

Overview

This book concentrates on socially excluded minorities, without power, marginalized, frequently illiterate, usually undereducated, and nearly always the victims of discrimination at the hands of their fellow citizens. Its basic query is why such groups remain the poorest of the poor, at the bottom of their social hierarchies even in the most promising situations such as long citizenship in wealthy nations committed to equal opportunity and other egalitarian values. I have in mind stigmatized, low-status minorities such as Roma (Gypsies), America’s blacks, Australian aborigines, India’s Dalits (Untouchables), Hazaras of Afghanistan, and hundreds, if not thousands, of indigenous peoples recently dispossessed of homeland and culture.

Why do such groups suffer persistent poverty at higher rates than other groups? Most obviously, they are or recently were victims of economic discrimination and exploitation. Even, however, in many cases where public and private efforts plus various social forces have eliminated the most injurious and obvious forms of discrimination, they continue to make slow progress into the economic mainstream. Impeded access to education is part of the explanation. Lack of economic growth is also fundamental. In developing countries, slow growth implies scarcity of middle-class employment opportunities and limited access to public education. It also implies persistence of the status quo such that entrenched political forces (traditional elites, ruling tribes, religious authorities, etc.) and traditional social institutions (e.g., customs, norms) are unlikely to permit rapid redefinition of highly discriminatory social roles. Perhaps a more controversial cause lies in the cultural heritages of some excluded groups. Traumatic histories, such as enslavement or conquest and ensuing exploitation, have led to patterns of behavior and belief among the victims passed on from generation to generation that reduce their upward mobility. Together these interacting variables suggest a theory that responds to the basic query.

I formalize this theorizing in two steps. First, in Chapter 2, I define the socially excluded as the set of stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities, or SRELIM. I only include as SRELIM those ethno-racial groups that have endured overpowering economic discrimination and other injury within the last century as a consequence of being descendants of slaves, or indigenous groups deprived of their homeland and culture, or social outcasts and who still suffer discrimination today. So defined, such minorities have been and generally are still “ranked,” that is forced into a position subordinate to the dominant groups of their countries. So defined, SRELIM also have much in common because they have all suffered similar injury and exploitation. Specifically:

• The indicators of status, income, employment, education, life expectancy, health, and social deviance of SRELIM are always less favorable than those of the dominant majority.
• Members of each majority rationalize exploitation and discrimination against the corresponding SRELIM by attributing to the latter myths of genetic or other innate shortcomings including defective intellect, bad karma, or moral corruption.
• SRELIM usually share much of the dominant culture but may also develop subcultures that, in part, contradict the corresponding majority culture but support minority self-respect. These subcultures may lead to beliefs and other behaviors that slow their progress to economic parity.
• Unlike many ethnic minorities, SRELIM are too weak to strongly threaten the larger state (although they may cause riots and take other violent actions).

Some SRELIM have made substantial progress to parity with other citizens. Others are still at a very early stage. Still others have broken into smaller groups including some that have fully integrated into the larger society and others that appear indefinitely trapped in poverty.

The second step is to formulate a theory that explains these outcomes. Similar characteristics and historical experience across SRELIM groups in many countries suggest that similar causal mechanisms operate to slow their progress out of poverty. Thus far, my findings from study of SRELIM mobility histories invariably support this assertion. This outcome led me to develop a theory or model rooted in the hypotheses used to define or construct the set of SRELIM. The model’s dependent variable is minority progress to socioeconomic parity with the corresponding majority. Four independent variables explain most of their slow progress to parity:

1. degree of economic discrimination in labor markets and school admissions;
2. pace of economic development;
3. educational attainment of SRELIM;
4. their individual family cultural endowments.

In Chapter 3, the book explores this model and cites some of the impressive multidisciplinary array of empirical evidence supporting it. Later, the theory is used to analyze the problems and prospects of the five SRELIM cases presented in the book.

