UNWILLING TO ENDURE the opprobrium associated with its “gulags”, the Soviet Union of the 1970s changed tack. Rather than sending dissidents to labour camps (gulags) the Soviet authorities decided to redefine dissidence as a form of mental illness. Opposition to the Soviet system could now be presented as a sickness, not deserving of condemnation, but care. Opponents of the USSR no longer faced summary trial and incarceration. Instead they were to be diagnosed and hospitalised. The barbed wire fences of the labour camps rusted away, replaced by the locked doors of Soviet mental hospitals. Resisting the tyranny of the Communist Party didn’t mean you were bad – it meant you were mad.
That this grim historical detail should be recalled more than thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union is due to Ao Mai te Rā | The Anti-Racism Kaupapa a document which first saw the light of day back in August 2022 under the rubric of the Ministry of Health. Subtitled “Combatting racism in the health and disability system”, Ao Mai te Rāboldly declares:
“Eliminating all forms of racism is critical to achieving health equity and the vision of pae ora – healthy futures for all New Zealanders.”
Intentionally, or unintentionally, this statement of official health policy raises the spectre of political dissidence being redefined as a form of individual and/or social pathology. Like Covid-19, racism is being presented as a threat to the future health and wellbeing of New Zealanders. This threat must be eliminated – presumably by a process akin to inoculation.
But racism is not a sickness, it is a political belief. As such, it stands to be argued against and condemned. But, attempting to eliminate “all forms of racism” under the guise of a government health programme is sinister in the extreme.
To oppose the purposeful imposition of ethnically derived distinctions is one thing; to treat the creators of such distinctions as “sick” is something else entirely. Pathologising racism instantly casts any kind of political debate about ethnicity and nationalism as illegitimate.
The Ministry of Health’s paper presents racists as the carriers of a dangerous racism virus. As New Zealanders have discovered over the past two years, those deemed to be carrying a dangerous virus by the Ministry can be detained and confined until they no longer test “positive”. Should racists refuse to “unite against the racism virus” by undergoing a government-mandated programme of “inoculation”, they could end up losing both their employment, and their ability to access all but the most basic services.
The experience of the public fight against Covid-19 has revealed just how injurious to social cohesion and the public peace such draconian levels of medical intervention can be. And, let’s not forget, Covid-19 was an real virus! Arming the state with equivalent powers against a metaphorical virus would unquestionably engender much greater resistance.
That the Ministry of Health anticipates such resistance is made clear in another document released under its name. Entitled Position statement and working definitions for racism and anti-racism in the health system in Aotearoa New Zealand, this document defines racism in ways that leave no ethnic groups – apart from Māori and Pasifika – in a position to assert their innocence of the charge. Pakeha, in particular, find themselves declared guilty from multiple perspectives: historically, politically, scientifically, culturally, institutionally and socially. It is a verdict in which the legal concept of mens rea (evil intent) plays no part. This is because racism can be both conscious and unconscious. Regardless of whether a Pakeha New Zealander’s closet contains a Ku Klux Klansman’s robes, or an anti-apartheid banner from 1981, they are racists – beyond all reasonable doubt.
Given that the Position Statement was not only released under the authority of the Ministry of Health, but also the Government of New Zealand, what should we make of the state’s “working definition” of racism?
Racism comprises racial prejudice and societal power and manifests in different ways. It results in the unequal distribution of power, privilege, resources and opportunity to produce outcomes that chronically favour, privilege and benefit one group over another. All forms of racism are harmful, and its effects are distinct and not felt equally.
The most important conclusion to be drawn from this definition is that there is no culture, no society, no state on the surface of the planet that would not stand condemned by its content. All societies contain racial animosities and hierarchies based on religious, political, sexual and economic power. Everywhere “privilege, resources and opportunity” are distributed arbitrarily and inequitably so as to “favour, privilege and benefit one group over another”. Equality is a moral aspiration, not an settled condition. Indeed, if one substitutes “capitalism” for “racism” in this definition, it works just as well.
