So far as I know, Afrikaaners didn’t have special rights under apartheid – white people did. It was racially defined.

“The American Confederates could be seen as an iwi”

Don’t be silly.

“Sam Buchanan at 4.27 accused me of being obsessed with race because I responded to his labelling as a racist Don Brash, the politician who called for one law for all.”

No I didn’t.

I did say that there was a subtle racism in Brash’s presumption that ‘one law for all’ meant a law founded on European culture, and I thinkl there are similar assumptions in much of his view of how society should operate.

Though Buchanan called Brash a racist in his earlier post, he now denies the debate around the Brash comments are a race issue. Bit of contradiction here, Sam. And if I have an obsession it is with the unfair and untrue depiction of Brash as a racist.

In earlier postings Buchanan and I discussed the concept classifying as Maori people who have any Maori ancestors whatsoever (and I guess this could soon be as little as one one-hundred and twenty-eighth, or seven generations back). I compared this to the infamous “one drop” policies of the slave-owning Confederate states and apartheid-era South Africa, which meant that the merest smidgen of Coloured or black ancestry (“blood”) meant you were Coloured or black.

In a 3.48 post, Sam Buchanan said it was the disadvantaging of a race that was racism, not how the race was identified, as in the one-drop rule.

Are Maori disadvantaged? They may be behind in economic development and in various Western measures such as university attendance and criminal offences. But they are not legally disadvantaged, and many Maori leaders seem to want Maori to be a minority advantaged over the rest of society. Advantages either partly received or sought include ownership of what have previously been Crown assets, open access to university, special prison and justice systems, even a separate political system within NZ.

As for the final Buchanan assertion that these issues are based on cultures and iwi but not race, you could similarly argue the Afrikaaner special rights under apartheid were a cultural issue rather than a race one, or even an iwi one, as Afrikaaners are part of the European race, and not the whole of it. They also had and have a separate culture from the English-speaking South Africans, in religion, language, and in many customs.

Afrikaaners were and are an African iwi. The American Confederates could be seen as an iwi, too, one that fought with the bigger, American iwi.

* fastest mass extinct in human history
http://www.greens.org.nz/node/17412

Travel overseas at the age of thirty confirmed and emphasised for me that it is New Zealand and its experience and traditions, Maori and Pakeha, that is in my bones; and that there is no other part of the globe in which I would want to live or could live with the same sense of belonging and enrichment.

Among the subsequent experiences that have sharpened that feeling for me are being informed by members of the Aahi Kaa group that I was in fact a tau iwi or foreigner in this land; and, just as offensively, listening to Cabinet Minister Doug Graham say that Maori people had spiritual feelings for lakes, mountains and rivers, and that Pakeha people did not. Doug Graham might not have those feelings: but I and my family have them, as have the thousands of other Pakeha people I have encountered in four decades of walking, tramping and camping on this beautiful land; and doing their best to preserve the contours and the character of Papa-tua-nuku from a variety of commercial interests which have sought to destroy that character by ill-considered development projects.
http://sof.wellington.net.nz/origins.htm

The role of Kotare in Te Tiriti o Waitangi protest
Kotare is a Pakeha dominated organisation. In our country this means that according to a treaty
of agreement made between the Crown and tangata whenua leadership (first people of the
land) we have a right to live within the country providing we acknowledge the independent
sovereignty of the tangata whenua.

ps green members voted her in!

Does not tino rangitiratanga cover the rohe of Iwi at the time of signing of the treaty and therefore foreshore seabed and Uncle Tom Codley? Please explain.

How are Māori affected by climate change compared to other communities?

The reliance of Māori on the environment as both a spiritual and economic resource makes them more vulnerable and potentially less adaptable to climate change.
(what about frigg*n farmers?)
http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/emissions-trading-scheme/questions-and-answers.html#about

No.

“And you must concede “disadvantaged” is to a far lesser degree than the disadvantage of slaves who were bought and sold as property and denied civil rights.”

Hardly a concession given this is startlingly obvious. But so what?

“However, this obsession with race is unhealthy. ”

Yes – and you seem obsessed with it – going on about Maori being ‘diluted’ and so on. As I pointed out above, what is being called a ‘race’ issue is not. It is iwi that are being compensated by the ‘Treaty settlement’ process, not a race. In discussions about legal systems et al, we are talking about cultures, not races.

Was this a typo for “I DON’T think Brash was racist”???

On your 3.48 post, I agree that disadvantaging one race was racist, but how you defined the race was an element of this racism, and it is in this that special interest rises for NZ. Here I concede it is the disadvantaged race that is making the one-drop definition. And you must concede “disadvantaged” is to a far lesser degree than the disadvantage of slaves who were bought and sold as property and denied civil rights.

However, this obsession with race is unhealthy. Throughout history it has led to calamity. Where there has been continued mingling the problem disappears. Even in India, which seems to have frozen various races into castes, the radce problem thus continues, with particular savagery to the bottom racial-and-now-social caste.

