Can you imagine a Stuff headline that reads:
The brown, female, youthful face of local government
What about:
The black, male, senior face of local government
How about this real headline?
Why on earth did anyone think that it was okay to critique councils not by their effectiveness or combined range of skills but by their sex, age and skin colour? This is identity politics at its most hateful and the blatant target of the article is middle-aged and older white males.
[…]If you’ve ever been to a meeting of your local councillors, you may have noticed they share certain characteristics.
It is almost certain that most of them were male, most of them were white, and most of them were aged between 50 and 70 (and many would have been a combination of the three).
So bloody what? Why should anyone even begin to care about this? Only a racist would care about skin colour and most sensible people associate age with wisdom and experience. Women dominate in many professions and no one cares. To target men and white men in particular like this is completely unacceptable and racist. This so-called news story is trouble looking for a place to happen.
[…] An analysis of nearly 900 elected members, who together represent district, regional and city councils, show they collectively bear little resemblance to the people they represent.
Again I ask, so bloody what? Does my doctor have to look like me in order to do a good job? Do the people in the supermarket need to look like me to provide me with good service? Does the political party I support need to have politicians who look like me to win my vote? The answer is no, no, and no. I want my doctor to be good at his or her job I don’t care what race or sex they are. I don’t care if the checkout operator is male or female, old or young, brown, black or white. I care about good service. I vote for policies that I support more than I vote for personalities yet this article is trying to tell its audience that we should care about superficial things like whether or not a person looks like us. It is divisive and it is racist.
[…] Every council fails on the age measure, but some fail harder than others.
Most councils – 50 in total – don’t have any elected members younger than 38, and most of the remainder have one.
What a bloody cheek! Who on earth made this reporter the lord of everything? Who the hell does he think he is to state that employing older wiser heads is a failure?
[…] Elected members don’t have to publicly declare how old they are, so there is no official data to draw upon,
stuff.co.nz/national/114930238/the-white-male-middleaged-face-of-local-government
Of course, they don’t because to force them to do that would be discriminatory.
The article is full of photos to illustrate the shamefully white and male make up of many councils. I can’t imagine how these people’s families must feel seeing the photos being used as a racist visual guide to what is wrong with NZ councils.
Oh yeah and just for laughs check out the sex, age and skin colour of the author of the Stuff article below. I wonder how he feels being publicly judged for things that he has no control over? Pretty racist, sexist and ageist isn’t it Charlie?
