Supporting racism

Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, June 19th, 2017 - 31 comments
Categories: racism - Tags: ,

The campaign.

31 comments on “Supporting racism ”

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  1. greywarshark 1
    19 June 2017 at 3:00 pm

    Racism. This is tongue in cheek from Taika Waititi. But turning the argument around 180 degrees and racism has a good side, and can be argued as necessary.

    Racism is noting that other people are different, not just like you.
    Racism is making room for other people to have their own culture, which is different from yours.
    Racism is not the name for asking people who are doing cultural things that go against hard-fought social improvements in their new culture, like not whipping dogs or children or women, not casting vulnerable wives out from the home by saying I divorce you three times, or practising genital mutilation because females have been carrying it out for centuries.
    Racism is making sure that different people get opportunities to get into premier institutions with quotas, so that it becomes normal for people of other cultures and colours to be part of the larger cultural mix.
    Racism is making an effort not to have preconceived ideas about what different people are like.
    Racism can be not forming expectations that are massively high, or unreasonably low about with different people can achieve, ie not all Japanese people learn the violin, not all Filipino women can only be caregivers though many are, not all
    Asian children are great at maths.

    People who look and act differently will be noticed. The child who is different from the majority may get stared at and not accepted at first. This is not racism it is human nature. Relationships can be built up by learning about others cultures, backgrounds until there is understanding and normality achieved. It is racism to expect that someone different should give up everything individual and try to be like the dominant culture.

    Tom Lehrer on National Brotherhood Week prods us about the difficulties of accepting everybody totally tolerantly – can’t be done.

    • marty mars 1.1
      19 June 2017 at 4:44 pm

      ffs are you for real?

    • Wainwright 1.2
      19 June 2017 at 10:56 pm

      What absolute bollocks. Whole point of racism is its damaging prejudice which justifies mistreating people. Next maybe you;ll argue class struggle is good because it just means making room for the poor to die in sweatshops.

      • Stuart Munro 1.2.1
        19 June 2017 at 11:13 pm

        The question is – what if you’re wrong? What if the confiscations of land were motivated by simple greed and not this evil caricature you’re trying to invent? The highland clearances in Scotland were just as devastating to local communities as NZ confiscations – but conducted by and against people of the same culture.
        Rather like contemporary asset thefts in NZ.

        Brownlee has cheerfully mistreated Christchurch’s eastern suburbs, despite having no genetic or false race theory basis for his wrongdoing. He did it because he could.

        Mistreatment is the ill, not racism. Otherwise you’re just picking favourites among Coleridge’s “all our dainty terms for fratricide”.

        • Wainwright 1.2.1.1
          19 June 2017 at 11:41 pm

          What the hell are you talking about and what the fuck does it have to do with my comment?

          • Stuart Munro 1.2.1.1.1
            20 June 2017 at 9:48 am

            At an individual level it’s quite easy to find evidence of the hate-based racism that forms your thesis ” Whole point of racism is its damaging prejudice”
            When it comes to the more damaging large scale actions of governments it much harder to find credible evidence of hate. Avarice is abundant however.

        • marty mars 1.2.1.2
          20 June 2017 at 7:49 am

          “The questions is…”

          LOL sorry stu that ain’t the question – but please carry on, I love reading the wild ramblings of those defending the indefensible.

          • Stuart Munro 1.2.1.2.1
            20 June 2017 at 10:25 am

            I’m not defending the indefensible – I just happen to think that the prurience of the approach is dysfunctional.

            The research you quoted is a good approach – I remember the mortality statistics in the 80s that put male Maori life expectancy at 50.

            But if response to injustice, like “responses to racism include smoking, alcohol and other drug use” then the prevalence of those issues indicates more injustices than racism, that also demand action.

  2. marty mars 2
    19 June 2017 at 4:49 pm

    Good campaign and I’m enjoying watching the faces drop to non-expression. Can’t wait to try that out soon lol.

  3. D'Esterre 3
    19 June 2017 at 5:14 pm

    Greywarshark: I agree with your sentiments. I wonder that Taika Waititi would get involved in a finger-wagging campaign such as this; though I conclude that his clip is a neat illustration of irony.

    I’m irritated by this well-meaning but wrong-headed stuff from the Human Rights Commission. Characterising people as “racist” is just name-calling; when people do it to me, I conclude that the name-caller has either run out of arguments, or hasn’t any countervailing argument to begin with. It’s designed to shut people up and silence alternative views: a really pernicious notion in a free society.

