New Zealand has this in spades too, and it's widely accepted (by anyone either mildly informed (or not racist)) and by definitely shown overwhelmingly by academics. Colonisation lead to disempowerment and disenfranchisement for Māori, their lands were taken often by force or coercion, as well as their culture and customs even outlawed for the most part.
The resulting impacts are shown statistically with Māori overrepresented in crime, health, economic etc statistics.
It seems to be a recurring theme for any group of people who have been marginalised by another.
New Zealand is one of the best countries in how they immerse themselves into the culture of their indigenous people and they have extensive programs to equalize the racial imbalances in the country and yet, you’re absolutely correct they still have an issue with institutionalized racism. If one of the best socially progressive countries struggles with it, then you can only imagine how bad it is in the US when we don’t even recognize the problem
New Zealand is one of the best countries in how they immerse themselves into the culture of their indigenous people
The government tries, but we have way too many people that openly refuse to even be assoicated with Maori culture. We even had someone complain to Air NZ (our airline) for greeting them with Kia Ora (Maori for hello) because "I'm not Maori". Heck, people openly go on the radio to complain that the actual Maori pronunciation of their hometown is wrong because "I grew up there, I know how it's pronounced".
Short rant over. It is good though that the issues are recognised, especially more recently. Many people here still try to deny racism existing, but we have a large number, thankfully in media and politics as well, that talk about the issues and keep people aware.
All through Uni we had 19-20 year olds doing the same thing. "It's pronounced Towel-po" or "I come from Toke-a-row-a". The worst one was the Pizza lady that tried to tell me that my street name in Wellington was "Arrow Street, not Aro street". The real stinger was when she says "No no, you turn of Te Aro Street (pronounced perfectly) and down Arrow Street".
I can't roll an R and I've struggled my entire life. I somehow managd to do two years of Spanish in High School and my rolled R's sound more like Klingon or phlegm caught in my throat.
As long as there are culturally and morally cognizant individuals such as yourself I’m sure that despite the ignorant hostility present in most developed countries that you’ll strive towards inclusivity and community. ❤️☮️
I agree, but you have to realise that a lot of Maori and Polynesians even the large Chinese population aren’t open to other cultures either, I’m Polynesian and a lot of my family and Maori I know literally HATE the Chinese, they’re basically the new “Jews” because they’re ramping up cost of living and house prices. I know a lot of Maori who hate whites and a lot of whites who hate Maori etc. it’s not just an issue with Maori culture as you’ve claimed. You should see the hatred between Tongans and Samoans, my partner is half of both those cultures, her family even calls her “Tongan pig”. Racism isn’t just exclusive to Maori. I know what you’re trying to say, but I just thought I’d add on :)
Just asking them to pronounce names correctly. They can ask for a croissant at the cafe but when it comes to the name of a town, all of sudden it's too difficult to say a word that isn't English.
After being told how to correctly pronounce Thames, I didn't say "I'm not English, I can pronounce it like James". I have nothing against people that genuinely weren't aware of the correct pronounciation, but the ones that refuse to even try I have issues with.
I spent a lot of time on the South Island, and I heard a lot of racist comments. People told me I was lucky that the indigenous people of North America we're mostly killed off so we don't have to deal with them.
I mean only comparatively is NZ good, which isn't saying a lot. Casual racism is still common, a lot of things we do are just tokenism. The amount of money given as reparation is pitiful. We're getting better but yeah.
I just left a vacation in Hawaii and yeah compared to how native Hawaiians are treated therefor example, we're doing great. Verrry similar culture to Māori too (Polynesian ancestry).
Heck, seeing how Aboriginals in Australia, or Native Americans are treated, us Maori get it pretty good. Which is saying something considering how bad it still is.
Yeah totally. I mean you were supposed to have all the things promised in the treaty, you should have had equal power of government, which clearly was a lie.
Personally I'm quite fair skinned, so most just assume I'm white. The racism I tend to recieve is from other Maori people giving me shit because they think I'm some white guy trying to appropriate their culture or they refer to me as a 'plastic Maori' (just pretending to be brown). But my wife gets it a lot. We live in a wealthier neighbourhood, and make a decent living, so are by no means poor.
When my wife first went to the doctor's office here, the receptionist ushered her over to let her know that this office wasn't subsidised so she may want to go somewhere else. When my wife said that was fine, the receptionist then told her that they didn't accept community services cards here, and gave her a brochure for places that did take them.
