Visible minority

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Visible minorities are persons who are not of the majority race in a given population. For example, in Canada, visible minorities are defined as "persons, other than Aboriginals who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour."

The term is primarily used in Canada and is a demographic category used by Statistics Canada in connection with that country's multiculturalism policies. It is also occasionally used in the United Kingdom, but not in other parts of the world.

[edit] Visible minorities in Canada

Nearly four million Canadians identified themselves as a visible minority in the 2001 Census, accounting for 13.4% of the total population. This was an increase from 1996 when the proportion was 11.2%, and a major increase over 1991 (9.4%) and 1981 (4.7%). The increase represents a significant shift in Canada's demographics since the advent of that country's multiculturalism policies.

Of the provinces, British Columbia had the highest proportion of visible minorities, representing 21.6% of its population, followed by Ontario at 19.1%. People of Chinese origin are Canada’s largest visible minority group, with a population of more than one million. In 2001, they made up 3.5% of the country’s population, followed by South Asians (3.1%) and Black Canadian (2.2%).

	Population	Per cent of population
Chinese	1,029,395	3.5%
Indo Canadian	917,075	3.1%
Black	662,210	2.2%
Filipino	308,575	1.0%
Latin American	216,975	0.7%
Southeast Asian	198,880	0.7%
Arab	194,680	0.7%
West Asian	109,285	0.4%
Korean	100,660	0.3%
Japanese	73,315	0.2%
Visible minority, n.i.e.	98,920	0.3%
Multiple visible minorities	73,875	0.2%
Total visible minority population	3,983,845	13.4%
Source: Statistics Canada, 2001 Census, 97F0010XCB2001002