# superminority
## English
### Etymology

From super +‎ minority, variously involving super-'s separate meanings of "above", "more than", "excellent", or "powerful".

### Noun

superminority (plural superminorities)
* A voting block which, although it has less than 50% of the vote, has sufficient numbers to prevent any other group from forming a supermajority.
** 1982, Rights of Employed Inventors:A President and a “superminority" of Congress—41 percent of one house—in the exercise of the constitutional mandate to “ensure” that outlays do not exceed receipts, might kill or maim any program they did not like—social security, environmental, defense—so long as the President could hold the support of 41 percent of the members of one house of Congress.
** 1993, Temple international and comparative law journal:Under this approach, a superminority of 34 Senators could prevent a sole executive agreement from enjoying the full force of the supremacy clause vis-a-vis state laws.
** 1995, Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit:When the votes were counted, the superminority resolution revoking the pledge took 37 percent, but backers of the pledge also failed to win a majority, so the UAW found itself with no formal position on the crucial issue.
** 1999, Congressional Record, page 6606:What my colleagues need to understand is that we are setting up, not a powerful supermajority, what we are doing is setting up a powerful superminority which will control the process.
* (more generally) A minority group that wields disproportionate power.
** 1979, Rodney Petersen, The philosophy of a peasant, page 244:This is an escalating process until we have a highly privileged superminority with a vested interest in increasing its numbers and its power. At that point the people have become servants of the bureaucracy, rather than the bureaucracy being a service function of the government, working for the citizenry.
** 1992, Environmental Law Update, page 389:State governors clamor for state control. They fear local control could generate a hodge—podge of conflicting rules and that a state's solid waste policy could be dictated by a "superminority" of activists in a given county.
** 2002, Mikhail A. Molchanov, Political culture and national identity in Russian-Ukrainian relations:Perhaps because of that, the Russian superminority became singled out as a target of nationalist attack.
** 2012, Kyle Langvardt, “The Sorry Case for Citizens United: Remarks at the 2012 Charleston Law Review and Riley Institute of Law and Society Symposium”, in Charleston Law Revue:What, then, is the policy justification for reallocating power in this manner in the direction that Citizens United does, away from the majority and toward an already disproportionately powerful wealthy superminority.
* An ethnic minority group that is seen as having outstanding abilities.
** 1987, Newsweek - Volume 109, Issues 18-26, page 12:Although the idea that they are a superminority is a new one, the increase in Asian- American activism is the result of years of discrimination.
** 2002, E. San Juan Jr., Racism and Cultural Studies, →ISBN:Assimilationist ideology of late has been refurbished by a neoliberal policy of multiculturalism, affording us a schizoid if pragmatic optic to handle this racializing dilemma. Mocking all hermeneutics of suspicion, the enigmatic superminority image of Asian Americans persists.
** 2006, Janis L. McDonald, Frank S. Ravitch, Pamela Sumners, Employment Discrimination Law, →ISBN:Since the arrival of Asian immigrants in the nineteenth century, and most notably since the 1960s, this ubiquitous superminority image has suggested that Asian Americans achieve economic success and gain societal acceptance through conservative values and hard work.
* A member of a minority group who has extraordinary abilities, often one who is identified as a leader and representative of the entire ethnic group.
** 1976, Affirmative Action in Employment in Higher Education:White males find it inherently impossible to believe that a woman or minority can be competent and can be qualified. It's a very, very difficult thing. I have seen people who appeared to be genuinely sincere struggling with this, and they find it very, very difficult to conceive of women and minorities being qualified. What they do is they look for superwomen or superminorities.
** 1979, Paquita Vivó, Hispanic Mosaic: A Forum on Hispanic Health Concerns, page 33:Teachers and counselors offer a good resource for identification or potential Hispanic health professional students. However, I must point out a potential problem which I have personally encountered in working with secondary, undergraduate and professional school faculty. Often this group must be educated to the concept that it is not only the "superminority" student who already stands out as being a motivated achiever who should be identified.
** 1981, John P. Fernandez, Racism and sexism in corporate life:A white middle-level manager from a large bank aptly sums up the present situation in the corporate world regarding qualifications: "Most minority executives are superminorities — mediocrity is the privilege of the white male.
** 1996, Community College Review - Volume 24, page 21:We suspect that the pressures present due to high expectations for minority presidents may lead to a "superminority" syndrome -- a condition conducive to fatigue and over-commitment.
* A large minority group that comprises a significant percentage of the population or most of the minority population.
** 1999, United States Congress. House Committee on Resources, HR 2547, to provide for the conveyance of land interests to Chugach Alaska Corporation to fulfill the intent, purpose, and promise of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, →ISBN:And out of the 326 village corporation shareholders, we only make up 37, so again, we are a superminority of our own corporation, so whatever the corporation decides to do, we have to go along with it because we don't have the votes to overpower the majority.
** 2011, Boze Hadleigh, Mexico's Most Wanted:Sheer numbers are changing that, but despite Spanish surnames popping up everywhere, this usually gentle and hardworking superminority hasn't yet learned that the wheel that squeaks loudest gets the grease.
** 2012 October, Geoffrey Thomas Greenlees, “Drawing the Necessary Line: A Review of Dating Domestic Violence Statutes around the United States”, in Family Court Review,, volume 50, number 4:If the aforementioned bills fail to pass this year, these states will be left in a superminority of states in this country, which do not recognize the extreme problem of dating domestic abuse.
* Multiple minority groups, seen as a single coalition or group.
** 1977, Martia Diamond., The Electoral College and The American Idea of Democracy:There is the assumption, underlying this problem with minorities, that all minorities will get together and form some form of superminority constituency—otherwise they wouldn't be all that effective— and I don't see any validity to that.
** 2010, J. R. Dunn, Time For Hate! Tree of Liberty Patriot's Fascism End the FED:Under the multicultural dispensation, Hispanics get to be considered “nonwhite”, as members of that global, monolithic “superminority” defined only by its opposition to the European ascendancy.
** 2013, Jonathan Eagles, Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism, →ISBN:The fragility of the superminority government was offset somewhat by the popularity of the President, Traian Basescu (2004–), a former mayor of Bucharest.
* A person who is a member of multiple minority groups.
** 2008, Barbara L Bernier, “Unholy Troika: Gender, Race and Religiosity in the 2008 Presidential Contest”, in Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, volume 15, pages 277–278:This concept is legally established by federal court decisions that have decreed that black women can represent blacks, but may not represent women as a group or be considered a "superminority" in a class action.
** 2016, Patricia A. Matthew, Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure, →ISBN, page 120:The erasure of a queer of color faculty and the difficulties for the research team to understand an intersectional experience was evident from the beginning of the study when the author identified thos who are both LGBt and racial and ethnic minorities to be "superminorities" who were underrrepresented in the city of Bellingham, Washington, and the campus itself.

#### Coordinate terms

* qualified minority, plurality, relative majority, simple majority, absolute majority, qualified majority, supermajority