The case studies address four SRELIM: Cuba’s blacks, India’s Dalits or Scheduled Castes (Untouchables); Japan’s Burakumin; and US African Americans. The model is also applied to a fifth group, which appeared to be a SRELIM, but probably is no longer: Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara highland peoples. These five groups were chosen because in addition to fitting the definition of SRELIM, they fulfilled three additional criteria:

1. For each group studied, at least minimal quantitative data exist that permit some estimate of their comparative progress towards socio-economic parity.
2. Their national governments have long made sustained efforts to integrate them into their economic mainstreams.
3. The countries corresponding to the minorities differ significantly in degree of economic development, ideology, and political institutions.

Criterion 1 is a necessary condition for meaningful analysis. Criteria 2 and 3 are desirable because one research goal is identification of effective approaches to SRELIM integration. Including nations that differ substantially in their degree of economic development is also desirable because it provides a partial test of the model’s assumption that rapid growth per se is a necessary condition for rapid increase in the upward mobility of SRELIM.

Organization

The book is divided into three parts:

• The first part consists of this Introduction (Chapter 1), Chapter 2 (definitions), and Chapter 3 (theory).
• The second part consists of five chapters devoted to the five case studies. Each of these traces the historical development of the SRELIM in question and analyzes its mobility history and how governments and SRELIM themselves have attempted to deal with their plight (increased educational opportunities, job preferences, antidiscrimination legislation, political empowerment, etc.). Insofar as data permit, these chapters also assess the success of these measures. The five case studies also apply the theory to clarify and analyze each SRELIM’s mobility history. They point to similar causal factors in the various SRELIM mobility histories, suggesting that the theory has value. In many ways the cases also elucidate and flesh out the bare-bones definitional hypotheses of Chapter 2; e.g., the forms and prevalence of stigmatization or of involuntary identity among SRELIM.
• The third part, the two concluding chapters, draws on the case studies to compare progress to parity of the five minorities studied. It also summarizes and compares the actions that the SRELIM and their governments have taken to promote SRELIM parity. It briefly reviews the mobility histories of the five SRELIM cases in terms of the constraints implied by the mobility model. Finally, Chapter 10 briefly considers how political variables impact on SRELIM and government behavior with respect to promoting SRELIM mobility.

What does the book contribute?

Social scientists have long been interested in the plight of the socially excluded. There has been an enormous amount of work on why these groups suffer poverty, humiliation and exploitation to a greater degree than others in their societies. This book is very much in that tradition, given its two basic queries: Why are SRELIM universally the poorest of the poor? And how do the SRELIM themselves, their governments, and others attempt to close the deep and durable poverty/status gaps between SRELIM and their dominant groups? The book follows in the footsteps of many others who have asked similar questions. It differs, however, from what has gone before in its syncretic, cross-disciplinary, and comparative approach. To address the two basic questions, the book integrates empirical work and thinking from anthropological, economic, historical, legal, political, and sociological perspectives. On one level, therefore, everything in the book is old-hat and drawn from the work of others. On another level it is distinctive in digging out material from all these disciplines and integrating it into a final product. Put differently, what the book mainly contributes is its cross-field synthesis. If it has merit, it is in large degree due to the quality of the parts from the diverse disciplines that make up the whole.

Put more specifically, the taxonomic definitions and theory provide conceptualization and tools that lend themselves well to SRELIM mobility analysis. They pull together diverse history, parceled out among the social-science disciplines, into a more general analysis of cause and effect. The content of the book also provides a preliminary test of the usefulness of the mobility model in that the reasoning engaged in the case studies is based on the hypotheses that underpin the mobility model.²

So the study offers a “first cut” at constructing a cross-disciplinary theory to explain the slow roads to progress of SRELIM. Applying the resulting “mobility model” turned out to be a feasible and economical way to frame the analysis of each case study. Together economic growth, discrimination, education, and family culture amount to the binding constraints on SRELIM progress. Deal adequately with these constraints and social parity for SRELIM will become a reality.

Of course, grand conclusions based on five case studies are like the proverbial single swallow as proof of the arrival of summer. Difficulties with my conceptualization of both SRELIM and the mobility model could materialize when considering mobility histories of other socially excluded minorities. As detailed in Chapter 9, one way to improve the model has already come to the fore: the behavior of government is a crucial variable in causing or resolving the plight of the SRELIM. A better model would integrate the determinants of government behavior into the model per se.³ Nevertheless, at this juncture, I find that the SRELIM concept and the mobility model are the most important contributions of the book.

