ECONOMIC WRONGS
There currently exists in many places a great deal of anger and resentment on the part of large numbers within the populations of those places, directed toward smaller groups residing among them, who happen to fare better in business, and thus financially, than the majority. These more successful but hated smaller groups are frequently of a different ethnic or cultural background than the majority; or may comprise a group who emigrated there from another place. They are frequently referred to as a "market-dominant minority." What is generally claimed to be sought on the part of the irate majority is more equitable access to wealth and success on their part. At the basis of their demands is usually the fact that they were original long-term residents within the place in question; and/or that they happen to constitute the "market" from which the said minority is deriving its wealth. This resentment and hatred for such groups sometimes boils over into violence, which occasionally escalates into episodes of senseless wanton mayhem, murder, and even genocide.
A factor that contributes to this increasing outpouring of contempt and hatred for "market-dominant minorities " has been the recent widespread expansion of democracy within our world. Such developments have enabled the alleged deprived majorities to communicate their discontent more freely and more widely than ever before. Examples can be cited concerning, among other places, Burma, Latin America, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, and Zimbabwe.
In the Philippines, hostility is said to have centered around the realization that sixty percent of the nation's private economy was controlled by Chinese residents, who comprised a mere one percent of the population. In Burma it became unhappily realized by the populace that the Chinese minority there dominated every aspect of commerce within that country. In Latin American nations in general, there has been resentment and hatredfor the "tiny white minority," direct descendants of the Spanish settlers, who have become more or less native within these places, and control the economies of their respective nations. In Mexico, relief was attempted to be obtained via nationalization of various entities within the business sector; but in some instances, this has been said to have been "economically disastrous." In Russia, after the end of the Cold War, an economically advantaged minority group offered loans and political support to the government in exchange for majority shares, at a bargain price, in key segments of that nation's economy. And in Zimbabwe, widespread complaints were directed at the fact that seventy percent of prime real estate within the country was owned by white European residents, who constituted but one percent of the population thereof. All of these instances provoked similar outrage on the part of the more or less newly democratized, but still destitute, majorities among the respective populations of these places.
We especially shudder when we learn about the wholesale slaughter that went on in Rwanda in 1994, when Hutus slew Tutsis on a horrific grand scale, and almost a million men, women, and children perished. In like manner, this followed the acquisition by Rwanda of independence from Belgium, and the subsequent conversion of the new government to a kind of quasi-democracy a couple of decades following. At the base of the genocide that finally took place was hatred on the part of the Hutu majority, who consequently controlled the new government, for the Tutsi minority, who were considered to be unjustly economically dominant within the nation.
There has long been resentment in the Middle East for the economic disparitties that exist there. According to a study conducted a few years ago, Israelis enjoyed an annual per capita income of $16,700.; while in Jordan, it was only $1,710.; in Syria, $940.; and in Yemen, a mere $370.
The tragedy of September 11th has been characterized by some as a particularly horrid demonstration of hatred for a "market-dominant minority." It has been proposed by some that this catastrophe was not so much an attack upon a number of innocent individual human beings, as an assault upon an alleged "faceless embodiment of corrupt wealth, arrogance, and abusive power." Pursuant to such a point of view, the World Trade Center was looked upon as a "high temple of capitalism," wherein extravagantly paid minions of our economic system operated and thrived, while eighty percent of mankind was forced to continue to struggle on in poverty.
Of course, it goes without saying that any behavior that results in harm to one's fellow man, to his property, or to any element or aspect of the world in general, is plainly and absolutely wrong. Moreover, such acts are nothing more than criminal behavior and ought never be resorted to or approved by persons of intelligence and logic. The common denominator underlying the various instances wherein people have been reviled or attacked for reasons related to their status as a "market-dominant minority" is apparently a strong feeling on the part of the "majority" for the locale that it calls home. The resentment stems from the fact that, relatively speaking, the "minority" are newcomers to that place, and that they should consequently refrain from eonomically dominating it, or its "majority" original population. These feelings appear to bear relation to the emotions implicit in nationalism, wherein the residents within a particular country desire success and prosperity for themselves and their fellow citizens, by reason of the fact that they have lived together within that nation-state for an allegedly "long" period of time.
But I believe that it is now time for man to progress beyond this "turf" mentality; and to consider anywhere in the world "fair game" for economic success for any members of the human race. Had there been no such country as Rwanda--had there been no countries throughout the African continent in 1994--would the atmosphere that led to the murder of a million innocent people have materialized anyway? Or might the feeling by a "majority" of being disadvantaged by a "minority within our borders" have been theoretically impossible, and thereby have never led to mayhem? It doesn't hurt to wonder.
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