Brash’s position of one law for all seems the antithesis of this.

If not, then it was okay and non-racist for the legal-slavery southern states of the Confederacy too, to have the one-drop rule. Any smidgen of black ancestry and you were black with all the disadvantages that implied. Similarly in apartheid-era South Africa. New, black-dominated South Africa doesn’t like such racial stuff any more, if the country’s reaction to a suggested visit by a Maori rugby team is any indication.

Also there are practical difficulties as intermingling continues (which I am all for). Ngai Tahu has already had an embarrassment over a prominent contributor, perhaps even keeper, of the tribe’s stud book or whatever it calls the record in which logs tribal membership, proved himself not to have any Maori blood. How long can such genetic discrimination continue in practice?

“He just seemed to be the kind of guy who didn’t get out much and couldn’t quite handle the fact that the world had lots of cultures and opinions other han his own….”

I guess that’s why Don Brash married a Singaporean Chinese lady, and why he graduated from a leftist, Christian pacifist world view to one of free-market capitalism. Doesn’t sound much like your picture of someone who doesn’t get out much, Sam. I read where he corresponds regularly with world central-banking figures. Again, not much of a narrow life. Nor his career moving from kiwifruit farmer and running the kiwifruit export authority to being central banker to leader of the opposition.

Also Buchanan says: “I don’t think it occurred to him that ‘one law for all’ might mean we, for example, institute a marae-based justice system which applies to Pakeha and Maori and everybody else…”

Of course Maori had a very highly developed legal system, with case law, international reference, layers of court from basic to supreme, legal scholarship going back to Roman times, and sophisticated legal recording systems, such as for legal title. All without a written language. They had bloody great memories.

I’m sure other countries would be happy to set up legal exchange systems with a marae based justice system, such as extradition treaties and copyright recognition.

Of course no-one would think of a marae-based justice system for all as a plausible option to put before NZ voters. It would be almost as politically risky as suggesting we make slavery legal again, as it was in Maori days.

Actually I think Brash was racist – not particularly overtly or deliberately – he just seemed to be the kind of guy who didn’t get out much and couldn’t quite handle the fact that the world had lots of cultures and opinions other han his own. When he called for one law for all he was assuming that meant law designed from a Pakeha world view. I don’t think it occurred to him that ‘one law for all’ might mean we, for example, institute a marae-based justice system which applies to Pakeha and Maori and everybody else.

That statement doesn’t make Brash a racist. You can describe a race without being a racist. Is it racist to say that the Dutch are now the tallest people in Western Europe?

It’s fact that Maori are “diluted” if by this is meant intermingled with whites. You can say that Pakeha New Zealanders are also diluted. I know you wouldn’t regard such a statement about whites as racist, Toad, and why should you?

Is it racist to criticise judges for left-wing interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi? There is no criticism of their race – just of their politics.

Further on varying characteristics of races: While skin colour is merely pigmentation related to the various climatic needs to harvest Vitamin D from the sun — not too little nor too much — there is no doubt they aren’t the only characteristics that vary. Indigenous Bolivians function better than the rest of us at higher altitude. New Zealanders of Pacific Island descent excel in both codes of rugby. Whites suffer more from skin cancer, Polynesians and Maori more from diabetes. IQ tests internationally show Asians on average above other races. Is it racist to note these things?

For something more like racism read rants like Rawiri Taonui’s in the Christchurch Press. In the July 8 paper, this Canterbury University Maori studies lecturer makes extravagant statements such as “… Maori students on student loans subsidise rich white kids” and “fear of open entry (to universities) is the simple fear of Maori arriving”.

Taonui rants about “destruction of pre-contact wananga (schools), subjugation of tohunga (priests) and obliteration of te reo, then goes on for more than a thousand words about how Maori should have open access to Western education, the culture of Pakeha.

I bet the wananga of old wouldn’t have allowed pakeha they adopted into tribes to rant against the wananga entry standards.

Taonui talks of “asinine ahistorical anti-Maori commentators” and states that Maori will comprise 30 per cent of school children within a generation. By this, he takes the racist view that any Maori blood makes you Maori. This is the old “one drop” rule of the American slave states of the Confederacy and of racist-era South Africa. The truth is that Maori and pakeha continue to merge. It’s quite possible future New Zealanders will regard Maori as one of the historical races of their heritage, alongside Chinese, other Polynesians, British, etc.

Compared with Taonui, Brash is a pussy cat.

How on earth could even the most sickly liberal with a rampant case of guilty white syndrome describe what Brash said as being racist?

It is a statement of fact, the only people the treaty has failed are the 84% of people who do not claim to be of Maori decent, for the remaining 16% it is the never ending gravy train.

The sooner you and the rest of your commie mates embrace the idea of one rule for all and the sooner that sickly white liberals stop making excuses for Maori the sooner Maori will begin to make a positive contribution to New Zealand.