Muse: Indecision '11: Fighting the Grey Peril
51 Responses
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I'd prescribe an enforced watching of Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino for Mr Dunlop - he could choose his own ending.
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Also recommended viewing for Mr Dunlop is Chinks, Coconuts and Currymunchers. Mind you, model minoritarians aren't much better either.
And where do old-genners like myself fit into his world view?
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<i>Also recommended viewing for Mr Dunlop is Chinks, Coconuts and Currymunchers. Mind you, model minoritarians aren’t much better either.</q>
Or a double bill of Rosanne Liang's Banana in A Nutshell and My Wedding and Other Secrets (the local rom-com this year that didn't suck a duck). This is someone who's actually had to think about - and live - what "intergration" really means, and has done so with more grace and insight in two films than Grey Power have managed in their worthless collective existence.
And where do old-genners like myself fit into his world view?
Simple answer: You don't. Neither does Dunedin mayor Peter Chin, whose family was here before my Irish ancestors stumbled off the boat and threw up.
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Because there is a PTerry quote for every occasion: "My arse has been my arse for a very long time. I just don't have to listen to what it says."
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You know, reading the synopsis of Logan's Run makes me immediately leap to things like Children of the Corn and The Tribe and this kid's book I read when I was, you know, a kid, about a disease that causes premature aging and death (not progenia - it was high contagious and killed quickly), and it all makes me want to pat old people on the head and say, "It's okay. Young people aren't that scary."
Then again, considering that one of the big red warning signs for civil unrest is a high proportion of educated and unemployed young people, maybe they are.
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And my suggestion of counter-tactics still stands.
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Personally, I would prefer to see a little more tolerance for some of these older folks who haven't been brought up in our more enlightened times. Sure, some of their fears and concerns seem silly and maybe racist to our generation, but they shouldn't be discounted or ridiculed like that.
They are from a different time (pre-Boomers) and they are in the minority and they won't be around for too much longer. If they were my grandparents I'd be well pissed-off at you guys' attitudes.
Fair enough, younger people with actively racist ideas and actions need to be nipped in the bud, but these older folks are expressing their personal opinions, not taking up cudgels against asians. Sticks & stones, an' all that.Just sayin'.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Sure, some of their fears and concerns seem silly and maybe racist to our generation, but they shouldn’t be discounted or ridiculed like that.
With all due respect, Stewart, when do we stop giving elder xenophobia a pass? One of the more shameful landmarks in our electoral history was the day in 1952 Chinese - some of whom had been in this country for almost a century - were no longer classed as "race aliens" and allowed to become citizens and vote. The explicitly racist poll tax was not abolished until 1944, eight years after Chinese were deigned fit to receive old age pensions.
Think about that on Saturday, will you?
And you know what, if people like Mr. Dunlop are so fucking threatened by people speaking Mandarin and shop signs in Hangul, perhaps they're they ones who need to "assimilate" and take a night class. And when Grey Power is an influential enough lobby group politicians feel obliged to ritually kiss arse every three years, I'm not willing to be so indulgent of ill-informed racism.
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Islander, in reply to
+1 e hoa,
My mother - who is part Maori - has had this uphill battle with the Scots side of the family (NOT from her own mother may I add! Who was Orcadian & ferociously on the side of her husband's people = Kai Tahu,)
There are family olds who have these relict prejudices - but they are the same olds who stood vigil during the Gloria King affair in Oamaru.
Craig - you are Northern & while I appreciate some of what you are writing, you just dont have any fucking idea about how matters are in the far South-
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Craig – you are Northern & while I appreciate some of what you are writing, you just dont have any fucking idea about how matters are in the far South-
I don’t know where that came from. I’d just rather people like Dunlop shove their “I’m fifth generation so my ignorant racist twatcockery should be taken seriously” nonsense. Well, no – an ignoramus with pedigree is still an ignoramus. And folks who like to hide their bigotry in a family tree, need a reality check. But I guess history is as inconvenient to the bigot as any other fact-based form of knowledge.
And when it comes to contributing shit to this country, I’ll put Peter Chin or Meng Foon well above Des Dunlop or Grey Power any day of the week.
