Article: Disempowering minorities: a critique of Wilkinson's `task for social scientists and practitioners'.(response to article by Doris Wilkinson, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, vol. 27, p. 115, 2000)

In this article, I examine Wilkinson's (2000) injunction that practitioners "omit entirely the `minority' concept" (pp. 124-25). I maintain that Wilkinson's argument disempowers groups--such as gays and the disabled-who have used a "minority" identity effectively, and speciously indicates that African-Americans would benefit from such retrenchment, thereby implying that social justice is a zero-sum game. Rather, "minority" coalitions are effectively pursuing justice for all. Moreover, Wilkinson's deconstruction of "minority" conflates conceptual breadth with conceptual vagueness, and conveniently ignores (or denies) the socially constructed character of "race" and ...

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