The minority experience in majority spaces

To move through institutions, professions, and social spaces as a member of a minority group is to navigate a set of demands and frictions that majority members rarely perceive: the expectation of representing your entire group, the question of when to speak and when silence is the more strategic choice, the exhaustion of perpetual translation. What is sometimes called resilience in minority members is better understood as the skilled management of conditions that the majority group has not had to develop those skills to manage. The examined majority life involves becoming aware of what it does not have to navigate.