A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that minorities are viewed through the lens of threat to the majority, regardless of the reality of that threat.
Christopher Isherwood's quote highlights the perception of minorities in society, indicating that they are often seen as a threat to the majority group, whether that threat is actual or just a product of fear and misunderstanding. It underscores the complex dynamics of power, fear, and societal positions, suggesting that any notion of threat carries weight and impacts how minorities are treated, regardless of the validity of those fears.
In practice
During discussions about social justice issues, this quote can be used to emphasize the biases faced by minority groups.
The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.
What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?
I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
I am a camera, with its shutter open. Someday, all of this will be developed, printed, fixed.
I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.
You said your mom is the goddess of balance," I reminded him. "The minor gods deserve better, Ethan, but total destruction isn't balance. Kronos doesn't build. He only destroys.
Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.
We're all inseparably part of each other. We all coexist in each other.
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.
The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.
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