The knee jerk position by many on the left is to cry out about Maori regarding any issue. That means the debate quickly deteriorates into arguing whether or not the issue is racist, which has everyone retreat to their defensive corner decrying everyone else in the debate.
Game starts again with no actual resolution.
We do it with poverty, justice, housing and we are doing it with vaccine hesitancy.
The problem with that is it misses the huge chunk of poor white people who also have poverty, justice and housing problems, many in numerical numbers larger than Maori.
By painting every issue about Maori it allows the rest of us off the hook while providing a stick to bash Maori with!
Right now there are 159, 810 Maori unvaccinated, 42, 183 Pasifika unvaccinated and a staggering 317, 544 Pakeha who are unvaccinated!
By constantly screaming vaccine hesitancy is a Maori and Pasifica problem, we let 317, 544 Pakeha off the hook!
Yes, proportionately these stats hit Maori hardest, but by allowing that to decide the entire focus of the debate we ignore the far larger numerical problem of those issues impacting poor White families and that allows an escape to scrutinize what’s really happening.
By constantly blaming Maori we can’t see that this is a failure of neoliberalism that cascades across race.
It’s not an identity issue, it’s a class issue!
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Exactly. I am not into the woke mantra blaming colonization for Maori having to unfairly bear the burden on the price on a litre of 98 octane petrol but for Christ sake, stop blaming them for non vaccination rates.
As stated, there are plenty of ignoramuses of all stripes out there who are fence sitting or plain retarded, not getting vaccinated. The “I read it on Facebook…” thickies.
Maori are a handy boogie man, the character manipulated from unseen hands to whip up resentment to distract from those other people’s shortcomings is the way I read it!
I don’t think we should be collecting (and broadcasting) race based statistics at all. France banned the practice for a good reason, it’s racist.
It also leads to lazy and false assumptions; this one simple and obvious difference is often used to falsely dismiss far more important contributory factors such as poverty or, in the case of criminality, lack of a proper father during upbringing. You won’t solve a problem if you are mistaken over its cause in the first place.
Right now there are 159, 810 Maori unvaccinated, 42, 183 Pasifika unvaccinated and a staggering 317, 544 Pakeha who are unvaccinated!
Yes but Maori make up 16.5% of the population, Pasifika 9% and Pakeha 70% – so it is reasonable that there will be a higher number of non-vaccinated Pakeha. In fact, given the population data, one would expect one would expect a Pakeha number over times that of Maori – but it is barely twice the number.
The elephant in the room is more the age demographic of the Maori population – which has a much higher number and percentage of numbers in younger age cohorts. It is evident that some of the younger cohorts do not believe they will need to be vaccinated because they are less at risk due to their age. However, while there is a bias toward older and those with pre-existing conditions, Covid-19 can and does impact in ALL age groups. Given the other negative social statistics for Maori it is not surprising that there is suspicion from younger Maori – especially toward Government edicts!
What you say is true enough, but what is hard to avoid is that Maori are the hardest-hit ethnicity as we speak. In fact for over a month now Maori have been the highest ethnic proportion of daily cases – many days hovering around 50% of the total. This is something to worry about and something to grapple with earnestly – identity apparently is at issue here, there’s no denying the facts. If it were just an issue of class, then it’s difficult to understand why PI people in Auckland have fallen behind Maori in the COVID stakes.
The issue of vaxinating the most vunerable, isolated should have been figured out well before the latest outbreak, the booking system worked for a certain % but left so many disengauged. The government should have met with leaders of iwi, hapu, early on, said that they needed to drive the vaccination for their communities and asked what tools they need to do that, they should have enguaged popular rolemodels to get the message out, all blacks, musicians, other celebreties. the retired nurses should have been given campervans to go out to isolated communites and get the jab to the people where they are. It’s too easy for the hesitant to miss out on these rural pop up vaccination stations that turn up without much notice every couple of few weeks. The reasonibility falls on community leaders to get their people protected- ethnic, sports, religious, work, or commuity groups needed to be approached to get their people to get the message across, because we arn’t all one background a multitude of approaches needed to be considered to tailor the maximum effectiveness of the role out. Incorporated societies for example up and down the country should have been given incentives to get all their members vaccinated. Hard work for sure, but DHBs are beaucracys and will always be more concerned about statistics than engauging one on one with every Aaron, Anna and Aroha.
With all the talk of incentives I wonder if those at the bottom of the pile are waiting to see if a better offer comes if they wait long enough as they have little to lose . This applies to both Maori and Pakeha but as there are so many poor Maori as a percentage it shows up as a Maori problem
The problem is the three hundred thousand Pakeha not vaccinated many are educated and come from professional jobs and a big group of them are religious peoples they are not poor Pakeha peoples. This is why it is so hard to shift their mindset no matter what many of our experts say.
Here’s a nice soft blanket
exactly right
What are your experts saying?
There is plenty of blame to go around, whether they are Maori gangsters who dont give a ****, incompetent DHBs, Libertarian Anti Vaxxers or the Government itself. There is a whole mess of dysfunctional stuff and so very much blame from the rest who conformed as required. No matter how much we tinker at the edges, throw money at it, things wont change by much . People are people and this is about as good as it’ll get.
Now that the government has effectively pulled the plug on Covid control, we just have to shut up and buckle in for the Covid ride. Everyone across the country has got the Covid message by now and at the end of the day, they will make their own choices and will need to live with the consequences. Including sadly, some of those who will also bear the brunt of their choices eg: the immune compromised and the elderly.
We should just count ourselves lucky we dont live in the UK or US where it has been and largely continues to be, every man for himself.
everyone knows the story – time for it to play out.
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