Starfish’s blog

going on with my blog lately - I’ve fixed one thing that was obviously ‘wrong’ - so, while I decide whether I am, in fact, right to be a little ‘paranoid’, I’m going “no comments/pings/trackbacks”. Apologies to M, whose last comment was lost. (Sorry, too, to ask vaguish questions then fail to clarify, elaborate or engage).

Elsewise, I’m fine.

Well, except for what I’ve heard about a particular man-kills-woman case being tried down south right now.

I cannot find words to adequately describe how feel about this man who stabbed a 22yr old woman (who had been his partner/girlfriend) a horrendous number of times.

NB: There is enough graphic description in what is italicised below for me to give a potential trigger warning.

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From here,

Mother: I saw him stab my daughter

“Sophie Elliott’s mother thought her daughter was being raped as she raced upstairs to answer her screams.

“He would take offence where others might be able to deal with it. He gets offended easily and becomes distressed at someone thinking the worst of him …“

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*According to other articles I’ve read, he had issues with some members of his uni dept - believed his work to have been stolen by them (and I do not, cannot know whether that was so, or not) - but did he unleash his… what? …rage? on them? (Not that I’m advocating that, of course).

No. He took everything he believed to be wrong in his life out on a woman with whom he had been intimately involved. Same old, same old.

And, while the majority of my readers wouldn’t even think of going there, women (who’ve been in the news here lately due to rising rates of violent crime/assault committed by us - figures still very low though; offenders highly likely to have been raised in violent homes, you know, the castles of men) are not even remotely near equally, nevermind so disproportionately responsible for crimes of violence as men.

After reading Overly Helpful Dudes at L’s blog, I have a question, or questions.

Do any of you out there try to talk with other women who seem glad of, accept and/or play along with “benevolent sexism”, the kind that seeks to prevent women from lifting anything that looks heavier than a light grocery bag, or mowing lawns, etc? I’ve done this kind of thing and am wondering whether or not it’s wrong-headed of me.

Does it verge on, or is it woman-hating to suggest (in an attempt to consciousness raise) that going along with this sort of thing often seems to allow men to justify the likes of the emotional absence that so frequently plagues women in het. relationships? You know, “Honey, I’m just so tired from flexing my muscles/ability to earn 100cents in the dollar that I really can’t be expected to do all this feeling/relationship/communication stuff with you as well!”.

This could be a more complex post, I know, but, thoughts anyone?

your white-only post. This’ll be kind of garbled, but of all the waves of thought swooshing round in my head on different subjects/issues/goings on that I’d like to write about at the mo’, this is the one I’m choosing, even though it’ll likely take some thought on the part of anyone reading to make any sense of it.

One note before I really start. I couldn’t tell from your post where the deeply personal and clearly political stopped and started and maybe there were no such clear deliniation(s) going on in you at the time, so if you’re uncomfortable with addressing what I’ve written some time soon, or at all, I wont be offended and would also be happy to take it down if you’d rather it weren’t hanging out here in the wind. Also, as with much conscious growth and development, the stretching parts can hurt at times, and maybe what you wrote came out of that sort of place in the distillation process, and that is a difficult, if not impossible, place from which to feel anything like trust when you’re in it, in case that point was something you needed to hear, and is relevant at all.

Onward.

I don’t trust myself anymore.

I get that feeling too, like, hey, where’s the solid ground again? Sometimes it’s ’cause I find myself kind of lost for argument to a particular point, which I’ve learned is often an indicator that the conversation or my thought process has/have somehow defaulted to the white perspective, or that the person I’m speaking with is short a building block/aka a clue or two in their understanding and I’m not sure what it is that’s missing from their understanding/knowledge base. Or it can be more general, which is what I think I read in your words, perhaps prompted by unproductive and/or negative experiences bringing on a malaise, sense of frustration that might well be a plateau rather than anything more fixed.

