Wait – what? You ignorant banjo strumming white volk awarded the racist blackface float second prize??? Maybe Hone was right?

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The absurdly racist blackface float was originally written off by us all as just stupid pig ignorant white people doing stupid pig ignorant white people stuff right?

Sadly we gave these banjo twanging cross burners far too much credit because it turns out the fucking Mayor awarded this grotesque fuckwittery SECOND PRIZE????

South Taranaki mayor was judge who awarded prize to blackface float
The mayor of South Taranaki was the parade judge who awarded second place to a float featuring people in blackface, it has been revealed.

After being pressed by media, Ross Dunlop has come clean over giving Hāwera Mt View Lions Club a spot on the podium and a $300 prize after the group entered the float at the town’s A and P Show on Friday.

The club’s costume choice sparked outrage across the country and two days after the incident Dunlop told Stuff that “considering the situation” the group had been stripped of both the title and the money.

He did not reveal, however, that he had been the judge, with the assistance of the A and P Association.

On Thursday, he refused an interview with Stuff but in an emailed statement and a response to questions he admitted to having made a mistake and formally apologised.

…Jesus wept, you try and give pig ignorant white people the benefit of the doubt and write this off as an extraordinary lapse of judgment and then find out they fucking rewarded this monstrosity with second prize?

I was far too forgiving wasn’t it and it looks like Hone was right…


…maybe racism this bad just needs the bash?

Hone and other Māori students confronted the Engineers at Auckland University in the 1980s when the Engineering students used to burst into lecture theatres in blackface and grass skirts to perform an ugly and racist haka during University Orientation. They thought it was hilarious, Hone and other Māori students begged to differ with this interpretation of their culture and one day turned up on Campus  and beat the living shit out of those Engineering students.

Was it violent? Sure was.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Did the the Engineering Society of Auckland University ever perform their grotesquely racist haka ever again?

No. They. Did. Not.

Sometimes racism this bad just needs the bash.

21 COMMENTS

  1. …well old farts Lions Clubs and Mayors from South Taranaki…what do you expect?

    ….time for a change

    …maybe there should be a boycott of the Lions Club?

    … and a campaign to oust the Mayor ?

    ….even better replacing the Mayor with a female Trans-sexual Maori ?

    ….a Georgina Byers would trounce him?

    • Yeah those Lions Clubs donating their time to support local communities and charities

      Boycott the bastards! No more free stuff!

      • maybe they should white wash their faces and paint their lips and eyebrows and look like the Pakeha clowns they really are?

  2. Two things, first unlikely that any poorer Maori would attend Auckland uni these days due to the Rogernomics reforms and the costs of tertiary education. Tertiary education has now been scaled down into bums on seats for foreign students and more engineers and lawyers or chefs who have little idea of history and therefore unlikely to understand any historical references. Part of the right wingers ideology is to remove history and art and critical thinking from tertiary education in favour of vocational skills and basic literacy. They want an army of undereducated conformist grunt workers.

    Secondly, the ignorance of the Mayor shown, highlights local government (and central) needs to be stopped from making decisions that could have long term ramifications such as selling off council assets and entering into debt arrangements for future generations, or allowing decade long consents of water for free. (Not the only one doing that stupidity sadly). Maybe a constitution?

  3. Nope, bashing people is wrong. And where do we draw the line ? “The Mikado” could be seen as disrespectful of Japan, and maybe also the lead soprano in “Madam Butterfly” coming to Wellington, should get bashed for portraying a pathetic gullible Asian girl cruelly exploited by the world’s number one exploiter.

    These small town people may have seen themselves in the same league; they got it wrong; they now know that they got it wrong; they know the whole country knows that they got it wrong – they may not even understand why, and no amount of bashing can up-brain them.

    Simon O’Connor is apparently on the lookout for a mayoralty; he might do.

    • I agree, and what a terrible thing to promote in this already violent prone country, bashing people up is no solution and Hone is reverting to bully boy aggression, and overreaction to what effectively is a bunch of idiots and a stupid provincial mayor. Black face does not have the same reverberation in NZ as the US either, not that this somewhat gob smacking float by people who should know better is excused by that fact, however its nothing to get bashed over. No.