What, then, is the “working definition’s” purpose? The answer, sadly, is to render any attempt by Pakeha New Zealanders to challenge the Māori- and Pasifika-centric project currently unfolding in the health sector, politically and ethically untenable. What the “working definition”, and the twelve bullet points listed below it, set out to achieve is a situation in which the only acceptable role for Pakeha politicians, bureaucrats and medical professionals, is to sit quietly and learn how they might make the fullest possible restitution to the victims of their racism.
And it’s working. So averse is the professional-managerial class of most Western states to the charge of racism that its members will accept just about anything to avoid the accusation. Critical to this posture of surrender is the essential concession that it is impossible for the victims of Western racism to themselves behave in racist ways. Of equal importance, is the companion concession that any suggestion that racism can be overcome by treating all human-beings as equal in rights and dignity is itself racist.
As the Position Statement makes clear:
“Race and racialisation are social and political constructs designed to categorise physical differences between people (that is, skin colour, hair texture, geographical origins, etc) and assign value and meaning to a hierarchically arranged racial grouping. These constructs originated from Europe and influenced the structure of society, racial superiority and hierarchy.”
And if you balk at the almost unbelievable historical cheek of this statement. If you want to shout out “Have none of you studied anthropology!” Or point out that for centuries the majority of the world’s slaves were white. Or that there are a number of other “constructs” that “originated in Europe” – like democracy, and the quaint belief that all human-beings (in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) “are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Well, then, you can only be a carrier of the racism virus, and you should be hospitalised until you test negative.
The bleak Russian humourists of the 1970s expressed the difficulties of principled disagreement slightly differently: “Only a madman”, they declared, “would question the superiority of the Soviet system.”
At this point can I just allege that the Ministry of Health has always been peopled with drop-outs from the outside world where the real work in medicine gets done. Top surgeons, and neo- natal paediatricians, and neurologists, and orthopods, and trauma specialists, are too busy saving lives, to even have the time to indulge in unproven theorising.
What’s more, most well-salaried health department seat warmers, and even some GP’s, have little knowledge of the sheer hard grind and level of expertise involved in becoming specialist medical practitioners, specialists who are able to be measured according to international criteria, unlike them.
Chris is hitting the mark so much lately, a slew of recent columns right on the money.
Anyone with half a brain knows this is Critical Race Theory applied with a religious fervour. Whites must repent for their original sin. It is a thought disease rapidly taking over NZ.
Even Ngai Tahu is recognising this: “In short, uncritical acceptance of Māori knowledge is arguably just as patronising as its earlier blanket rejection”. Maori are protesting the “decolonisation” of Te Urewera huts by demolition.
It’s time we called this for what it is: Revanchism. It is a specific policy of cultural, racial, and political revenge. A new nationalism built on racism and a mythologised indigenous past. It has nothing to do with social or other kind of justice.
But I’d rather know – what now? What can be done and how? We’re all just whacking off in the corner of the blogworld and it gets a bit boring. Direct political action is needed.
Vote ACT. While you’ve still got a democracy to do it.
ACT are globalists.
Direct political action by white people sounds like Jan 5.
If the Maori race and the grouping of races called “Pacifica” are to be exempt from being able to be racist, you are going to have to define who is and who is not Maori and “Pacifica”.
As Tauiwi I cant claim any quota of the preferential racial blood grouping. But at the same token many New Zealander’s will have a proportion of the preferential racial blood group by the fact that great grand mother had 1/32 of non racist Maori blood (or a similar distant relative). My family took just one generation to have Maori blood content.
Will the state set up (under Willie Jackson’s leadership) have a genetic testing program to determine Maori (or Pacifica) blood content for each person (five million and counting)?
Will the state set a limit on the percentage of Maori blood required to be considered a non racist Maori?
Will the state catalogue all the Pacifica races and portion blood percentage required to be considered a non racist “Pacifica”?
