America’s Market-Dominant Minority

Amy Chua coined the term “market-dominant minority” to describe a minority ethnic group that holds more economic power in a region than the group which is the region’s demographic majority. Chinese in South Asia (and probably Africa); Lebanese in Latin America; Jews in Russia; Afrikaaners in South Africa. These groups are much, much wealthier than the indigenous South Asians, Latin Americans, Russians, and Black Africans, all of whom yet win hands-down in terms of population.

Market-dominant minorities live a precarious existence, for obvious reasons, especially if they are recent arrivals. (Nor do old wounds heal quickly, a fact to which over 4,000 dead Boer farmers can attest.)

Whenever it is pointed out that white Americans are to be a minority in America within half a century, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about whites becoming a market-dominant minority in their own country. However, this will never come to pass, for two reasons.

First, even when white Americans dip below 50% of the American population, they will nevertheless remain the largest ethnic group. Pew Research puts the latest projection for 2065 at White: 46%, Hispanic: 24%, Asian: 16%, with blacks and Native Americans rounding out the rest. Per the link, this projection holds even though Asian immigration is soaring at the present. 

Whites are thus projected to remain the largest ethnic “minority” within a country that has no distinct “majority.” Market-dominant minorities, by definition, are true minorities within a region that has a distinct ethnic majority. White Americans will not fit that description.

Second, and more to the point, white Americans will not be a market-dominant minority in the future because they are not and most certainly never will be the wealthiest ethnic group in America.

Once again, Pew provides the relevant data*:

If we may correlate religion with ethnicity (as I think we can in this case), Indians are by far the wealthiest ethnic group in America. Many other data reports can be found to verify this fact. Indians, then, are today’s market-dominant minority and will remain so into the near and middle-term future. Per the earlier Pew link, by 2065, Asians will still be a meager 16% of the population; separated out, Indians will obviously constitute a smaller percentage than that. Given the reality of power laws in economics, there is no reason to think that Indian Americans will lose any of that wealth in the coming decades. Today and in 2065, they fit and will fit the description of market-dominant minority much better than WASPs. (Jews are not a market-dominant minority because they are white, no matter what anti-racists or white supremacists tell you.) Chinese Americans are and will continue to be market-dominant minority runners-up.

I don’t expect this reality to be confronted or even mentioned any time soon. Class-based Leftism is deader than punk rock. Today’s Left is far more concerned about cultural dominance as opposed to material or economic dominance, and I think we can expect whites (including Jews, who are white) and Blacks to continue dominating the culture industry.

* A more recent graph exists (the one above is from 2009), but the same trend emerges. However, Pew has tried to muddy the results in the most recent graph by listing the religions alphabetically instead of by income.