Waatea News Column: Another report highlighting structural racism met with the usual silence

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Māori don’t need to know the justice system is racist, they live that reality and have lived that reality since the mounted constabulary was established in New Zealand.

A new study from the excellent Just Speak highlights that police are almost twice as likely to send a first-time Māori offender to court, than a Pākehā.

Remember, these are people with no previous convictions, this is Police discretion at work and that Police discretion is biased against Māori.

NZ Police will give white kids a break, they won’t give Māori kids the same.

Call it what you want, unconscious bias or naked racism, it amounts to structural bigotry that dooms first time Māori offenders to the most severe punishment while giving Pākehā favouritism.

This doesn’t mean we should treat Pākehā with the same prejudice, it means Māori should be treated with the exact same leniency as their fellow citizens.

So what has been the response politically to another damning report on the structural unfairness of our Police and Justice systems?

Labour are too frightened to look soft on crime to say anything and National are currently too busy demonising Gangs as a cancer to comment rationally on the issue.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

How many reports need to say the same thing, how many times do Pākehā NZers need to hear the same complaints, how many times do we need to keep doing this before there is a change?

First published on Waatea News.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Tracey Martin and Grannie Trouts response to all of this is pretty clear. “You say Whaaa …!”

  2. In NZ we have racism at the front end ,,, like in our ‘ dirty politics ‘ , when National rat fucked* New Zealand Alcohol law reform ,,,

    ““research indicates ( booze ) outlet density is higher in areas of greater socio-economic deprivation in New Zealand, ….suggesting that people living in those areas may be more likely to experience harm simply because of where they live. “ …..

    “” Mäori suffer a disproportionate burden of Alcohol related harm in comparison to other New Zealanders ”

    ” In comparison to other countries young New Zealanders have very high rates of suicide, sexually transmitted infections,teenage pregnancies, and motor vehicle accident fatalities. Alcohol is implicated in all these problems, so interventions to reduce harmful alcohol consumption could reduce the burden of these problems on Young New Zealanders.”

    “New Zealand’s youth, Mäori and Pacific Island populations bear a disproportionate amount of alcohol-related harm.” …:Quotes from ‘ Law Commission,Report 114,,ALCOHOL IN OUR LIVES:CURBING THE HARM’.

    Into the mix we add More Racism from our police ,,,,, and then a final dose more from our judges and courts ,,,

    Egged on by dirty politicians a criminal degenerate stereotype is pushed ,,, this was on display here at TDB ,,,, with many ugly and incorrect comments directed at Hone Harawira ,,,, ‘the statistics prove how criminal / bad your race and culture is’ ,,, that IS their argument.

    The same sentiments are expressed in this video ,,,, Different country but its the same right wing song sheet. ,,, ‘ Black lives matter / Hone is the real racist’.

    Being awake to it will get you accused of being awoke ,,, Become awake NZ 😉

    https://youtu.be/dnE9O-vV-ws

  3. The Justice and Police systems are still to understand what unconscious bias is?
    It somehow doesn’t make sense to them.
    There spokespersons said,”we’ll have to get back to you on that one. No comphrendae, nada, no can do, wtf are youse on!”

    • Furthermore …. “White job applicants were found to be 74% more likely to have success than applicants from ethnic minorities with identical CVs. University professors were found to be far more likely to respond to emails from students with white-sounding names. US doctors have been found to recommend less pain medication for black or Latino patients than white patients with the same injury. White participants in a study were found to perceive black faces as more threatening than white faces with the same expression.” – University of Washington and Yale, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) promised to lift the veil on people’s subconscious attitudes towards others. Upon publishing their landmark paper in 1998, the team described “a new tool that measures the unconscious roots of prejudice” that they said affected 90-95% of people.

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