Sometimes, too, it’s down to the (deliberately if not consciously) confounding nature of the patriarchal perspectives of the white people I’m listening to, reading or conversing with (including myself in my own head sometimes), which is also often an indication that the white perspective is once again dominating, is overarching and thorough-reaching.

Did I just more or less say the same thing twice? ie. it’s not you, it’s the confounded, confounding lense, again. Perhaps the lack of trust in ourselves is about being at or near a point where we’re wavering between what we knew, or thought we knew and what we now know or are learning, where the latter has yet to fully settle inside of us; we’re on what seems shifting ground. And white dominance does have its ways of sucking you/me/us back in to the mind meld, lots of ways.

I could be on the wrong track, but I’m wondering if, when it comes to this,

I get caught up in the whitely liberal desire to do the right thing and prove myself a good (i.e., nonracist) person and I’m learning that’s a very bad place from which to act.

that’s really what’s going on in you, or is it that other white people have suggested to you, directly or indirectly that that could be your only possible motivation? There’s no acknowledgment that you could possibly care deeply and sincerely about racism, particularly as it effects women of colour. That all you could possibly be trying to do is make yourself feel better by one-upping and/or more liberal than thou-ing, which is the only reason anyone within the hierarchical capatriarchy (hat-tip polly for that term) could possibly have for doing anything, ever, right? - at least that’s what most of us are trained to believe and it’s especially ingrained in so many who particularly directly benefit, albeit unconsciously sometimes, from the system, (and because one must traditionally also “succeed” by the standards of the dominant paradigm before it’s “acceptable” to turn around and ‘do good’/”give something back” which is often framed as passion for, but by the time the person has sold out, is/has/has been compromised enough to have “succeeded” - as one must do, at the expense of/on the backs and bodies of those who are not intended to benefit - there’s usually piss all (if you’ll pardon my vernacular) in the way of actual passion about it, which is where that thing called ‘liberal guilt’, being accused of or believed to be operating from that, even when you’re really not, can come into it as a patriarchally manufactured and managed faux way of being, which can be leveled at and suck the most genuine person back in(to the white mind-meld) at times). Expletive! I know what I mean to say, but is it there, somehow, in ten paragraphs condensed into one run-on sentence that calls for not only mega reading between the lines but superintuitiveness as well ?

Then, about this,

Acting out of those desires recently has brought me to arguing with, even haranguing, some people I really care about,

Perhaps you care about them enough to challenge them, as you likely expect and desire to be challenged in turn, about many things, especially when loved ones have a specific area of interest/concern/knowledge they are growing and wish to share/are genuinely passionate about? I know that I, personally, revel in the company/thoughts of folks who challenge me by broadening my perspectives, who deepen my understanding of issues I care about, even when it does give me pause to examine my own limitations in ways that can feel really uncomfortable.

I will ask too, are you actually haranguing, or are you simply perceived to be haranguing just because you’re speaking up and out at all? Which is not to say that friends et al mayn’t call “time” when they might need a break to absorb or are otherwise feeling overwhelmed by your passion.

And *cough* is The Backtrack never in play here,

over what amounts to nothing more than my misinterpreting what they were trying to say.

The Backtrack *
“Hey, wait a second, that’s not what I meant… I mean… you took my words out of context, don’t make it try to sound like I’m racist!”

So, I’m obviously going to question your experience when you add this,

That makes me feel like shit, and deservedly so.

and ask if it is in fact *you* who should be ‘critically examining’ themselves?

I had more to say, and maybe will get to some of it later, particularly if you wouldn’t be averse to the idea of a Starfish and Amy have a public email-style conversation here (not to exclude others who also have something to say, of course, if anyone is able to make head or tail)?

Edited 19 June ‘08 ’cause cj’s blog is gone, rendering this post entirely nonsensical!

post and comments over at CJ’s Universal Plume, where I’ve been reading appreciatively off and on for a while.

No matter your location on the feminist spectrum, I’m sure there’s a button that will be pushed in every woman. Up to the challenge, to perhaps being incensed, for one thing? Head on over.

