Class and Race: we are still getting things the wrong way round
It’s impossible to read any media outlet today without an academic report being discussed which points out the disparities in social and economic indicators between Māori and Pasifika on the one hand and Pākehā New Zealanders on the other. These reports don’t usually propose solutions but are appeals to the wider community to pay attention and develop plans to address what are seen as racial injustices.
(Older readers will recall that under Helen Clarke’s Labour government the slogan “closing the gaps”* was used, initially at least, to emphasise the importance of addressing these issues)
The latest such report is from the Auckland University of Technology and says the Covid pandemic has worsened labour market disparities between New Zealand European and Pasifika people.
The research also found that pre-pandemic, Pasifika men earned on average 22.5 percent less than NZ European men when entering employment.
The disparity increased by a further 2.4 percentage points during the pandemic.
It also found that pre-Covid-19, when compared NZ European women, Pasifika women were on average 0.4 percentage points less likely to exit unemployment.
But during Covid-19, the probability gap widened to 1 percentage point, meaning the pandemic deteriorated Pasifika women’s chances of entering employment by 0.6 percentage points.
Lead author of the report, Dr Alexander Plum from the NZWRI, said it was important to tackle the gaps.
“There must be as a first step awareness of what is going on. Being aware [that] there is this large gap between both populations and [have] the willingness to try to somehow address this gap.
“The other [reason] why it’s so crucial is because it’s affecting young people, it can leave a long term scar on their career and make progression in the future harder.”
It was important to improve access to education, training, building pathways to higher occupations or have active labour market programmes for displaced workers, Plum said.
AUT professor and NZWRI director Gail Pacheco said while the labour market was generally robust during the pandemic, not everyone managed to benefit from it.
“Covid-19 has amplified the prevalence of ethnic disparities in the workforce, but it did not create those disparities in the first place. Therefore, policy needs to not only tackle recent Covid-related disruptions to the workforce but be long-term focused on addressing the entrenched disparities evident before the pandemic hit.”
The research was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
This report didn’t cover Māori but we can be certain similar negative disparities from Covid will be present in the indigenous community.
So why are all these negative disparities for Māori and Pasifika so prevalent across pretty much all social and economic indicators?
The answer is straightforward. For the most part it is because Māori and Pasifika are disproportionately represented in the working class and these negative statistics affect all working class New Zealanders.
There are two important questions which follow and these are the ones we should grapple with.
Firstly why are Māori and Pasifika disproportionately represented in the working class and secondly why is the focus on “closing the gaps” rather than confronting the problems faced by everyone in the working class?
The first question as it relates to Māori is directly a result of colonisation – pushing Māori off their land and using racism (ideas of European racial superiority) to justify doing so. There are many layers to this but understanding colonisation is the key. Pasifika were a cheap labour force (as they are today in the RSE worker scheme) brought in from the 1960s to make up labour shortages in our factories and then faced state oppression to drive them out through the “dawn raids” etc when the economy declined. It was the demands of capitalist businesses that made these decisions undertaken by successive Labour and National governments (the dawn raids started under Labour in the mid 1970s) rather than any concern for the welfare of Pasifika people. Racism was rife then as it is today.
The second question should lead to us asking why is it that as a country we are happy to have the working class suffer to maintain the deep streams of unearned income for the 1%?
Working class New Zealanders pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes and local body rates and they are consigned to be capitialism’s shock absorbers – the first to lose their jobs when times are tough and the last to be rehired when things improve. As a class, they and their children suffer the worst health, education and employment outcomes compared to the middle class and the ruling elite.
The only changes we are likely to see as a result of this latest academic report, commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, will be plans to grow the Pasifika middle class so the social and economic disparities related to race disappear while the whole rotten capitalist system gets off the hook.
Uniting to fight all forms of oppression and discrimination – including capitalism – is the only way to a decent world.
*We don’t say “close the gaps” any more after Labour abandoned that phrase under Helen Clark in the face of Pākehā backlash roused by Don Brash’s Orewa speech. Labour minister Trevor Mallard – yes the same one – went on a mini crusade to root out any government plans to close the gaps.