At her work, she is the Service Manager for a soical work home. I'm not sure what the terminology is, but they look after people, mainly teens, who have had issues at home and legally cannot stay at home any more (usually something to do with abuse or drugs etc). She's had mutliple occassions where she will show up to a new doctor, therapist, or other third party service, and the staff there assume she is the client. That one is likely more because of her age though, as most of her staff are much older than her.
Besides that, it's the small stuff. Like retail staff following us around stores. This one stands out more recently as white friends always bring it up when shopping with us, like "That guy is definitely following you, wth" etc. It isn't something they had experienced before so they were quite dumbfounded. "Random" bag checks when leaving stores, or "random" security checks at airports (these happen to my brother a lot. When we went to Australia a couple years ago, he was randomly checked at the NZ airport and AUS airport going both ways.)
But as I said at the start, it doesn't happen to 'me' so much, but I see it with the people around me a fair bit.
Fair skinned half-cast Samoan in NZ too and my story is pretty much the same as yours. There's a sort of weird disconnect where a lot of my islander friends don't treat me the same as their other friends because I speak a little bit more proper, have a little bit of a higher education or am slightly better off than them. Yet I've been followed around stores, constantly got the "Wait, you're in this class?!" in school and have watched a middle-aged white lady threaten my mum, saying she'll call the police because our car had broken down and parked her in. I have never truly felt marginalised in my life and I'm very thankful because so many people have it much worse, but there are moments where you're just like "man this wouldn't happen if I was white".
I think these stories are interesting and am grateful to have read. I feel like PoC should be trying to help one another out, instead of playing the "Who has it worse" game. What makes it more messed up is that through history, your ancestors was there first, yet you're the stranger, or who doesn't belong. I get pissed reading about the apartheid and such. People whose families have been there for centuries, all of a sudden, don't "belong" or seen as trouble, while the irony is those who colonized were the ones starting it.
It's a different perspective than mine since I'm just an average black descendant of slaves in the US, so it's not a history I can identify but can relate to. Kinda also why I feel like many who suffer for being a minority in anything should be able to relate and be more understanding than hate.
Curious how you think reparation hand outs are going to fix the problem?
Most of the money is handed to upper tier Maori institutions that seem very keen to not pass the funding down, so the imbalance of the lower socioeconomic issues doesn’t seem to be fixed.
I’d like to see more funding into areas to improve overall standards, and funding to improving communities. And less of a focus on high government payouts or reducing statistics by means of ‘just don’t charge them if they’re Maori’
Yeah possibly funding directly to those individuals of Maori heritage would work better. I guess the iwi system works against Maori in that regard, NZ government assumes that all iwi work together as one and would share, but yeah I've heard some stories of how they don't, that's for sure.
I think the reparations are fair, and did you know the total spent on them for all time is less than 10% of the governments average yearly budget, pretty pitiful,
I think they're fair because land was literally taken from Maori, and that directly equates to dollars. Not really fair to say, oh we're using your wealth to help cure issues that are shown to be caused either directly or indirectly by us taking that wealth in the first place. You're welcome.
Literally stolen land, either by force or legislative manipulation. The total reparations paid over all time amount to less than 10% of the governments average yearly budget.
And the Treaty was not honored, that's the issue. That was what was claimed to be the point of the Treaty, but in reality for various reasons it was more of a trick, I suppose you'd call it, to placate Maori.
They only started teaching the truth about it in NZ school in like the last 10 years so fair enough, I only got to understand it better because of a uni paper
How native Hawaiians were treated by people or institutionally?
In my experience haoles were very respectful of Hawaiians, their culture, & the islands. Conversely, it wasn’t uncommon to see islanders dumping trash in the ocean or along a trail, but no one would dare say anything cause it’s their island. Though fear played into that as well.
My friend, are you aware of the entire history of the Dawn Raids?
The Dawn Raids were specifically targeted towards Pasifikaand specifically ignored European overstayers. It was a targeted crackdown on Pasifika individuals and didn't actually target the largest amount of overstayers.It was massively a race issue and the actions of the New Zealand police are unforgivable.
Sure, but by the standard of the British empire we treated our natives well. We traded and intermarried with them, didn't hunt them for sport (looking at you, Aussie), and we didnt give them smallpox blankets (USA! USA!).
(by anyone either mildly informed (or not racist))
There's also the common mistake to think that racism is an "all or nothing" thing. Many people have some minor prejudices against other people in one form or another. There doesn't even always have to be a bad intention behind it, often it's just a lack of knowledge. But this can be treated.
It's important to adress stuff like this because often when this topic comes up people react with "racist, me?? Impossible, I'm not a KKK member!" and then completely lock up. Instead of entering a respectful discussion about how they feel and think.
