There are a multitude of protections that can be built into any democracy that protect the minority. One, you can add constitutional rights that supersede majority will - like the Bill of Rights in the United States. All laws passed by majority rule are subject to those amendments and the Constitution.
Second, you can build in procedural rules like the filibuster, or calls for reading of a bill, amendments to a bill, etc. that slow down the process and give the minority a limited form of veto, although this can obviously be abused to the point where the democracy is threatened.
Third, because one group is the minority in a country overall, it does not mean it is the minority locally, meaning they can still elect candidates and have some local control over their own lives, allowing them to still live according to majority rule without being oppressed, at least directly, by that majority.
Take Dearborn, Michigan as an example, which has one of the highest populations of Iraqi-Americans in the country. Clearly a religious and ethnic minority, but with enough local numbers to still control their local governments to a reasonable extent. Since their religion is protected by the 1st amendment, they are also protected by the courts.
** In response to pohnpei's statement -- it is true the Constitution failed to protect blacks for nearly a hundred years - the system worked as it should have, but popular will was against it in the South. To be fair though, the court ruled as it should've in favor of minority rights in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, and then the order was enforced against the majority will of southerners, by a President who didn't favor minority rights (Eisenhower). So while slow, cumbersome, and often unsuccessful, in this case the system and the protections within it did in fact work.
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