Rethinking minority status and ‘visibility’

Abstract

Historically, minority status has been linked with visibility as a non-White person, and such phenotypical visibility has marked people in terms of racial stigmas and discrimination. But definitions and claims to minority status are increasingly complicated (and contested) by immigration and the growth of multiracial people, many of whom are racially ambiguous, and some of whom look White. As the multiracial population in various multi-ethnic societies continues to grow, and diversify, to include multigeneration multiracial people whose non-White ancestries are more distant, questions about recognized minority status will become more pressing. Do we need to rethink the link between minority status and visibility as a non-White person? To what extent should lived experience (as a multiracial person) matter for our understandings of minority status, if one is not a ‘visible’ minority?