CJ’s comment policy reads like this

“Respectfully, kindly, thoughtfully, intelligently, with radical feminist analysis and woman-centered intent on the brain only, please!”

so that many a deep breath will need to be taken, I’m sure.

I’m having trouble formulating my own thoughts, but am definitely provoked, challenged - excited, rather than anything negative. CJ, and Darkdaughta, are publicly going where, to the best of my knowledge, almost no woman has dared to tread. I say, go! you two and will admit to recognising myself in some of your criticisms :/ and to having shared some of the same thoughts. Could I be anymore cryptic? I’ll likely have a go at elaborating some time.

Lately I find myself really enjoying and appreciating posts like the one jo put up for International Women’s Day, quoting Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

“Joy is the kind of feeling a woman has when she lays the words down on paper just so, or hits the notes al punto, right on the head, the first time. Whew. Unbelievable…

“…something that made her stretch, best herself, and succeed - maybe gracefully, maybe not, but she did it…”

And this one, What Feminism is to Me by Eeni B. Bella StinggRose.

“Then one day I realized that forging those beautiful, strong, wonderful connections with women was not at all a bonus or by product of feminist activism…I had had it all backwards. Connecting with women is now my goal, and my only goal. It is my feminism.”

And a love story from Amy The crip and the fat chick.

“After the meeting, the fat chick sat in the hall to wait while the crip went to the restroom. When she rolled out, their eyes, on the same level, met. The crip’s eyes were like glistening marbles with melted milk chocolate centers, and the fat chick felt the proverbial arrow in her proverbial heart.”

There used to be a site, a relatively small, simple site called, I think, The Power of Kauri that I would go visit from time to time for a dose of some of the same sorts of feelings I get from the posts above - happy, relaxed, inspired. Although I can’t find it anymore, the memory of it still acts as a restorative at times.

I was also happy to learn of the Beguines not so long ago, (from a feminist blog I can not at this moment recall). The Beguines were (European) women who, during the middle ages, chose to be neither wife nor cloistered nun, but to live a ‘third way’; communally on the fringes of towns, most often. These Beguinages, as the communities came to be known, were self supporting and largely self governing - though the powers that were did become unsettled by women living so free (of direct male interference). Natch.

Please circle back to the beginning again and click on the first three links only.

almost all day today. She was two years old when she was shot dead in a drive-by shooting as she lay sleeping on the couch in her home, killed by a bullet that was never, ever intended for her. A bullet fired in violation of

“…a generally accepted agreement had been developed between gangs nationally that whanau homes would not be targeted like this and how that understanding had more or less held good for well over a decade.”

Quotation extracted from this article written by a former BP member shortly after Jhia’s death last year. It’s the most or rather, only, in-depth and most fully human account and analysis of the situation I found (in the first 3-4 pages of a google search anyway). It’s long, of course, but well worth the read. Please do read, concerned and thoughtful A/NZer’s (who do not know this stuff already).

It includes reference to a fairly recent, not too foul sounding govt study, from which I learned lots I had not known about gangs in this country, from their beginnings

” New Zealand Youth Gangs Timeline

1800’s

* Gangs comprised of Pakeha sealers and whalers create mayhem. Authorities are concerned about a Maori backlash and so form the NZ Police to curb Pakeha gangs”

on through to some details about present day gangs/’wannabes’ (inc. Sth Akl specific ref’s). The article pulls together elements of that study and other related things I do now know quite surely, mostly thanks to the fall-out from the so-called ‘terror raids’ of late last year.

