When a minority is an object of discrimination and contempt, this is most frequently explained and justified by attributing some moral inferiority to the group in question. Its members are lazy, feckless, addicted to thieving, generally endowed with criminal tendencies, dirty, given to unsavoury sexual habits, drunkenness, and so forth. The attribution may of course be totally unfair and unjustified. Alternatively, it may be, as it were, enforced or imposed, by a kind of circular selfconfirming procedure. An easily identifiable sub-population credited with strong criminal proclivities may find it difficult to secure ordinary employment and may in fact be forced into criminal activities. It is difficult to escape the consequences of social stereotyping, and determined attempts to do so quite often lead only to a strengthened imposition of the initial attribution.

But, leaving aside the fairness or otherwise of the attribution, this ‘normal’ condition of discrimination has a certain manifest logic. The minority in question is bad in terms of the recognised values of the dominant ‘host’ or majority society; if the attribution of the said inferiority is justified – and who knows, in some cases, it may be – discrimination does thereby acquire a kind of justification. That kind of situation – without prejudice to the question concerning whether the ascription of the relevant deficiency is in fact justified – constitutes what may be called the standard or simplest version of discrimination.

There is however a rather more interesting and complicated variant of minority persecution.