What is the main problem facing New Zealand today? It is the rather patronising attitudes of the suburban white upper-middle-class towards Maori, where Maori are not seen as ‘equals’ but as an unfortunate group who need to be helped by benevolent people who know what is best. All very “White Man’s Burden”. I realise, dear reader, this may well include your demographic but it is important to address these matters.
My dearly beloved (who is Maori) and I, famously met on the day of the September 2010 Christchurch earthquake in Cathedral Square at about 4am – each of us in a state of great agitation (you had to kinda be there to understand what it was like), and we have been together ever since.
In the nearly 12 years since, especially when we were living in suburban Wellington whilst they attended Victoria University, or pottering about the country on holiday, or attempting to use their mathematics PhD, or when joining clubs; in so many walks of life they experienced one rather condescending attitude after another from clever dick woke types.
Automatic stereotypical assumptions were made – from being thick to being a criminal to being addressed with fake Maori words by tiki-wearing Karens, to that awful hippy hoppy music. The worst was being addressed by private school educated rich kids as “bro” and other slang terms. It really had to be experienced to be believed folks how patronising (and lacking in self-awareness) the white woke middle class really are. The other automatic assumption – hilariously – was people thinking I was their “father” rather than husband! (There’s a slight age gap between us).
It isn’t just my spouse within the Maori population who isn’t impressed or fooled by this sort of stuff.
Funnily enough, moving back here to rural Otago and associating mostly with country people for the last couple of years, has been a colour blind ‘content of your character’ experience and so refreshing.
It would be wrong to point the finger solely at, say, the current government, as these attitudes have emerged over a long period of time. Winston Peters was using the term “sickly white liberalism” 35 years ago. It isn’t going to change anytime soon as some of the problems will never be solved.
Take crime as an example. It is fair to say that criminal activity and dealings with the justice system are viewed with a sense of shame within the white middle class and rightly so. Most white people don’t engage in criminal activity and would view prison with a sense of horror and would impose that viewpoint on attempts to solve the crime problem.
Consequently, each “crackdown” on some crime problem or other is always thought up with the middle-class mindset – (of their own view of being law-abiding) – as its basis. What civil servants, academics and politicians who think these things up fail to see is that the average Maori who is a criminal and involved in the criminal justice system has a completely different mindset. They see prison, for example, as akin to a school camp; no big deal. They would view no pudding at dinner as a greater sanction! Prison viewed as a glorified school camp? What? Huh? How could that be? It is this lack of understanding at the highest levels which IS the problem.
When you have a clash of completely different mindsets and when one side doesn’t understand the other in any way whatsoever it’s a recipe for a long term disaster.