“However, similarly, the indiscriminate spraying of political bullets is an equally terrifying reality. In the name of getting gangs under control we seem to be hell bent on making fundamental changes to our criminal justice system. We are contemplating the extinction of personal rights that have sat in place in English Law since the Magna Carta, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Indeed further, the suggestion of Terrorism Legislation intimates a suspension of habeas corpus. Just as we don’t want to see our kids killed by a drive by bullet we surely don’t want them to live in a society where these fundamental rights do not exist; where the shortcut rules intended to deal with one manifestation of a problem produce unintended consequences and now its your kids or grandkids who arise as the social devils of the day and are subject to whatever eventuates in legislation. Legislation is significant but how we use it is even more so. If drive bys are indiscriminate how we apply criminal legislation is very discriminate. This is reflected in the racial profile of our prison and gang populations. What we really mean when we talk about gang is Maori gang. We aren’t talking about organised crime at all. If we were talking about organised crime we would be talking about the big hitters, the internationals, the dudes that are hard to catch. They might not even look like our caricature of a gang member. But, no, we are fixated on Hori and Hemi at the mall with leathers and moko. I think we Pakeha actually suffer some sort of settler malaise at this point and we run a fever. Do we have some suppressed memory and unresolved fear of the natives?”

Most of the piece is far less in-our-pakeha-faces than that which I’ve quoted, some of it is very personal and moving

” It could be any of a thousand state house streets in NZ. I recognise the regalia but none of the faces. They are all young people and they are dressed in a mix of hoodies and leathers, a conflation of gangsta styles. Over to the side of the street are a line up of similarly young faces but sporting yellow scarves, the colours of the Killer Beez, reputedly a junior wing of the Tribesmen. We approach the Blacks, remove our caps and begin the greeting ritual of hariru. One of these young warriors looks harrow. His eyes are set deep and are ringed with the redness of tears and grief. It is Josh, baby Jhia’s dad. To my knowledge we have never previously met but in the instant of the exchange of breath of the hongi it feels that we know each other as a tuakana may know a teina. I am consumed with sorrow. We do not speak but stay locked. Our tears mingle.”

and solutions are offered, throughout (seriously, go read), many of which were already underway and/or have been effective in the past. There was no need for the media and political frenzy, shocked and angry though many of us were and perhaps still are to some degree.

since my last blog post, and it is likely to be some further time yet before there is another.

Am switching to “no comments” for now as I may not be on-line much, even to read, for the next wee while due to real life busy-ness, in ultimately good ways.

While this is not new news, it’s still quite relevant, and I really like the authors approach.

(It’s election year here too, and faux-left or right, the focus is still on The Pie - witness proposals to extend the imprisonment of youth in inductive ‘educational’ and/or ‘corrective’ facilities, in the vain hope that one day the entire population, (or all that can be convinced of the lie), will have skillz for some sort of increasingly mythical gainful employment).

What follows are most of the words from Anne Else’s 1998 The End of the Fairytale: Beyond The Capitalist Romance.
Note for the time poor: The very short version is highlighted in this colour.

“It is usually women who are seen as addicted to romance…

But in fact it is clear that it is usually men who show true devotion to another romance - the social and economic romance of capitalism. They cling loyally to it in the face of all the evidence that it too is a sham.

The early nineteenth century brought two romantic movements - one in literature, the other in economics.

First, there was the iron romance of industrialism itself, as vast machines began to stamp tons of what capitalists called “raw material” into new shapes for human use and profit.

Secondly, there was the blood and guts romance of masculine working class labour, locked into a complex love-hate relationship with coal and steel and the men who owned it - and virtually owned the workers too. The romance was strong enough to mask the sordid reality. That is why (despite the absence of choice in taking it on) the loss of this literally killing work was so devastating.

Thirdly, there was - and still is - the endless romance of consumption. Its premise is that desires for goods are infinite, and that people - particularly women - inevitably do and should act to satisfy those desires as fully as they can. In fact, capitalism deliberately set up this romance, just as it did the romance of labour.

These forms of romance provided the essential underpinning for what has turned out to be the most enduring capitalist myth of all: the intoxicating romance of investment. One of the great appeals of this magic wand was that it appeared to work regardless of birth or title. Money could conjure up more money almost overnight - and just as quickly make it vanish again.

Like Frankenstein’s monster, the machines, the mass production and consumption they made possible, and the money they made all took on a life of their own. Instead of being merely the means to the human end of a better life - whatever that is taken to mean - they became the end itself. But they also contained the seeds of their own destruction.

