There is a real danger in NZ Politics that when you attack policy as racist to Māori we play the ‘is it racist’ game where everyone screams it is or isn’t, everyone goes back to their polarised corners, nothing progresses.
We’ve done it with Police shootings, we’ve done it with Police taking photos of kids and we did it with the vaccination rates.
Back in November 2021 when we were chasing vaccination rates, there were 159, 810 Māori unvaccinated, 42, 183 Pasifika unvaccinated and a staggering 317, 544 Pakeha who are unvaccinated!
By constantly screaming vaccine hesitancy is a Māori and Pasifica problem, we let 317, 544 Pakeha off the hook!
I fear we’ve done the same thing with child poverty.
Right now there are 156,700 children in poverty in households with less than 50% median equivalised disposable household income before deducting housing costs (BHC), 53,600 identify as Maori, 72,600 identify as pakeha.
There are more white children in poverty than Māori children and that might be difficult to visualise because the focus is almost exclusively on Māori children.
Yes, proportionately these stats hit Māori 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 Māori we can’t see that this is a failure of neoliberalism that cascades across race. Look at the chart above, the poverty rate soared post Rogernomics!
It’s not an identity issue, it’s a class issue exacerbated by a neoliberal economic hegemony that purposely rigs the system!
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“It’s not an identity issue, it’s a class issue exacerbated by a neoliberal economic hegemony that purposely rigs the system!”
Identity politics the shiny bauble diverting middle class progressives since Occupy Wall Street.
Great to see that some one is finally acknowledging the elephant in the room.
Maori are but a subsector of a wider group of people all facing the same difficulties.
However the people in power insist that Maori are a distinctly different specie of human to the rest of us. That only Maori are failing in health, education, employment, crime and by every other measure. And the solution is more money specifically for Maori.
Maybe if they wernt identified as “different” but just with others in a similar predicament, better more durable policy could be put in place to lift all, not just the chosen few who happen to carry a bit of early settler DNA
It’s part of our politics DNA – the National Party does not care about the bottom third of society and identifies as a white (and male leadership – currently the promise keeper pentecostal type) middle class party. And the early arrangement of Maori support for Labour was on the basis that the dispossessed indigenous people had common cause with the working class party.
It’s become confused because of the one New Zealand line of Don Brash, Winston Peters and David Seymour and Christopher Luxon rejecting a hand up for Maori, restored chieftainship in delivery of services and indigenous peoples rights of partnership with the national government in management of their historic resources (land and water). Which has been deliberately misrepresented as a threat to democracy (some sort of CRT challenge to white majority rule …).
We can restore Maori mana with indigenous peoples partnership rights (and connect it to Treaty honouring too) and improve delivery (as part of restoring the chieftainship taken along with their lands) – but as Jason put it we can give them a hand up by doing so to all those in the botttom third who are neglected for every term of a National government.
It’s 2022, I’m sure we could fashion a device that detects skin pigment and plots it onto a monochrome gradient scale. Then all NZ children can be ranked from white-to-black.. with funding granted accordingly.. with extra funding for children with documented Maori ancestry of course.
The above sounds rooted in racism to me, the left call it “targeted” and “fair”.
It’s like teaching Te Reo Maori, sounds nice, expect NZ kids are largely illiterate. Wouldn’t it be better to focus on teaching kids English vowel and consonant sounds FIRST~?? Soon more “Pakeha” children will speak Te Reo Maori than Maori children AND the education system’s literacy results will be worse than ever.
Unions are probably blocking charter schools and ruining NZ education. There are many adult Te Reo Maori courses around which is great, but what about reading recovery for children and adult literacy courses? Again, things like NZ Maori history are great.. but students need to be able to read the textbooks first.
The way things are going the Maori elite will have to start seeding their power to trans-racial Maori (Pakeha with no Maori ancestry). The left eats itself when its’ philosophies are taken to their logical extremes.
I don’t have children so meh.. but I’d prefer not to be stabbed in the back by a 12 year old while walking down the street.
https://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/research/over-representation-of-maori-in-the-criminal-justice-system/3.0-early-life-environmental-influences/3.6-other-findings-from-longitudinal-studies
Great research that shows poverty alone does not account for violent offending (nor ethnicity). It is dysfunctional family life including violence, physical punishment and substance abuse.
Yep and a National Party white, pale, stale evangelical male, with 7 houses will fix all this poverty overnight, just like John Key did when he visited McGeehan Close? https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2016/12/mcgeehan-close-has-life-changed-for-residents-under-john-key.html
With slash and burn David Seymour as Finance Minister? The NACT neoliberal transformation will be complete:20% GST, 20% flat tax and 20% business tax – oh btw 20% unemployment to drive down wages. Seymour will be expendable as the 20% Neoliberal plan is completed.
Good luck with that New Zealand. Even Mike Hosking and Kate Hawkesby will reconsider leaving to go to Oz to stay in New Zealand to help out with poverty?
And when the 20% neoliberal ACT Seymour revolution is complete, Seymour will go live with his robot.
KeyLuxon will retire to landlord heaven, leaving the poor to wait for another Labour Government to try and create a social contract.New Zealand, if you think poverty is bad under a Labour government, use your f*cking imagination and think what it would be like under a 20% NACT government?
This cycle of poverty and anger will not stop until every child born is a wanted child born to a family that has a good warm and dry home at an affordable rent or mortgage. As they grow quality child care is available to all the the children who at 5 progress to a school where classes are limited to no more than 20 with 2 helpers to attend to the less able integrated children. Teachers should once again be on the same salery as MPs . The return on this investment will be in 15 years as these happy intelligent children move into uni or trades missing out time spent on breaking the law and a future in prison . The costs and problems involved in getting immegrants to fill holes in the skilled labour force.would be avoided and we would have a happy country.
Surely I cannot be that hard !
Well, when you have half the caucus that only seem interested in helping their own race Labour has set itself up to be divided and conquered by neo-liberalism. Those 72,000 pakeha kids in poverty are just using their “White Trash Privilege” to ruin the Prime Minister’s poverty KPI.
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Too many people judge others, be it race, age, education, number of houses. We need to bring the elites down. Its time to wreck them and ruin them, show them how it feels.
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