New Zealander’s are funny buggers. Our negative egalitarianism often highlights things about us as a culture that aren’t terribly pleasant.
Take for example the furore over this rich 19 year old teenager who assaulted a Police Officer. People are furious at the leniency and immediately note that if he was Maori he’d be in prison.
Note – no one questions whether or not sending a 19 year old into a prison is a good or bad thing, we just cry foul because we think the white kid should go to prison too.
Negative egalitarianism at its finest.
We shouldn’t be putting any bloody 19 year old in prison, we should be actively trying to keep them out of prison, we want this kind of leniency, we just should be demanding it for every 19 year old who faces the judiciary, not just the rich white ones.
The real issue here, as I see it, is the shock and surprise so many seem to be having over NZs justice system being so racist…
Report finds police are more likely to let off non-Maori Kiwis with warnings
Police are more likely to let non-Maori offenders off with pre-charge warnings than Maori offenders, a report has found.
The report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) found “a number of issues” with pre-charge warnings policy and practice, including that the system was used “inconsistently and sometimes inappropriately”.
Released today, the report revealed “substantial and undesirable inconsistencies between police districts in the extent to which pre-charge warnings are used and the types of offenders to whom they are given”.
…and this I think is the surprising bit, that people seem to be surprised by how racist our system really is.
The Police force admitted last year they were biased against Maori, our stats show the bias and the insane incarceration rates back all this up.
The only surprise is that there is surprise.
If you are only realising now that the judiciary, corrections and police are racist – you’re part of the problem.
Thanks Martyn I fail to comprehend how one group can speak for another group by saying there is no racism in our country. How the f would they know. When you colonize a country and a people you assimilate them this is racism and discrimination because you assume you and your ways are superior. Now we have a whole lot of foreigners coming her getting far better treatment than we ever did, nice state houses when we were put in the bronxs areas near factories etc. Now these houses and flats have been knocked down and who can afford to live in them. Many of our people (Maori) are not only landless they are homeless in their own country. And boy this makes me very very angry and I bet I am not the only Maori on the warpath
I also think it is as sexist and classist as it is racist.
Punching a women is ok in NZ. Time and time again the law minimalists these attacks on women.
Money also talks.
Horrible.
Hope he appeals and the judge extends his sentence to jail.
Only a fool or trenchant Nat supporter would deny that justice is for sale in this country.
I recall some years ago a judge dismissing a case of cannabis posession by a visiting millionaire after said wealthy guy made a donation to a local charity.
Make no mistake, if you have the ‘bucks’, you can make legal hassles ‘go away’.
My view is that people are mostly in denial, they know full well that there is racial bias, and prejudice, and most will themselves be guilty of this, and that includes even the ones who are often victim of this behaviour.
New Zealand is a country where many of our leaders and even common citizens claim that we have an “egalitarian” society, which is total nonsense, as we know, and as it has been discussed here and elsewhere again and again.
New Zealanders are also told we have “racial harmony”, which is again nonsense, as we have for decades had suburbs in our larger and also not so large cities where people live more or less separated on ethnic and cultural lines, which again are linked to their socioeconomic status.
As so many Maori and Pasifika are poor, they tend to live in certain suburbs where even the poor white citizens rather send their kids to other schools, where they have more white and perhaps also Asian students.
New immigration is gradually leading to new and old suburbs becoming more ethnically and culturally “unique”, as migrants from certain countries of origin prefer to rather live among themselves, than live in white or polynesian neighbourhoods.
We may not have the gun laws, the level of crime and social disaster that has been typical for many US cities, but we are following a similar pattern.
And the system itself tends to favour those who are better off, who have better off parents, who have better education and access to resources to spend on lawyers and other professional representatives.
With the society we now have it is only getting worse, that is more division and separation, and instead of acting in unison, most fight and fend for themselves and their immediate families, and ignore the rest of society. People walk past beggars in the city and many even demand that Councils should ban beggars and rough sleepers.
Welcome to New Zealand 2016, which is very unequal and divided, all else is just total bullshit, and those that hold smart academic views on this, well, I ask, when have you last shared your home with a down and out person, or welcomed a poor neighbour with troubles living next to you?
“as migrants from certain countries of origin prefer to rather live among themselves, than live in white or polynesian neighbourhoods.”
Under the skin, we’re all the same, eh? Some are adventurous. Many prefer to live among their own, with their own familiar language, religious version, and culture – even if the accents are becoming quite Kiwi as local-born kids arrive, then go to school.
Parochial, xenophobic – definitely. Been like that for well over a century: ‘no dogs, blacks or Irish’. ‘Wops and dagoes’ will probably have a hard time, too.
Those who are ‘in’, and those who are ‘not’.
Question is – have we enough smothering labels and generalisations to cover the problem?
Seems a lot of people are forgetting about a certain son of a Maori King getting off pretty lightly… but then that wouldn’t suit your clickbait headline now would it.
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