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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics article by writer John Black

Racism Or…?

Here’s my idea for a game show. A panel of academics from our most prestigious universities and a panel of ordinary human beings would both be shown clips of mishaps in the everyday life of an ethnic minority person. The question would then be asked of both panels whether they thought the incident was evidence of racism or if there were a more banal explanation. The academics schooled in neo-Marxist codswallop would give their arcane explanations probably involving ‘institutional racism’ or some such fantastical construction and then Terry and Rhonda from Foxton, much more acquainted with reality, would have a go. Viewers at home would then vote on the explanation they thought most likely and the winning panel would get to blow away the losers with those marshmallow guns from Bugsy Malone.

I fear the universities would never recover.

CC BY-SA 3.0 File:UniversityChallengeNZ.jpg Uploaded: 9 October 2005

While NZ On Air seem to have lost my funding application and The Chase is probably safe, I do feel my show (I’ve given it the catchy title ‘RACISM OR?’) would fill a niche. A much needed push back against the idea that we all live in a deeply racist country.

Not much imagination would need to go into the scripting of such a show. In fact last week a whole season’s worth was provided in something called the Whakatika report put out by a group called Te Atawhai o Te Ao. Known in the language most of us speak as the ‘Independent Maori Institute for Environment and Health’ it gets its $3.8 million in funding from the government (from the taxpayer). So, not all that ‘independent’ then.

Put together by seven academics and based on a survey of over 2000 Maori New Zealanders, it came to the striking conclusion (much reported by media) that ‘93% of Maori experience racism everyday’.

Shocking. So what form does this racism take, exactly? Rather nebulous and debatable ones as it turns out.

So let’s play the game, shall we? (All quotes are taken directly from the report and are not, unbelievably, created for satirical purposes).

‘Over half of all respondents (53%) said they had to spell their name all of the time or often and similar numbers said they had to explain their Maori name(s) regularly.’

Racism or…simple politeness in wanting to spell someone’s name correctly? One can imagine nervous non-Maori sweating over leaving out an ‘a’ in ‘Atairangikaahu’ and then being accused of a vicious spelling-related hate crime. Care in getting someone’s name correct and indeed interest in the meaning of someone’s name are evidence as much of racial tolerance as of the opposite.

‘63% feel …angry annoyed or frustrated when shown pictures of colonial statues or monuments.’

Racism or…history? The commemoration of the brave resourceful pioneers who founded this country and its institutions which we all now enjoy should be a source of shared pride. There may not be enough statues of Maori among them, causing this ‘angry annoyed or frustrated’ feeling. So let’s put more up.

‘While we traditionally had free access to Maori kai, this changed with colonisation and continues today…restricting for example the collection of kaimoana.’

Racism or…welcome to the twenty-first century? Yes, New Zealand is no longer a prelapsarian paradise where moa teem and crayfish jump into your kete. But it’s also no longer a land without KFC, Burger King or Carl’s Junior. Or ambulances, hospitals, and dentists for that matter. Are they ‘racist’ too?

Once my theoretical game show had exhausted Maori ‘racism’, I could get a second season out of the current panic about ‘anti-Asian hate crimes’.

A madman in America kills eight people, six of them Asian-American and seven of them women.

Racism or… misogyny? The twisted psycho has never indicated racial animus was his motivation but has claimed a ‘sex addiction’ and wanting to remove ‘temptation’. These comments got elided by media for not fitting the ‘racist hate crime’ narrative they are trying to push.

Highly dubious statistics were then dragooned into the cause with a claim of a staggering rise in anti-Asian hate crimes across America. For example a 100% increase in San Diego. Yes, from zero in 2019 to one in 2020.

Here the panic was picked up and run with by the radical-leftist fanzine otherwise known as the Spinoff. A Ms Tao Lin went on a page-long rant about the anti-Asian ‘discrimination and hate’ in New Zealand, giving as examples of how the Asian community suffers, (kids at school) ‘saying “Yuck!” to our lunches’ and ‘being told how good our English is’.

Racism or…kids being kids? And their well-known tendency to pick on anything different from the norm? Gingers get it worse.

And as for compliments about her English, I can understand why Ms Lin mistook it for racism. In the woke-brat world where any opposition to your barmy notions must be met with screams of outrage and calls for cancellation it must be quite difficult to identify simple politeness.

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