Very true John. These are intergenerational problems. I’m in a good economic position today, but I can name several threshold events where someone of my very moderate intelligence and low conscientiousness but born to a family outside the middle class would have been more likely to fall into serious civil debt or even catch a pretty serious criminal charge, and indeed I almost talked myself into that, but due to both socialization and better family resources to support did not.
We need to change society to do better by the working class, to advance their current position at the expense of corrupt foreigners like Peter Thiel and John Key and give them more opportunities for the future.
‘Racism was rife then as it is today.’ –
This is where the left loses people.
Agree. Racism hasnt helped and still persists today (but big progress has been made in people’s attitudes over the last 50 years) but it is a lesser issue than capitalism and its effect on the lowest 50% of the population.
Did anyone catch Luke Orbell at the Youth parliament shenanigans?
He is angry about race and colonisation but fails to see that 1. Personal responsibility and making your own way is key to success in any society 2. What he sees as colonisation and race is foremost a class issue and all about rogernomics and capitalism.
Great that the guy is putting himself out there unlike many kids today but sad that he has been encouraged to see NZs ills as all about race rather than class.
100% agree Fantail.
My fear and belief is there will be nothing done to rectify inequality. I naively believed Labour would.
I think focusing on race is having a problematic effect on NZ. I think a back lash is coming.
The groups you are talking about have 30-40% truancy rates and a high percentage are functionally illiterate .
You’re right that it’s not racial , it’s poverty but the answer is education. They have to go to school!
Anything else is a band aid
Correct
I disagree about the school thing.
School never worked for me and doesn’t work for lots of kids.
There should be far more formal diverse ways for kids to learn.
Lots of these kids need one on one attention and that is the way they would learn to read which is a vital link for life.
Well said and today’s figures on the numbers that are leaving school with no qualifications is frightening.. I would say a large percentage were Maori and Pacifica. We need to somehow break the cycle and if it takes a bribe to do it then let’s do it .
$3000 thousand for your child’s full attendance at school for the year and a payment to the child for every NCEA qualification.
This would work out cheaper than the $100000 a year to keep them in prison
You might want to check out the phonomen of “kiwi suspensions”, a process where troublesome (and often traumatised) children are quietly banished from education. Though illegal, they’re relatively common, and the Ministry of Education are well aware of it. Indeed, if their behaviors anything to go by, they agree. The vast majority of the victims are working class, of all races and both genders.
You are correct the issue is class not race.
Essential workers often on minimum wage kept the elite class fed and alive- while risking their own health- through covid while their betters worked from home and came up increasing complex ways of making business and workers lives more difficult.
When they protested, they were “rivers of filth” or “dumb lives matter”.
It’s not “we” who are getting it the wrong way around, it’s the insane identity politics cadre in charge who are fracturing our country by race while causing massive inequality with their house price inflation policies over covid.
Agree 100% Keep calm
Pakeha make up the majority of the wealthy.( Why do media not mention this, as it skews the stats)
So to improve the stats they can make more Maori and Pacifica wealthy. Or disadvantage poor pakeha more. Both would make the equity stats look better. Glaringly state media last few years never mention poor pakeha.
@Rik spot on, the only way identitarianism works is to ignore class politics and therefore ignore the white working class. As has been pointed out in the UK where white working class boys have the worst educational and social outcomes. Inconveniences like this shatter the intersectional model and therefore threatens the power and influence of far too many politicians, academics, activists and other middle class virtue signallers.
A backlash against grievance based equity politics is coming. My fear is that it will not be a return to the ideals of egalitarianism and genuine progressivism but an over swing of the pendulum to some mirror image of wokism on the right. The baby will be thrown out with the bathwater and the bath will be sold for scrap making genuinely progressive politics unpalatable for a generation.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Only word I have is education. Education floats boats.
Emphasizing race over class disparity does little to help those most effect by these damning statistics. Race based help/awareness raises poor brown people to the same level as poor white people. Class based help raises ALL poor people to a higher level. It also has the add bonus of not alienating people who are allies.
I think it would be very beneficial to establish a central employment agency for all the members of all the Maori tribes who are unemployed to link them up with employers. I know the Ministry of Social Development does work with all unemployed with the aim to attain employment for them but this additional initiative may be prudent going forward.