First to crumble was[...] the romance of industrialism. In this country it never reached full bloom, so we have been spared the rusting hulks and bleak wastelands it has left behind elsewhere. Hard on its heels went the romance of male labour, as the mines and factories closed.

Where did the jobs go?

In American cities, inspectors are finding 19th century style sweatshops where young immigrant girls as young as twelve work instead of going to school. A million to a million and a half immigrant farmworker children - some as young as three and four years - are at work in American fields (Schor, 1991, p.27). Many have moved to what are quaintly called “emerging markets”* - but massive unemployment is now emerging there too. Thousands have simply disappeared.

That leaves only investment. Thanks in part to the global reach of new information technologies, which annihilate time and distance and other human limitations, capitalism is coming to reign supreme in ways which have not previously been possible. Incredible riches are being built up - accompanied by equally incredible poverty.

But what we are seeing now is not an aberration. It is the apotheosis of capitalism. The whole point - the only point - of all this economic activity is to increase the returns on financial capital. This cannot be done fast enough by traditional types of investment - partly because they are too inflexible, long-term and unwieldy. Instead vast sums rove around the world seeking the most profitable temporary home.

The drive to privatise superannuation has added hugely to this pool of mobile capital. There is now excess productive capacity in every traditional major industry. Yet share prices are a greater multiple of earnings than ever before. Even so, it is becoming more and more difficult to find investments that return enough, fast enough. Two humanly destructive consequences are the surge in mergers and buy-outs, and the increase in gambling on various forms of “futures” - including national currencies.

Another strategy for dealing with the problem of finding lucrative havens for capital is to shift investment to forms of production which are so necessary to human existence that they should instead be seen as aspects of reproduction - that is, the maintenance and production of human beings. In an urban society, everyone must use water, sewage, energy, communications and roads; and everyone needs education and health care and social security of some kind. So it makes perfect sense for capital to seek to transform all these into areas for private investment - or at the very least, into parodies of private companies. This is the last frontier for profit - the essentials of life in the 21st century.

But there is a catch, and it is this: if everyone needs these things, then as they are turned more and more into free-market commodities, what happens to those who can’t afford to pay? You can get by, just, with cheap and inferior food. But you cannot get by with cheap and inferior housing or power or transport. In one Birmingham tower block, 70 percent of the tenants had their water cut off last year** when they failed to pay the private company which owns it (Alliance[A/NZ political party] kit on water privatisation, 1997).

Capital demands that people produce and consume only on its own terms. As Claus Offe wrote in a recent (1995) paper, the central notion is that “one can share in the commodities and values of life only if one has successfully marketed one’s own labour.” In other words, each individual must earn enough from the market to buy everything they need to live - as well as to support any unavoidably dependent members of their own family.

But the blunt fact is that capital does not need much labour any more. In 1989 the companies involved in the Business Roundtable represented 77% of New Zealand stock market value, excluding private companies such as Fay Richwhite. But they employed only about 11% of all NZ employees. In 1995 the world’s largest 200 corporations recorded sales worth 28% of the world’s total economic activity. But they provided jobs for only 0.75% of the world’s workforce.

Juliet Schor (1991, p.40) makes the point well: “Capitalist systems do not operate in order to provide employment. Their guiding principle is the pursuit of profitability. If profitability results in high employment, that is a happy coincidence for those who want jobs. If it does not, bottom-line oriented companies will not take it upon themselves to hire those their plans have left behind.”

There is no evidence that capitalist production will ever again conjure up enough jobs, with a good enough spread of wages, to provide anything like what we have come to see as a decent standard of living for all - let alone put back the social pattern of the “family wage-earner”***.

But the true believers are unable to let go of this last vestige of the labour romance. The “good job” has become the Holy Grail of our time. As Claus Offe (1995) puts it, “The more unlikely it becomes that every adult will be able to find and keep a secure, satisfying and well-paying job, the more frantic and aggressive the competition becomes - between generations, sexes, ethnic groups - for this `supreme good’.”

