“Middleman” minorities form significant economic bridges between generally poorer classes of consumers and generally wealthier classes of producers. Such minorities are often involved in small-scale retail operations or other entrepreneurial activities to provide goods and services to underserved populations.
The term “middleman minority” first became common among American sociologists during the 1960’s. It describes the status and function of minority groups, whether recent immigrants or long-standing residents, who serve the retail and small commercial needs of dominant minority groups, whose members themselves have little access to the economic and social status of the majority group. The term “petty retailers” has historically been applied to middleman minorities in the United States who open small retail stores to provide basic commodities in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods that larger retailers and service providers tend to avoid.
Middleman minorities can be found around the globe. Their ethnic and cultural designations vary among the groups that form the dominant minorities within any given society. Middleman minorities throughout the world exhibit several shared characteristics. For example, members of primarily middleman minorities tend to be self-employed or work for members of their own ethnic groups until they begin their own entrepreneurial activities. Their businesses tend to be small and financed initially by ethnic aid groups. Middleman minorities have limited access to the dominant majority to buy resources, but the access they do have tends to be greater than that of the dominant minority. The middleman minorities resell these goods and services to minority populations with whom they have only transactional relationships. Members of middleman minorities rarely attempt to form social ties with members of the larger minority group in a culture.
Members of middleman minorities share a number of personal characteristics as well. For example, they tend to be hard workers and long-term planners and savers. They also tend to have strong beliefs in the value of
Despite providing essential goods and services to neighborhoods that would otherwise lack them, members of middleman minorities are generally viewed with hostility by members of the minority and majority groups. They have often been the targets of discrimination and physical violence. As members of minority classes with little access to members of wealthier and more powerful majority groups, members of middleman minorities offer convenient targets on whom others may vent their frustration and feelings of anger for having being taken advantage of economically. Middleman minorities do not themselves produce the commodities they sell, but they profit from selling what others have produced. Their prosperity relative to the minority group is resented by their lower-income customers who do not share in that prosperity.
Members of middleman minorities and their children tend to outperform other minority group members in both capital accumulation and educational levels. Rather than imitate the behavior patterns of middleman minorities, other minority group members often view the entire economic and social system as be deliberately stacked against them. Thus, middleman minority businesses are often the first businesses to suffer damage during instances of urban unrest.
With the United States, members of various different ethnic and cultural group have held the status of middleman minorities. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example,
One of the most obvious hostile situations for members of middleman minorities in the United States has involved
Butler, John. Immigrant and Minority Entrepreneurship: The Continuous Rebirth of American Communities. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Examines how different ethnic minorities behave in their attempts to enter the American economic mainstream. Kaufman, Eric. Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities. New York: Routledge, 2004. Studies patterns of ethnic migration caused by the pressures of globalization as various ethnic groups try to improve their status. Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks and White Liberals. New York: Encounter Books, 2005. Sociological study of various middleman minorities around the globe and their psychological characteristics. Pays particular attention to Afro-American cultural history. _______. Migrations and Cultures: A World View. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Study of various ethnic groups within different cultures to see which cultures are better at accumulating human capital based through various behaviors.
Asian immigrants
Family businesses
Korean immigrants
Stereotyping