    It’s worth pointing out – again – that actual racism is the preserve of governments, which can enact legislation affecting entire categories of people. Apartheid South Africa and pre-civil rights era US, for instance. Individual citizens can’t do this. Moreover, the institutions of NZ society aren’t racist.

    The HRC claims that complaints about “racism” are increasing. What they’re talking about is presumably what Tom Lehrer was singing about in that hilarious clip: people saying mean things to and about one another.

    Discrimination and prejudice are part of the human condition; we are a groupish species, and discrimination of that sort is hard-wired into us. In general, we prefer to live, work and socialise with people who look and sound like us, and who share and understand our cultural norms and subleties. There is NOTHING wrong with this.

    The increase of what HRC calls “racism” mirrors increasing immigration to NZ from a variety of countries. Of course people – said immigrants included – will exhibit bias and prejudice. It’s human nature. But people – immigrants included – have to abide by our laws, which are blind to ethnic differences. If individual people discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, they’re breaking the law and can be prosecuted.

    Meantime, I sincerely hope that this campaign dies the death it so richly deserves. Stop lecturing the rest of us already!

  4. Corokia 4
    19 June 2017 at 7:01 pm

    Greywarshark- just wrong. Racism is discriminating against people because of their race. You don’t get to make up your own definition

    D’Esterre- what do you do,or say,to cause people to call you racist?

    • greywarshark 4.1
      19 June 2017 at 9:07 pm

      Corokia
      You are naive. People complain about Maori or perhaps refugees getting things not being given to everyone, because they are different or more needy and say that provision is racism. There is positive and negative racism. That’s what One NZ is all about, the small-minded

      It gets to be exaggerated so that we can’t talk about difference or anything because we are criticised as showing racist attitudes.

      Learning about tikanga can go a long way to prevent giving offence to Maori. You can then ask how to go about something, and not be an insensitive twit. But the clever marketing tool they have created doesn’t sound genuine to me, just tick-boxing for perfect people.
      And that brings me to hateism. Sorry but I hate perfect people.

  5. Stuart Munro 5
    19 June 2017 at 7:11 pm

    You have to remember the Gnats are funding this, and they do nothing without an utterly corrupt reason.

    I imagine they are trying to build credibility on race issues that they will use to wedge anyone trying to reduce the untrammeled flow of cheap labour and dirty money, much as they made a thoroughly baseless attack on Phil Twyford and managed to made it stick in some minds.

    Divide and rule is their game, and racism callouts divide us. It was claims of racism that were behind the Guardian’s anomalous position on Corbyn – subsequently shown by Al Jazeera to have originated in Israeli objections to his support for Palestinians.

    The idea that the harm of racism originates in racist jokes is also rather questionable – the worst acts of racism in NZ typically involve some sleazy government hack using the apparatus of the state to confiscate Maori land or other resources. I don’t see a campaign directed at jokes having much impact on such hardened kleptocrats.

  6. D'Esterre 6
    19 June 2017 at 7:47 pm

    Corokia: “D’Esterre- what do you do,or say,to cause people to call you racist?”

    Doing what I’ve done here: exercising my right to freedom of speech and disagreeing with views such as those expressed by the HRC. I am correct to say that discrimination and bias are part of the human condition. It’s ridiculous and pointless to characterise this as racism. In fact, to do so is very likely to be counterproductive.

    In this household, we’re well aware of that sort of prejudice, having been on the receiving end of it off and on over the years. I doubt that anyone could say what people who abuse Muslims (for instance) are thinking. I suspect that they’re not thinking; or if they are, it is – as the very perspicacious Vladimir Putin has said – with some part of their body that is not their brain.

    We can’t legislate to control what people think and say; nor should we try. What we can do is to enforce legislation – the Human Rights Act, for example – when people discriminate on the basis of ethnicity in employment, housing, healthcare and so on. If it can be proved, such people are breaking the law and should be prosecuted.

    But I’m damned if I’ll submit without protest to a nagging campaign of this sort from Susan Devoy, who appears to have had some kind of Road-to-Damascus moment since her appointment. Away with it!

    • greywarshark 6.1
      19 June 2017 at 8:56 pm

      I don’t agree that we can’t have some control on what people do or say. Tolerance of some things is best rather than making an issue of everything, but when there is repeated harrassment. name calling, sledging in sport, that is not acceptable. Then it is big put downs, bullying.