Unless the romances of productive labour and endless consumption are dispelled, the romance of investment will continue to hold sway. How can we break the enchanter’s spell? I think there are only two realistic places for Western societies to look. One is environmentalism. The other is feminism.

It has always been difficult for women to join the ranks of the true believers. It is not just that our lives have an awkward way of giving the lie to romance of every kind - particularly the romance of productive labour. Capitalism has never really found a satisfactory place for us. We [often] do not [easily] fit the traditional male worker mould, because it was never designed for us. In fact it was based on getting our shadow labour thrown in. Yet we know from experience that we cannot rely either on men or on capital to deliver the so-called “family wage”.

Unpaid work represents one of the few genuine challenges to capitalist logic. It makes no rational sense at all. But so resistant has romance been to reality that capitalism still scarcely admits that unpaid work even exists - let alone that it rivals paid work in size and scope; that paid work could not exist without it; and that it endures regardless of what is happening to paid work.

Those who do most of the unpaid work are women. So it is not surprising that women tend to be the heretics in the capitalist belief system. Not all women, of course - any more than all men are committed believers. But women are the largest group who can genuinely envisage another way of life - one which does not depend absolutely on paid market work, but uses the material abundance now possible as a means, not an end in itself.

Perhaps we would do well to stop talking about ethics and social justice, and consider instead the sheer unworkability of capitalism as we now know it. Larger and larger multinationals are producing more and more goods, with fewer and fewer people, to meet less and less real needs, at higher and higher environmental and human cost.

The United Nations estimates (Human Development Report 1997/8) that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly $40 billion a year. That is a lot of money. But it is just 4 percent of the combined wealth of the world’s richest 225 individuals.

Capitalism today makes no sense. It is only the ideological power of romance, coupled of course with the functional power of money, that enables the system to survive. A central part of that ideological power is most men’s inability to imagine what on earth they would ever find to do, in a world which did not centre on paid work and production.

So I will end by saying yet again what I and thousands of other women have been saying for many years now. Humans must have both bread and roses. As well as the necessities of life, and a share of its luxuries, they must have meaningful activity and a sense of belonging.

But there is no shortage of any of these goods in the world. There is only a shortage of jobs, along with a glut of production for profit. The sooner we reject the fantasy that market jobs are the answer and that untrammelled private investment will somehow create them, the sooner we may be able to start building a much more down-to-earth, equitable, sustainable way of life.

~

*Nine years on, from Growing pains dim India’s outsourcing edge: “Indian outsourcing companies are shifting some of their operations to China, the Philippines, Vietnam and Kenya in a bid to stay competitive as higher wages, expensive property prices and a rising rupee eat into profits.” Sound familiar?

**I tried to find a link for this, but could not. I do wonder though, is this one of the last “developed ” countries in the world that has not privatised, does not charge most of its people for water?

***That there will be no putting back the social pattern of the family wage-earner bothers me not at all.

~
While radical it is not, the thought that this,

“The United Nations estimates (Human Development Report 1997/8) that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly $40 billion a year. That is a lot of money. But it is just 4 percent of the combined wealth of the world’s richest 225 individuals.”

or some close facsimile, remains true 10 years on, grates, to say the least.

rather than subjects of The [white] Crown.

From The Maori Party - Re Immigration Bill: First Reading,

August 2007

Tariana Turia, Co-leader, Maori Party

“Tena koe Madam Speaker. Tena tatou katoa.

Sometimes when we come into the House and we hear people talking about these issues, we wonder how much those people understand the history of this country and the history of immigration.

When we hear talk about “fitting in to the culture” and “values of this country”, we feel as tangata whenua, that that is something we would have loved to see happen but did not experience.

This legislation is clearly targeted at people of colour, people who do not come from Western-speaking countries and I think that is appalling.

Immigration (New Zealand) has produced a pamphlet for migrants which features a statement that I believe provides an apt context for both migrants coming to Aotearoa; and for Members coming to this Immigration Bill.

