This article examines the emergence, institutionalization, persistence, and eventual decline of “visible minority” as a composite category of racialized populations in Canada over the past 50 years. Drawing on extensive archival research and institutional process-tracing, we detail the emergence of the terminology in racial justice activism in the 1970s, its institutionalization as “an ambiguous categorization” by the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment and in the subsequent Employment Equity Act in the early 1980s, and its integration in Canada’s statistical infrastructure by the 1990s.
We argue that, despite longstanding criticism of its conceptual ambiguity and clear limitations, “visible minority” persisted because of its legislative mandate, administrative uses, and integration into Canada’s centralized statistical system, which together created formidable institutional barriers to change. Its eventual decline was catalyzed by exogenous forces, such as changing political understandings of race and racism and demands for more disaggregated race-based data, which altered the institutional environment in ways that made the continued use of this aggregate category difficult to sustain.
Ultimately, the Canadian case demonstrates how racial classifications acquire institutional durability, that some institutional arrangements can insulate contentious classification schemes from changing political demands, and the confluent conditions that made change possible.
