Heather du Plessis-Allan: You can take the white South African out of apartheid but can you take the apartheid out of the White South African? (with only a tiny diversion to Kyle MacDonald, Rachel Stewart & Transphobia)

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog is not as mean to Heather du Pleases-Allan as the title suggests

So I’d heard on Twitter that Heather had said Pacific Islanders were leeches.

Now, I’ve decided not to partake in Woke Outrage Olympics on Twitter because it’s just so 2014-2017, and recently I experienced first hand the feral militancy of others projecting their own perceptions onto things I’ve said when a group of Trans-activists decided me pointing out the debate between TERFS & Trans-activists was ludicrously violent after my daughter was threatened by trans-activists furious a press release by TERFS had appeared on TDB (I thought Kyle McDonald’s full throated endorsement of trans-activists was funny when you consider the threats of violence towards Rachel Stewart recently. I love that anyone else making threats like that would be doxxed and decried by the Woke, but when it’s the Woke doing the threatening, you know, it’s a power imbalance against the heteronormative patriarchy so totes justifiable).

ANYWAY

I’m digressing.

Back to Heather, and me wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt after getting personally mauled by the new extra friendly members of the rainbow community.

So it turns out after closer scrutiny that Heather claims she was referring to the Pacific Islands themselves as leeches, which when you think about it, isn’t any inch less offensive than claiming Pacific Islanders are leeches.

We do a crap job in NZ of detailing how Pakeha did wrong by Māori in our history and we do an  even worse job of highlighting the appalling actions of NZ towards our Pacific brothers and sisters.

Perhaps Heather is just ignorant rather than bigoted because while Heather doesn’t seem to realise it, we actually owe our Pacific Island brothers and sisters a hell of a lot for our injustices against them.

NZ has done sweet fuck all to mitigate climate change in anyway meaningful (beyond our bullshit carbon neutral  by 2050 crap), so when the worst edges of that pollution we have been pumping into the atmosphere damages cultures that have little hand in creating it, we have an obligation to do right by them because that’s a basic compassion and empathy most humans have. We contribute to climate change, climate change damages Islands in the Pacific, we help those Islands mitigate some of that damage with tiny payouts which don’t go anywhere near matching the enormity of what the developed world are plunging the developing world into.

Let’s remember that NZ incompetence in Samoa saw the influenza pandemic come ashore and almost wipe out the entire culture or Black Sunday that saw NZ forces kill 11 Samoans. What about the way we brought Tongans into the country in the 1970s as cheap labour but when it was politically expedient start dawn raids to force them out? How about the fact that the Cooks, Niue and the Tokelau islands are actually still under NZ sovereignty as free association States?

Let’s also remember that NZ had a hand in stripping Nauru of phosphate the same way we are with the Sahara right now, accusing these countries of being leeches when we have caused so much damage to them and in some cases are still responsible for them only adds insult to injury.

We are in debt to these nations because of our past behaviour, they are whanau, they are family and with Auckland being the largest Pacific city in the planet, insulting them is beneath where we want the debate to be.

Come on Heather, lift your bloody game.