In this blog I intend only to speak on behalf of a misguided and hate-filled community of which i have personal knowledge and experience. This community I was once a part of and on behalf of which I wish to speak is ashamedly so, but undeniably, the white racist young people of New Zealand.
I met Tatyana Kulida at the New Zealand Art Show, where I was interviewing artists for my YouTube series “A Taste of LaQuisha”. Her art was unlike the other art on display. It was from another era. An era, I later discovered, before photography, where a portrait painter would train as long as a doctor. Studying not only light and colour, but detailed human anatomy.
There’s a hand on my arm. Gripping my arm, pulling me back. I sway slightly in my heels. Both adrenal glands, perched above my kidneys, deep in my viscera, squirt their load of adrenaline into my bloodstream. My pupils dilate, my heart rate and breathing increase sharply. All of a sudden I’m not sleepy, I’m not thinking about my day. I’m right here, right now. Deadly calm.
Every week over this wet winter I am being asked to fix substandard structures that are leaking that should not in any way be housing but are being populated by families, couples, the working poor who consist in equal measure of both people born here and recent non-wealthy migrants.
The anger has triggered finger pointing. The finger pointing has snowballed action. The action has forced reviews. So what will change? Will Moko be added to the ever increasing list of child abuse statistics, tut-tutted over, paper-pushed around in death as terribly as he was physically pushed around in life?
Daily Thought