According to Chinese American professor, Amy Chua, ethnic groups that control national economies are bound to be hated. In a 2002 book she called World On Fire, she listed her fellow Chinese, Jews, Igbos and Lebanese as some market dominant groups in various parts of the world.
In the book, which is available on Amazon, she disclosed that:
The Chinese Filipino community is 1% of the population but controls 60% of the economy, with the result being resentment by the majority against the Chinese minority creating an ethnic conflict. The ethnic Chinese are a market-dominant minority not just in the Philippines but throughout Southeast Asia.
In 1998, Chinese Indonesians, only three percent of the population, controlled roughly 70 percent of Indonesia’s private economy, including all of the country’s largest conglomerate. More recently, in Burma, entrepreneurial Chinese have literally taken over the economies of Mandalay and Rangoon.
Whites are a market-dominant minority in South Africa–and, in a more complicated sense, in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, and much of Latin America. Lebanese are a market-dominant minority in West Africa. Ibo (or Igbo) are a market-dominant minority in Nigeria. Croats were a market-dominant minority in the former Yugoslavia. And Jews are almost certainly a market-dominant minority in post-Communist Russia.
Is she right? Is this why Igbos are hated by many (not all) in Nigeria? Many non-Igbo Nigerians, including President Muhammadu Buhari, have acknowledged the entrepreneurial acumen of the Igbos. So we agree with Chua’s listing of Igbos with Chinese, Lebanese and Jews as market dominant groups. (It’s the truth.)
Igbodefender disagrees however with Chua’s classification of Igbos as a minority, because in every state in Nigeria, the Igbos are the second most populous ethnic group after the indigenes. They also have a homeland (Ala Igbo) which encompasses the five South Eastern states and parts of the South South like Opobo, Bonny (Igwe Nga) and Port Harcourt (Igwe Ocha). In fact, every census has put Igbos among Nigeria’s top three most populous ethnic groups, despite the sad fact that 3 million of our kin died during the unjustly prosecuted Nigerian Civil War.
So, is she right?
