Professor Lazos' thgouhtful and informative piece adds much to this debate. Her discussion of "race" in the context of "minority" reveals an important point. She writes:
"To determine if any social group is a "minority," the Court should take into account history ( a history of stigmatization as is the case with segregation and racial minorities), cultural ideology (a "common sense" that makes a group inferior or places that group in a restrictive role), and psychology (documented showing that the majority regards the minority as inferior or subordinate to them in some respect.) The nature of the dominant-subordinate dynamic will vary with context because different minority groups are subject to different kinds of prejudices and power dynamics." Her identification of the categories of history, cultural ideology and psychology provide a fruitful framework for analysis. As others will note, these categories can be turned in mah directions. One could argue, for example, that Catholics and evangelical Christians suffer from the majority culture in profound and continuous ways. As Philip Jenkins has recently noted, anti-catholic prejusdice is deeply rooted and casually expressed in almost every area of American life, and the evidence he marshals satisfies at least the last 2 categories described above. Speaking as a Catholic, I can attest to its negative psychological effects. But were a court to examine a claim for AA by a Catholic,I don't think we would feel comfortable identifying that plaintiff (or, say, a rural evangelical Christian) as a "minority." The larger question Professor Lazos reises is really whether the courts are the right vehicle for making these judgments, and whether such obviously contextual and shifting definitions of minority, which depend on region, education, and the reigning majotity stereotypes, are of suitable determinateness to be comprehensible in a constitutionally-viable way. Gerald J. Russello
