Majority Involvement in Minority Movements: Civil Rights, Abolition, Untouchability1

Social movements seeking to change the subordinate status of ethnic minorities have drawn activists from both the minority and dominant groups. Conflict has at times developed between movement members of these two groups. In a comparative analysis of three movements—the civil rights movement, the anti‐slavery cause in the U.S., and the movement to abolish Untouchability in India—the sources of tension appear quite similar. Ideologically, minority group activists viewed themselves as more radical and committed to that particular cause than did their dominant group co‐workers and were more for a strategy of minority group self‐help. Organizational conflict arose as majority members disproportionately assumed decision‐making positions in the movement. A third source of tension developed because some movement members were carriers of prejudices and hostilities of the larger social milieu. Outsiders frequently played essential roles in the early phases of these movements, but pressures developed on majority members to reduce involvement or withdraw altogether.