"The protection of minority rights is all that stands between any democracy becoming a tyranny of the majority. This book looks at what minority rights are and why they are important. The age-appropriate text discusses the different types of minorities found in society and explores why it's important to protect their rights. Fact boxes provide additional information about key figures throughout the history of democracy that have fought for and protected minority rights"--
The protection of minority rights is all that stands between any democracy becoming a tyranny of the majority. This book looks at what minority rights are and why they are important. The age-appropriate text discusses the different types of minorities found in society and explores why it's important to protect their rights. Fact boxes provide additional information about key figures throughout the history of democracy that have fought for and protected minority rights.
Minority Rights, Jennifer Jackson Preece, Cambridge (UK) and Malden MA: Polity Press, 2005, pp. ix, 213.This book is not, as its title might be thought to suggest, an abstract conceptual analysis of a particular sub-set of rights. Although it builds on, and acknowledges, the work of Kymlicka, Raz, Taylor and Shklar (160), the narrative thread that gives it unity is historical. It deepens our understanding of the nature of the discourse of minority rights by contextualizing that discourse both temporally (through historical examples) and spatially (through adroitly selected comparative examples). With extraordinary succinctness and clarity the author guides us through a succession of political epochs: the time of the Christian and Islamic medieval universitae, the period of the dynastic re-organization of Europe, the modern era of popular sovereignty with its attendant notions of civic and ethnic nationalism, and especially the contradiction-laden time of European imperialism and its post-imperial and post-colonial reverberations. As this narrative unfolds we follow the vicissitudes of religious, racial, linguistic and ethnic minorities and observe the successive forms taken by the "problem of minorities."
Cover; Table of Contents; Foreword: Respect and Protection of Minority Rights; Part One: Protection of Minority Rights from Perspectives of International Law and Domestic Law; Amalgamation of Different Cultures for a Harmony World Construction, In Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 30th Anniversary of China's Reform and Opening-up, Liu Hainian; On the Protection of Minority Rights: From a Perspective of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Zhu Xiaoqing.
Frontmatter -- PREFACE -- CONTENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- 1 INTRODUCTION: HOW WAR AND THE BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT CHANGED AMERICA -- 2 "THIS IS WAR AND THIS IS A WAR MEASURE": RACIAL EQUALITY BECOMES NATIONAL SECURITY -- 3 NATIONAL SECURITY AND EQUAL RIGHTS: LIMITS AND QUALIFICATIONS -- 4 "WE WERE ADVANCING THE REALLY REVOLUTIONARY VIEW OF DISCRIMINATION": DESIGNATING OFFICIAL MINORITIES FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN EMPLOYMENT -- 5 "IN VIEW OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE OTHER SIGNIFICANT MINORITIES": THE EXPANSION OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR MINORITY CAPITALISTS -- 6 "RACE IS A VERY RELEVANT PERSONAL CHARACTERISTIC": AFFIRMATIVE ADMISSIONS, DIVERSITY, AND THE SUPREME COURT -- 7 "LEARN, AMIGO, LEARN!" BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS IN THE SCHOOLS -- 8 "I AGREE WITH YOU ABOUT THE INHERENT ABSURDITY": TITLE IX AND WOMEN'S EQUALITY IN EDUCATION -- 9 WHITE MALES AND THE LIMITS OF THE MINORITY RIGHTS REVOLUTION: THE DISABLED, WHITE ETHNICS, AND GAYS -- 10 CONCLUSION: THE RARE AMERICAN EPIPHANY -- NOTES -- INDEX