Yeah that's a good point. Sounds sort of similar to positive racism, not sure if there's another name. Well I guess that'd be one type of that subtle sort of racism you mention that people often forget.
But examples being white knighting for an individual or group, as if they are incapable of doing so for themselves (Twitter is great for witnessing that). Or overly praising or supporting something just because it came from someone in a minority, or different cultural or racial group to your own. (As opposed to treating it as an equal, for example holding the movie to the same standards as others in the genre, not just calling it a masterpiece or being afraid to criticise it in any way etc.).
Yeah, I studied this shit in the Pacific. There’s absolutely no way a Samoan-Tongan on New Zealand is unaware of this. Literally zero chance.
Somewhere else in this thread, someone pointed out that the comment is fake, which seems like the most reasonable possibility. That or this is a case of r/asablackman. Alt-right goons love to string ethnicities or other identities that sound funny to them together to make points and mock what they don’t understand (e.g., “hur, I’m not white, I’m a pansexual homeless Eskimo, how dare you, dur.”). They think it’s all just stuff nobody understands, so no one can call them out.
I can absolutely see some teenaged edgelord thinking that because he can’t find Tonga and Samoa on a map, nobody else can, so it’s a good identity to hide behind.
You’re actually just going to say that people who don’t acknowledge it as racism are racist? Lmao. I don’t understand why you call the treaty of waitangi racist, it was originally an agreement between the Maori and the european, the european happened to flourish in New Zealand while Maori still lived a certain lifestyle at war with each other, they hadn’t been exposed to a european system requiring money and corporations before so I’m not sure how that’s racist?
You claim that Maori are incarcerated more and have more health issues and imply that that’s because of racism? Could the issue be that Maori tend to base their social gatherings a lot more on good food and alcohol? And Maori are more inclined to join gangs therefore commit crimes? These are truly unfortunate things but as someone who has lived through this I wouldn’t say it’s because my white overlords are keeping me down, I’d just say it’s because we haven’t fully adapted to a european system yet.. not because it’s racist.. if anything to me it kinda implies immigration and cross cultural countries are hard to implement fairly?
Fair points.
Also though who's to say the European system is better?
That's why it's fucked, Europeans just assumed they were superior. Maybe we would all be better off if we adopted you know some European inventions, but still respected the environment like kaitiakitangi, respected each other and our ancestors, we're more communal.
I mean, in an ideal world we would have taken the best from both cultures and worked together. But it seems like the Europeans took advantage, and racist things began to seep into peoples attitudes, to this day. That'd what most people are trying to stop. Stereotypes and biases and all.
Not me, I’m not sure what system is superior tbh so that’s true.
Oh no, I definitely agree with everything you’ve just said that’s a very fair way to look at it. That’d definitely be an ideal world, I think you are right though racism does exist too, it’s sad to see that’s the world we live in
Colonization turned their nation from a bunch of straw huts to a first world country with electricity, running water, internet, modern medicine and everything else you take for granted today. But of course the big bad white man ruined everything.
For all of history, the weaklings that lost in a conquest have been treated far worse than they are in the modern day. Give me a break.
The amenities you mentioned aren't even the issue. It's bullshit like what you spout where you view a race as inferior for having differing views on production, consumption, social status, spirituality etc. that is the problem. It's that mentality that led to the enslavement, murder and invasion of groups of people.
Two different cultures working together doesn't involve military force, violence and confiscation of resources to the benefit of one side.
And fuck off with your comparatively better bullshit, getting kicked in the balls is better than being stabbed in the chest, right, how about just not being attacked at all.
You're coming across as straight racist and I have no desire to have anything to do with someone racist.
So you couldn't actually refute anything I said, and thus unsurprisingly resort to cultural relativism bullshit and "racistracistracistracist" as if that constitutes an argument.
If you think the world would be better off without all of those innovations, feel free to live off the land in some deserted area without the burdens of modern civilization up until the ripe old age of 35.
That's your only argument, that if some people didn't conquer some other people, we could never have shared any inventions.
You're really dimly trying to justify your superiority over a group of people. Look where we are, we're mostly all going to die of starvation or from fucking up the environment in the next 70 years anyway. Boy we're so advanced and sublime.
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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '19
New Zealand has this in spades too, and it's widely accepted (by anyone either mildly informed (or not racist)) and by definitely shown overwhelmingly by academics. Colonisation lead to disempowerment and disenfranchisement for Māori, their lands were taken often by force or coercion, as well as their culture and customs even outlawed for the most part.
The resulting impacts are shown statistically with Māori overrepresented in crime, health, economic etc statistics.
It seems to be a recurring theme for any group of people who have been marginalised by another.