The ``minorities at risk'' project and data have offered a first and innovative systematic view of communal and ethnic groups. Collecting detailed information on mobilized and/or discriminated groups it has allowed researchers to offer new insights in many areas dealing with relationships among groups. Nevertheless, scholars have used this data also in ways for which it was not designed or hardly appropriate. This paper offers an overview over the main contributions of the ``minorities at risk'' project and discusses for what research questions this data has to be used with care.