The Dishonest and Misleading Idea of the ‘Global Majority’

The acceptable way of referring to people of African or South Asian heritage has changed regularly over the years. At one time ‘coloured’ was thought to be a polite adjective in this context, although this has now fallen from use. More recently, BAME, an abbreviation for black, Asian, and minority ethnic has enjoyed a vogue, only to lose ground to the Americanism “people of colour.” 

An increasingly common practice is to refer to all non-white people as being part of the ‘global majority’. This phrase was coined a little over twenty years ago but only gained widespread popularity during the Black Lives Matter disturbances following the death of George Floyd in the United States in 2020. In Britain, it is now rapidly replacing the initialism BAME. In November 2022, London’s Westminster Council officially adopted the phrase in preference to BAME. The difficulty is that this is part of an exceedingly cunning and ingenious scheme, designed both to make white people feel bad about themselves and also to promote a mindset which allows black people to enjoy an unfair advantage over people of any other skin colour. Here is how this modern racket is operated.

Talking of the global majority is designed to counter the concept of black people being in any sense a ‘minority’. How can they be, when most of the people in the world are not white? The reasoning goes, from a global perspective, it is white people who constitute the minority. This is neatly done, because it is of course very fashionable these days for us all to think of ourselves as global citizens, rather than being bound to the parochial outlook of this or that nation. So if black people are actually in the majority worldwide, how can it be fair to describe them as any kind of minority? Of course, this all depends on how you divide up humanity and into which categories you place people. The world’s population ranges from those with very pale skins, who are definitely white, in northern Europe, all the way through to those in West Africa who are very dark indeed. If we assume that ‘white’ people are those who live in, or have their ancestral origins in, Europe, then there are perhaps three-quarters of a billion white people in the world; just over 11 per cent of humanity. Apart from Europe, they are distributed, among other geographical locations, across Canada, the United States, and Australia. There is no doubt at all that these folk are a minority viewed from that perspective. What about black people though? Those who live in sub-Saharan Africa or whose ancestry lies there? How many of them are there? It is now that matters become interesting and the concept of the ‘global majority’ rapidly falls apart.

There are roughly 1.2 billion people in Africa. Not all of them are black, of course—Egypt alone contains 109 million Arabs. In total, there are perhaps 220 million Arabs, Berbers, and white people living in Africa, which means that there are something in the region of 980 million black people on the continent. Another 43 million black people live in the Caribbean, perhaps 15 million in Brazil and of course some 40 million African-Americans. Then there are half a million or so aboriginals in Australia. All told, there are probably about 1.1 billion black people on Earth. Of course, the total human population is now approaching 8 billion, which means that black people only make up one-seventh of the people in the world. Put another way, six-sevenths of the global population is not black. There can be no doubt in the fact that black people are a minority whether looked at in terms of the populations of Britain or the United States or even from a global perspective!

We can see from the above that the concept of the ‘global majority’ is hopelessly flawed and is no more than a measure of whatever you set out to prove. If you wish to show that white people do not belong to the global majority, that is easy to do. Reverse the process and it is just as easy to demonstrate that it is actually black people who are not part of the global majority. We can do exactly the same with Chinese people, who make up less than a fifth of the world’s population. Who would ever have guessed that the Chinese are not part of the global majority?

Having exposed this trick, readers are perhaps asking themselves why such a pointless exercise was devised in the first place, and secondly, why nobody ever draws attention to the foolish nature of this method of categorising the human race. The first question is answered quite simply. It is no more than a means to allow black people in Britain and the United States an edge when seeking employment, promotion, places in higher education, and so on. It is a matter of common observation that people in the United States of east Asian origin have no difficulty getting places at universities such as Harvard and Yale, any more than they do in getting into English universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Indians in Britain find no difficulties in their way when it comes to higher education, employment, or indeed even becoming Prime Minister. It is black people alone who appear to be the victims of what is sometimes termed institutional or systemic racism. An example of how this works in practice might make this a little clearer.

On Thursday, 8th October 2020, the United States Justice Department sued Yale University for allegedly violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Assistant Attorney General Eric S. Dreiband said in a press release:

“All persons who apply for admission to colleges and universities should expect and know that they will be judged by their character, talents, and achievements and not the colour of their skin.”

Yale had been deliberately marking down Asian applicants for places at the university in order to be able to increase the number of African-Americans. When it comes to promoting the interests of the ‘global majority’, black trumps Asian every time. In Britain, many opportunities in higher education are now limited to those from a ‘global majority’ background. Exeter University for instance offers a funded PhD scholarship, but only to those from the global majority. 

The reality is that almost all such opportunities are tailored for black people, rather than for those whose families are from south or east Asia. They may only represent one-seventh of the world’s population, but by lumping themselves in with everybody with brown skin, black people are now accepted by employers and academic institutions as being in some strange way, a majority.

The motive and practical advantages for black people joining in this dubious enterprise are perfectly plain: it is to their benefit. The second question posed as to why nobody is tempted to draw attention to the absurdity of this imposture is equally easy to answer. Racism around black people is such a delicate subject that most people play safe and avoid making any statements which might hint, however obliquely, at the idea that black people will benefit from some anti-racist endeavour. Such a suggestion is widely viewed as being in, and of, itself a form of racism. So it is that even when we see, as in the case of Yale, those of Chinese heritage being racially discriminated against so that black people might have some advantage, we would rather remain silent instead of talking openly about the matter. To examine in fine detail what is actually meant by the expression ‘global majority’ is felt at best to be in questionable taste and at worst racist. Most of us would rather avoid the very suggestion of such things.

The language used to denote ethnic minorities may change over the years, but one thing remains the same. This is that efforts which are made with the supposed intention of eradicating racial prejudice are almost invariably slanted in such a way that it is only black people who will benefit from them. The global majority scam is a perfect illustration of this tendency. On the face of it, the aim was to put race and ethnicity in their proper, global perspective, but the true goal was always to portray white people as a greedy minority, exploiting and oppressing anybody whose skin was darker than their own. At the same time, this new terminology succeeded in opening up opportunities for black people which would be denied to those whose skins were a shade or two lighter than theirs—people whose ancestry was Indian or Chinese. The ‘global majority’ is a scam, a semantic Trojan horse devised to make white people feel that they are a minority, causing them to be reluctant to challenge anything said by the so-called ‘majority’.