The book also makes several other contributions:

• It helps clarify the widely used but vague and variably defined concept of social exclusion (Chapter 2).
• It distinguishes SRELIM conflict from other categories of ethnic conflict, building on Horowitz’s distinction (1985) between ranked and unranked multiethnic polities. Where ethnic groups competing within a polity are “unranked” (i.e. not in a clear dominant/subordinate position) protracted and violent conflict is a frequent outcome. Where groups are ranked, “hot conflict” is unlikely. Analysis of ethnic conflict usually confounds both categories in ways that probably weaken analysis (e.g., the design of ethnic fractionalization indexes). Australia’s native peoples are SRELIM, while the unranked ethnic rivals of Sri Lanka are not (Chapter 2).
• It shows that national economic development is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for bringing SRELIM into the economic mainstream (Chapters 3 and 9).
• It illuminates problems involved in generating equal opportunity for SRELIM (Chapters 3, 8, and 9).

2 Stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

(African American Spiritual)

The SRELIM concept

The book concentrates on socially excluded minorities “marginalized, without power, unable to take decisions over their destiny and often experiencing high levels of illiteracy, undereducation and overt or covert discrimination” (Minority Rights Group International 1997: viii). Even in the most promising situations, after their human rights have been guaranteed in national legislation and international conventions and their governments have eliminated overt discrimination and undertaken compensatory affirmative action, such groups remain among “the poorest of the poor” (ibid.).¹

To understand why these groups are on slow roads to progress and also to indicate means for developing remedial policies and measures, I developed a conceptualization that applies to them across the board. This construct differentiates between them and other ethnic groups; e.g., minorities at war as in Sri Lanka or who cooperate as politically equal members of multiethnic states such as Switzerland and Malaysia. There is need for such conceptualization, inter alia, because current analysis of ethnic minorities uses an overlapping and not always consistent definition of “minority.” The conceptualization involves a taxonomic definition of the groups in question as “stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities” or SRELIM. As explained below, this categorical characterization is based on the striking similarities in the diverse histories of victimization and exploitation common to all SRELIM. In this chapter I also indicate some basic implications of the conceptualization and posit that because of the similar nature of their traumatic histories, worldwide, SRELIM have similar status, beliefs, traits, behaviors, and interactions with their dominant majorities such that a single theory or model can be employed to analyze and compare them. The chapter concludes with an indication of the numerical importance of SRELIM in today’s world, and an introduction to the five case studies.

Definitions

SRELIM are defined as descendants of slaves, or indigenous groups conquered and dispossessed of their homeland, or stigmatized outcasts, that have endured deep economic discrimination and other injury. I put a time dimension on the definition: the discrimination and other injury as a consequence of the initial trauma have persisted in some degree to the present. I portray experience by a minority of any of these three trauma (enslaved, dispossessed of homeland, cast out) as traumatic victimization of that minority. Each case study in the book traces the content of the traumatic victimization of the group under study. The three traumas are not necessarily exclusive. Enslavement usually involves homeland dispossession, as may outcast status. For some of the world’s outcast groups, the initial traumatic victimization that led to their being cast out is unknown; e.g., India’s Dalits. The historical events that precipitated Dalit outcaste status occurred more than two millennia ago and are not known.

SRELIM are also defined as ranked, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: Overview, Organization, Contribution
• 2. Stigmatized, Ranked, Ethnic, Low-Status, Involuntary Minorities (SRELIM)
• 3. A Mobility Model for SRELIM
• 4. The Dalits and Human Rights: The Indian Dilemma
• 5. The Mobility of Japan’s Burakumin: Militant Advocacy and Government Response
• 6. The Afro-Cuban Story: A Brief Success
• 7. Bolivia’s Highland Indians: Oppressed but Not Conquered
• 8. US African Americans: Updating the American Dilemma
• 9. Comparisons and Conclusions
• 10. Postscript: Politics and SRELIM Progress
• Notes
• Bibliography