      But if people are looking for racism are keeping it at the tops of their minds so that they interpret every look as accompanying a negative, racist thought, then its getting overblown. As for Susan Devoy I remember her saying something as RRC and thinking it sounded like preachy PC stuff. I think she will be ticking the boxes to earn her fee.

    • Daveosaurus 6.2
      19 June 2017 at 11:11 pm

      Your ‘freedom of speech’ to downplay racism is balance by other people’s ‘freedom of speech’ to criticise you for doing so.

  7. D'Esterre 7
    19 June 2017 at 7:57 pm

    Marty Mars: “nah – sadly a bit more to it than that.”

    No there isn’t. Racism is the preserve of governments. Calling individuals racist is both inaccurate and deeply dishonest; it’s designed to shut people up. Nobody likes being called a racist.

    Stuart Munro: “The idea that the harm of racism originates in racist jokes is also rather questionable – the worst acts of racism in NZ typically involve some sleazy government hack using the apparatus of the state to confiscate Maori land or other resources. I don’t see a campaign directed at jokes having much impact on such hardened kleptocrats.”

    Agreed.

    [RL: Learn to use the “Reply” button. It makes the threads far easier to read and annoys the moderators less.]

    • RedLogix 7.1
      19 June 2017 at 8:15 pm

      It is generally understood there are two broad types of racism. The kind of statutory racism (for instance Australia Aboriginals were denied even the right to vote until 1963) which you have in mind is pretty uncontroversial. Very few people openly defend this kind of legal discrimination these days.

      At the other end of the spectrum is the kind of personal belief system that justifies demeaning, bullying, excluding and abusing other people on the basis of skin colour or race. Openly racist behaviour is just plain boorish, low rent and generally regarded with disdain. But that does not and cannot necessarily change how people feel. We all have our own unique experiences and socialisation, and while it is natural for people to feel affinity with family, community and race and nationality … it is too easy for this to be distorted into bigotry.

      To get a sense of this, consider how many words we have expended here on The Standard this past few days over Grenfell Tower, yet almost none I think on an equally devastating loss in Portugal. Does this make us all bigots? Or is it just an expression of our moral and empathy horizons?

      Then there is institutional racism that rarely shows it’s face openly, but is evident when we examine outcomes. For instance why is it far more likely a young man with a brown face finish up in prison than one with a white face? This is the subtle layer which is hard to see, but easy to feel the effects of if you are on the wrong end of it.

      If you are going to talk about racism, it’s vital to be very clear about how you are using this most loaded of words. Because we all have much to learn.

    • marty mars 7.2
      19 June 2017 at 8:52 pm

      just cos you say it D doesn’t make it so. Your explanation of your understanding of what racism is is funny and well incomplete – thanks for the laugh.

  8. marty mars 8
    19 June 2017 at 9:05 pm

    Nice – good study that will provide additional evidence to help people.

    The impact of racism on the health of New Zealanders will go under the microscope thanks to an $800,000 research grant to Wellington researchers.

    Using data from the New Zealand Health Survey, Drs James Stanley, Ricci Harris and Donna Cormack from the University of Otago, Wellington will spend the next three years working to determine whether racism leads to poorer health across all ethnic groups.

    Harris, of Ngati Kahungunu, Ngati Raukawa and Ngai Tahu, has previously studied the impact of ethnic health inequities on Maori health.

    A report Harris co-authored in 2008, titled The Impact of Racism on Indigenous Health in Australia and Aotearoa revealed: “For Indigenous peoples, unlike white Australians and Pakeha New Zealanders, racism is a fundamental driver of health.”

    It found those who had experienced racism had poorer access to employment, good housing and higher exposure to toxic substances. This new study will provide insight into impacts on health into the future, the researcher said.

    Harris also pointed out the health effects of racial attacks through racially motivated physical assault, along with impacts on mental health such as stress and anxiety – which can also affect the immune, endocrine and cardiovascular systems.

    Other negative responses to racism include smoking, alcohol and other drug use.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/93826520/victims-of-racism-to-have-health-tracked-in-800k-study

  9. Sumsuch 9
    20 June 2017 at 2:49 am

    Rascism is no guid. This from the trustees of Empire, the Scots. I don’t want to situate to politicsI but I would feel uncomfortable with a massive flock of Chinese. Tho’ I’m fond of them as people. Wedge politics y’reaken? Bill Birch?