The genetics involved in this project are going to be mind blowing. Racial profiling up to 1940’s level?
Worth a read from one straddling the knife edge of being a racist or not racist, genetically.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/464652/i-know-i-m-maori-but-sometimes-i-feel-like-a-fraud
Gerrit, this want be necessary although your questions are worth asking.
This isn’t about race or ethinicity. This is about the professional middle class indoctrinated with CRT imposing their ideology on us, in order to feel morally superior.
There is very,very little racism in the health system. This will drive our hard working and long suffering highly skilled health workforce overseas. Why would you put up with this crap, when you know your in the game to do your best for all your patients. The health system falls over itself to offer good treatment to Maori and Pacifika
Yes racism is a handy diversion from the underlying problems of class distinction.
‘Only a madman”, they declared, “would question the superiority of the ‘American Dream’.”
Gerrit, there’ll be no genetic testing.
You will either be a useless Maori or an Uncle Tom – whatever the epithet of the day is. And you will be considered a racist as well. No getting away with your 1/32nd or 1/512th if you act like a coloniser.
Or to recently quote a senior Manager of a unit within the Department …. the Maori people put forward for our role, were not ‘real’ Maoris. Maybe Maori and Pacifica are exempt from the label of Racism these days but discrimination is alive and well.
Fantail, the comment from the manager you refer to shows very clearly this isn’t about racism, It’s about the need to ensure people have right think
As long as material inequality remains firmly entrenched.
NO.
Chris, you spent all your adult life promoting a revolution and now you have it, it’s not to your liking.
Chilling
Discussions of racism are largely without value. Not all human groups are the same. Some population subgroups, perhaps because of different age structures, perhaps for other reasons, may have different outcomes.
What really hacks normal men off is what Charles Manson called “people [who] think it’s slick to get over on somebody else because they’re in a down position”. And that’s what New Zealand has had in orders of magnitude more than it could ever need, as if we need them for anything, since the demon Roger Douglas was unleashed to destroy New Zealand’s politics, economy and downstream from that, our civil society.
The key is a switch from equality as a moral aspiration (MLK), to equity as a moral aspiration (Kendi, Diangelo et al)
As Kendi says:
‘The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.
The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.’
To Kendi if discrimination is creating equity then it is anti-racist and ethically good. There is no middle ground or simply ‘not racist’ only racist and anti-racist. One should note his definition of racism is circular.
https://youtu.be/GyNBEM9NXO0?t=135
Of course the equity measure is applied selectively and typically to the benefit of the affluent. George Floyd is murdered by police which facilitates affluent black kids into universities for example San Francisco Medical School introduces racial quota’s, increasing black students numbers but halving asian students, previously their biggest cohort. Meanwhile Kendi doesn’t notice a contradiction in his “white privilege” narrative.
https://t.co/mNz0PBvO0v
However little is done for poor inner city blacks, even the legacy of Biden’s own crime bill which decimated black communities and families (recent announcements such as the marijuana reform released zero people from prison). Working class blacks cannot be helped because affluent wokists need poor racial outcome statistics to perpetually justify woke policies. All oppressed identities are leverage, both human shield and battering ram to propagate woke policies and ideology.
Expect similar here, this is not a racism issue it is an elitism issue.
I guess you dont want blacks to go to university then?
@Millsy Lol so by logic you obviously don’t want working class black social mobility and desire fewer asians at university. In addition to being an online troll are you a bourgeois elitist, anti-meritocratic and racist?
Meaningfully improve education and support for black working class communities and you improve many social outcomes including university numbers. This requires hard work and difficult to get right, it also takes time. Relying on quota systems that benefit the middle class creates a quick fix facade of feel good progressivism, but it’s lazy slacktivism that creates little material change.
Of course woke culture politics is a distraction, mostly courtesy of ‘useful idiots’.
The Bretton Woods order and globalised economic system is collapsing. Woke identitarian narratives appear to be one means economic and cultural elites have chosen to divide people against one another, suppress dissent and retain power, resources and opportunity during the transition to whatever economic model comes next, likely one based on scarcity rather than perpetual growth.
