Envied successful minorities are prime scapegoat targets, not the weakest groups.

Evidence

High status or powerful (e.g., socioeconomically successful) minorities that are viewed as competing with the dominant group are subjected to envious prejudice: they are admired for their success, but also resented for it; stereotyped as highly competent, but as having hostile motives. Because envied minorities are viewed as having the power and intent to harm, they are at risk of being blamed for causing group-level frustrations. Additionally, a sense of relative deprivation (Runciman, 1966) can play into the scapegoating of successful minorities, who may be perceived as being less affected by or even as benefiting from the suffering endured by the ingroup, inflaming resentment and lending plausibility to the belief that the scapegoated group intentionally brought about the ingroup’s misfortunes. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1585

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common assumption that scapegoats are the weakest or most marginal; connects to Allport’s original question about whether scapegoats are defenseless, and to general accounts of envy-driven persecution like antisemitism toward successful minorities. — connects to: Only low-status groups evoke pure low-low derogation, not envied high-status groups. — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 124
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the tree-grafting logic of asymmetric relationships, though more directly it echoes the sacrifice article’s theme of who gets singled out to absorb collective frustration and the mechanism by which more powerful groups are chosen rather than the dispossessed.