The comment, from Hon Justice Taihakurei Edward Durie, is as follows:

The Treaty of Waitangi is not just a Bill of rights for Maori. It is a Bill of Rights for Pakeha too. It is the Treaty that gives Pakeha the right to be here.

And maybe sometimes we need to be reminded of that.

The challenge issued by Justice Durie is to remind us all that without the Treaty there would be no lawful authority for Pakeha presence in this part of the world. He describes Pakeha as Tangata Tiriti, those who belong to the land by right of the Treaty. And I agree with him.

This is a most suitable challenge from which to consider the Bill’s purpose - which is to manage immigration, through balancing the rights of the individual and the national interest as determined by the Crown.

This is an interesting twist of the truth– that the national interest is determined by the Crown.

Because of course, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as the first immigration document of this nation, puts forward another vision: that the “national interest” is determined in dialogue and co-operation between the Treaty Partners.” <snip>

And,

“But for Maori as a partner to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, there is absolutely nothing.

There is nothing in this Bill which reflects a partnership approach in which tangata whenua, in a spirit of manaakitanga and in a demonstation of rangatiratanga, can develop systems for whanau, hapu and iwi to help immigrants and refugees in their adjustment to Aotearoa.

There is nothing in this Bill which serves to provide incentives for whanau, hapu and iwi to produce economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits out of pooling their skills, knowledge, talents and experience with those of new New Zealanders.

There is nothing in this Bill to support whanau, hapu and iwi and new migrant groups to develop collective strategies for moving forward together as communities and ultimately as a nation.

It is not as if the concept of a Treaty partnership is automatically alien or unwelcome to new migrants.

Two weeks ago I received an email from one of these new New Zealanders, living in Dunedin who told me, and I quote:

“I do very much agree that newcomers to New Zealand need to be introduced – in a friendly way – to the Treaty and Maori culture. Also the idea of a welcome from tangata whenua is a nice concept indeed, and I wish this were in place when my family first moved here in 2003…..Maori inclusion in immigration planning is important.

So one has to ask – if this man, having lived in Aotearoa for four years, can see value in Maori inclusion in immigration planning – what is stopping other Tangata Tiriti – many of whom descend from new settlers who have been living here for some 167 years, from also being able to support Maori having a partnership role?”

Extracted from, Unfolding History, Evolving Identity by Manying Ip.

“The Chinese have since the 1860s been the largest non-European and non-Polynesian ethnic group in New Zealand. A visible minority, they did not fit into the colonial image of a ‘better Britain’ and were harshly excluded from political discourse, socially marginalised and often victimised. In the twenty-first century, they are also arguably the most conspicuous cohort among the ‘new Asian immigrants’, owing to the numbers and perceived economic privilege of the Chinese new arrivals from various countries of origin. Yet there have been few serious studies of the Chinese community in New Zealand and its history, and much of what is reported continues to be based on anecdotes and inaccurate information. For more than 130 years, the Chinese have remained the archetypal alien in New Zealand: the ‘essential outsider’, deemed inscrutable, inassimilable.

“To study the Chinese in this country, therefore, is also to examine in depth New Zealand’s race relations and notions of national identity. The characteristics of the Chinese community as an ethnic minority, especially in its formative years, were heavily influenced by interactions with mainstream New Zealanders who monopolised political power and dominated New Zealand culture. The aspiration of the Anglo-Celtic pioneers was to build a ‘better Britain’ in the South Pacific. So the presence of the Chinese was considered an aberration, a blemish to be rid of. They were relegated to the fringes of society in the expectation that they would be repatriated or die out. The early Chinese were excluded from political discourse and had no part in forming the blueprint for the nation.

“Contemporary New Zealand has an image of itself as an egalitarian, fair and classless society. It sees the new Chinese arrivals as too brash, too privileged and lacking commitment to this country. The Chinese find themselves accused of failing to display New Zealand cultural values, although no one can convincingly define what these are. The paradox is that the Chinese have always been particularly visible to mainstream New Zealanders, yet their real features have remained indistinct.