Completely agree.
Agree Tui.
Not at all helped that the colonial past had put Maori into an underdog position and then Neo Liberalism came along and basically screwed the underclass. Recently, Maori have been encouraged to think that colonialism is the author of all their woes. Whilst true in large part – it is Neo Liberalism that has wreaked so much practical damage to Maori. At least under 1950’s paternalism, there were plenty of low income state houses and jobs to match.
No are tw, the elites are milking the system whilst encouraging identarianism because if we are all fighting over racism and the impacts of colonialism then we dont collectively come together and ‘stick it’ to the man and work toward a basic level of fairness in the system.
CRT is God’s gift to the elite, they can virtue signal while taking the money (relatively low taxes over $70K, free $50K share income, Asset growth through property etc) that the poor should be getting.
@Fantail that’s a good concise summary, agree 100%
Chilling
We don’t need gulags, just a social credit system and digital unpersoning.
Imagine wrong-think punishments ranging from blocked social media accounts to blocked bank accounts. How much harder would it be to get a salary, raise a family, pay mortgage, rates, bills and simply participate in modern society if every electronic transaction and interaction was off limits?
True. Thanks. The worst thing is the feeling of helplessness of ‘ordinary folks’ of every ethnicity. All of us who are polite and gaze into the distance and refrain from stating the obvious are perpetuating the problem. We need to liberate ourselves from these feelings, acknowledge when we are patronising, ‘holier than thou’, and just tell it like it is – if we know what it is.
So we need to get educated, learn our history – and our present – use facts instead of invective, replace the government – insisting on commitment to truth from any new regime. Let’s do it.
I see you have now gone from promoting white race fear of “white identity/established privilege” speech being censored by “hate law” to “enforced health” treatment of them for their opinion.
“Eliminating all forms of racism is critical to achieving health equity and the vision of pae ora – healthy futures for all New Zealanders” would be based on structural obstacles to equal health outcomes for Maori. The lack of Maori governance in health delivery, and greater dependence on public hospital/primary provider care – given the lack of insurance.
I am presuming a lack of awareness of what is really going on the world, as to exercise of real unaccountable power against citizens. And power aint held by the poor, but by God and mammon neo-liberal western regime.
Any Pakeha who has members of other races in their extended families knows how pointedly racist other cultures can be, be that Chinese, Cook Island, Indonesian, Persian, Mexican, Maori …. etc. People’s real view rather than their displayed view on race are always individual.
Pointing out some white trash person’s “privilege” seems racist to me.
That moment you check your junk folder and you find a declaration of race war against European New Zealanders . .
The thing with a lot of this rubbish is that it is doing real damage to some of the more pragmatic measures to address clear past wrongdoing. Look at the treaty settlements and co governance. Forget race! One entity, the Crown signed an agreement with a group of other representatives that were, without dispute, here before the Crown. The Crown subsequently reneged on some of the terms and rights afforded the other groups. Were any of us there, no. Is it our fault no. Should the Crown and those groups remedy breaches of an agreement, yes.
If a company or entity enters a contract with another, they don’t get off performing their obligations, just because some of the management changes.
Wheel you are 100% correct.
“for centuries the majority of the world’s slaves were white” It is inconceivable that this is true, and if there was supposed to be a link for that statement it doesn’t work. I Googled it and did find reference to slavery of Europeans in North Africa at one time being more prevalent than trans-Atlantic African slavery, but as far as I read it does not even claim that white slaves were more common in North Africa than sub-Saharan African slaves (North Africa was where the Spanish first bought African slaves for South American plantations), let alone dealing with all the slaves that existed in China or elsewhere in the world at that time.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-irish-slaves-idUSKBN23O2BS
https://news.osu.edu/when-europeans-were-slaves–research-suggests-white-slavery-was-much-more-common-than-previously-believed/
Comments are closed.