  4. a symbolic “bash” is fine by me, but really once physical violence apart from in self defence, or against open fascism, is seen as a legitimate tactic in political arguments it could all be on, and as an old saying goes–“disabled, smaller people, and those in wheel chairs, will never be right or able to win an argument”…

    however, I totally get Hone and others frustration–40 years ago now that Hilda, Hone and He Taua made their point with those bloody Engineering students…and we still have racists thinking they can do “blackface”, Taranaki is one of the most entrenched settler mentality Māori hating regions in this country and the Lions dickheads did not make a mistake–they meant to deliver a statement to their fellow rednecks

  5. Theres some really silly people up that way they seem to be still locked into the old colonial racist/discriminative ways. As for the mayor what a complete idiot you would think he would know better. Many of the pakeha are sitting on confiscated Maori land and have paid pepper corn rent for many many years and I see they don’t want to pay the market value for the land now some saying they cant afford it. Funny how the tide turns. Taranaki was were the first land wars started.

  6. So is chopping peoples heads of in a consulate snow white and we are still trading and shaking hands with cold blooded murderers and human rights abuser but we are quick to lock our people up in our country for far lesser crimes. Now what sort of message does this brutal and premeditated killing in a consulate send to our country and our people “its fine your rich and powerful and have lots of oil, you can do what you like” we will still be your friends. This is bloody disgusting and we like to see ourselves as fair minded, valuing principles, morals and standards.

  7. Belonged to Lions for years but couldn’t take the bigotry and left.If you were a Maori or left wing you soon found out you weren’t welcome. You can imagine the rage when Winston went with Labour. The club members went hysterical.
    This blackface doesn’t surprise me.

  8. There’s no point in the mayor apologising because he awarded the prize in the first place and to do so he made a conscious decision which reflects his narrow-minded out-dated views especially about the puerile float filled with numb-nuts and the despicable meaning behind it.

    Then, being stripped of the placing followed by an apology from the mayor simply rubs a ton of salt into an already gaping wound and highlights the deeply ingrained dinosaur and completely unacceptable attitudes of the people who inhabit such archaic racist cultish institutions such as the Lions Club not to mention the mayor’s office.

  9. “Sadly we gave these banjo twanging cross burners”

    As someone who plays the banjo, I strongly object to the “banjoism” of this column. Banjo players have been tarred with stereotype of being racist for far too long. The banjo was invented by black Americans and one of its most famous exponents was Pete Seeger. Far more racists play the electric guitar than the banjo so perhaps a better turn of phrase might have been “Sadly, we gave these guitar thrashing cross burners”

    $:-)

  10. What’s more, perhaps what’s worse, is that their ‘float’ attempt is just a shitty, dirty, nasty old trailer with a few balloons and some bits of string. If you’re going to be racist, arrogant, and inflammatory? Please? Show some Class and creativity at the very least.
    As for the mayor? Would his name be donald? What a fucking moron.
    I’m going to do what all ‘good’ white people should do immediately. I’m going to peel myself with a paint scraper then I’ll use an angle grinder on those places I won’t get to with that blade and I’ll walk around while bleeding to death but I’ve shed my filthy white skin. Because it’s all about the colour of one’s cladding right? That’s pretty fucking dumb too isn’t it when one thinks about it? Fans the embers of division and race based hate doesn’t it? We poor old white folk haven’t go a chance in Hell. And God help poor bastards like me? White as snow but with spots of Satan’s brown! And a heterosexual ‘male’ to boot. No, please don’t boot me. That wasn’t an invitation.
    Giving racists the bash for their racism is playing by the rules of moronic engagement.
    It’d be better to take some of them Big Ol’ Boys down to the trailer of dumbness to cuddle everyone then offer a joint around followed by ginger beer infused with quality MDMA.
    P.S. If the best thing Honi Harawira can come up with is to promote violence and division within an already violent and divided ground level Kiwi populace then he’s a fucking moron too.
    @ MB? Why am I feeling a little disappointed with you? It’s a bit saddening, if I have to be honest.

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