“Since the early 1990s, New Zealand society has witnessed the revival of waves of racism against the Chinese, especially new immigrants. While the new Chinese arrivals understandably felt surprised and hurt, it was the old settlers’ community that was most badly shaken. To them it was like being treated as a gate-crasher in one’s own home. The Chinese New Zealanders were accustomed to being labelled ‘the model minority’, and considered themselves accepted and respected by their fellow Pakeha and Maori New Zealanders. With the arrival of the ‘new Asians’ (as the new Chinese migrants are commonly called), the Chinese New Zealanders, many of them third- or fourth generation Kiwis, suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of racism. The thin veil of racial tolerance and social harmony has disappeared, and the ugly truth is that the Chinese remain vulnerable as a visible ethnic minority. The previous legislative discrimination described in this book might be gone, but much of the social stigma that comes with once being ‘undesirable aliens’ clearly persists. The physical features of black hair and yellow skin mark them apart and, no matter how many generations their families have been in the country, many non-Asian New Zealanders treat them as ‘foreign’.

“At the same time, there has been genuine puzzlement and much soulsearching among thinking New Zealanders at the prevalence of simplistic anti-immigration sloganeering. To those who grew up in the relaxed and comparatively tolerant years of the 1950s and 60s, when virulent anti-Chinese feelings were largely submerged, New Zealand’s strict policies of exclusion and discrimination against coloured immigrants were unknown or forgotten chapters of the past. Many have asked themselves how such intolerance could have become rampant in a purportedly egalitarian country where the concept of the ‘level playing-field’ was considered sacred.

“The unwillingness to admit the Chinese as part of the nation’s legitimate history, and future, indicates New Zealand’s persistent indulgence in an anachronistic dream, still imagining that it is a European instead of an Asian & Pacific nation. I believe that the process of finding out who the Chinese are, and where they should fit within the New Zealand cultural and ethnic mosaic, will greatly contribute to the nation’s self-knowledge and foster the positive development of New Zealand’s own national identity.”

In 2002 the government formally apologised to Chinese for past (legal) wrongs,

“In the late nineteenth century, the New Zealand Parliament passed discriminatory laws against Chinese seeking to enter New Zealand. The Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881 imposed a poll tax of ten pounds per Chinese person and restricted the numbers able to enter the country to one person per ten tonnes of ship cargo. In 1896 the tax was lifted to one hundred pounds per person and there were further restrictions on the numbers of Chinese able to enter New Zealand.

No other ethnic group was subjected to such restrictions or to a poll tax. Other legislative initiatives also singled out the Chinese.

* In 1908, Chinese people had to put a thumbprint on their Certificates of Registration before leaving the country - no other ethnic group had to leave thumbprints.
* Chinese people were deprived of their right to naturalisation in 1908 and this was not rescinded until 1951. No other ethnic group was deprived of this right.
* A reading test in English was introduced - other immigrants had only a writing test in their own language.
* Even in 1935 when entry permits were introduced after a suspension of 15 years for reunification of family and partners of Chinese people, they were severely restricted.

There were those who spoke against the passing of the poll tax legislation. They included journalists, members of the House of Representatives, and members of the Legislative Council. Quotes from these people are on the displays here tonight. Chinese people organised petitions against the poll tax, and one backed by the great majority of Chinese residents was sent to the King via the Governor-General.

Many Chinese suffered the indignity of the poll tax and the other restrictions. Arrivals in the port of Wellington between 1888 to 1930 numbered around 2100 people. In total, the estimated number who paid the poll tax between 1882 and 1930 was 4,500. The tax was not abolished until 1944. At that time, the Minister of Finance, Walter Nash referred to the “removing of the blot on our legislation” and affirmed that the government would not in future countenance any discrimination against Chinese people in New Zealand.”

Of course prejudice and discrimination do not magically go away because a government takes some formal stance.