Minorities are small groups of people who differ from the rest of society due to certain characteristics.
Minority is the smallest part of the people that make up a body, a nation or a community . Those who make up the minority, therefore, are numerically less than the group of individuals who make up the majority (the majority group).
For example: "I think that people who do not buy polluting cars are a minority" , "We cannot stop working because a minority is bothered by what we do" , "The people who repudiated the writer's visit constitute a minority" .
Different types of minorities
At an international level, we would have to establish that when we talk about minorities we are referring to groups of people that differ from the rest, from the majority, because they have a series of different characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion. , the sexual condition or even the language they have. When we talk about ethnic minorities we could use gypsies as an example.
In the same way, there are religious minorities such as those made up of the Yizadís . They are Kurdish and pre-Islamic, they live in the north of Iraq and have become the target of heartless acts by certain jihadist groups.
respect
Currently, more and more work is being done to respect and guarantee the rights of minorities . For this reason, we find important legislation and regulations in this regard such as the European Charter of Minority Languages or the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities.
It is important, therefore, that the State guarantees, in every sense, respect for the rights of the minority. If there are no legal mechanisms in this regard, it is possible that the majority will impose its numerical strength and undermine the rights of the minority group.
The person who has not yet reached a certain number of years (usually 18) is a minority.
Social and political minorities
In general, the subjects who form the minority group of a community are easily identifiable since they differ, by some characteristic, from the majority of the members of said society . If in a town of 1,000 people there are 600 people with black hair, 280 with brown hair, 100 people with blonde hair and 20 redheads, the individuals with reddish hair will be the minority and will stand out from the rest due to their differences.
At the political or electoral level, the minority is the set of votes that are contrary to the opinion of the majority . It is also about the fraction of a deliberative body that is smaller than the majority part . In a Chamber of Deputies composed of eighty deputies from the Blue Party , sixty deputies from the Yellow Party and twelve deputies from the White Party , the members of this last bloc will be the minority.
The concept linked to age
In addition to all the above, we would have to explain that minority is a term that is used within the legal field. Specifically, we speak of a minority to refer to the fact that a person in question is a minor, that is, they do not have the age established in the relevant legislation as majority, which brings with it another series of rights and duties. .
In Spain , for example, it is considered that every boy or girl who is not 18 years old is considered to be within the minority group.