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Islander, in reply to
Kindly note I was supporting Stewart’s comment – and, you dont know how things were – and are- between Kai Tahu & Chinese immigrants (from the the 1860s for goodness’sake) in the South-not to mention between us, Chinese immigrants, and Scots immigrants from a similar time.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Well, enlighten me. I'm perfectly happy to accept I don't enjoy expertise I never pretended to in the first place.
But with all due and sincere respect to Stewart, I'm not going to give ill-informed bigots indulgence use they're old; especially when they're operating under the banner of an inexplicably influential lobby group. Not least because it's pretty insulting to people of any age who manage think through, and out of, bigotry. Grey Power deserves to be mocked, and if they want my respect they can earn it by not being hateful trolls.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Personally, I would prefer to see a little more tolerance for some of these older folks who haven’t been brought up in our more enlightened times.
Des Dunlop is 71. He’d have started school at around the end of WW2. Compared to, say, former Whitlam Government Minister Tom Uren, or my own late uncle, both of whom were systematically mistreated as prisoners of the Japanese, but who lived to more than welcome their own Japanese grandchildren-in-law, there's no generational excuse for his bigotry.
If Dunlop requires the kind of care that an old folks’ home provides in his remaining years he’ll receive a salutary lesson in how vital immigration is to this country.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Des Dunlop is 71. He’d have started school at around the end of WW2. Compared to, say, former Whitlam Government Minister Tom Uren, or my own late uncle, both of whom were systematically mistreated as prisoners of the Japanese, but who lived to more than welcome their own Japanese grandchildren-in-law, there’s no generational excuse for his bigotry.
Yes. One of the most awesome-ghastly racist slap downs I ever heard was an acquaintance of mine who replied to a nasty, obscenity-flecked anti-Japanese tirade by pointing out that 1) he was Malay Chinese and 2) The Sook Ching Massacre didn't exactly engender much pro-Japanese sentiment among Singapore's Chinese community.
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Craig, I think it's great to call racism. I don't think it's great to call age. Isms of all varieties have been taught to children for generations and are taught today, by their parents and carers, teachers and mentors, and the various media of communication. Until an -ism is challenged it is often unconscious. In my personal opinion I think the best thing that has ever happened to Auckland in my lifetime is the growing multi-culturism. But I do not think it right to imply that just because there are numbers of elderly (of all races) who express rascist ideas, that such behaviour is an essential characteristic of any particular age group.
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merc, in reply to
In my personal opinion I think the best thing that has ever happened to Auckland in my lifetime is the growing multi-culturism.
Me too.
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As they say "My great grandad didn't cross 20000 miles of ocean in a leaky boat to see this country overrun by immigrants!"
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
But I do not think it right to imply that just because there are numbers of elderly (of all races) who express rascist ideas, that such behaviour is an essential characteristic of any particular age group.
Oh, that's a perfectly fair point - it will be a fair few years before the repugnant Kyle Chapman is drawing a pension. And I live with a 66 year-old white male who finds Grey Power and Mr Dunlop's anti-"Asian" bigotry repugnant. There are many things that come with the years. I don't accept that ignorance and racism is among them.
I hope my satirical barbs were squarely aimed at one repulsive individual, and an inexplicably influential lobby group that purports to speak for those "50 and over" whose contribution to debate over the future of Auckland is the same-old same-old Yellow Peril crap in a new box. If I was Keith Ng, I would have offered detailed, point by point fact-fu on the outright falsehoods in Grey Power's submission. [sarcasm]You know, he's one of "those people" who is really good at numbers. [/sarcasm] Impertinent snark is more my skill-set.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
As they say “My great grandad didn’t cross 20000 miles of ocean in a leaky boat to see this country overrun by immigrants!”
Can I haz that on T-shirt plz?
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Hebe, in reply to
an inexplicably influential lobby group that purports to speak for those "50 and over"
Fuck, do they? I'm 51. Those people have been life-long bigots and "all right for some" types who think that the patina of age gives their vile opinions some credibility. I plan to stay a human until I die.
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Chinese tend to vote National so they should be welcomed.
That said, I don’t see why predominantly european countries should ever voluntarily agree to become minorities. The Dalai Lama is hardly going to agree it’s a good idea to allow in greater numbers of Han Chinese, for the simple reason the Tibetan culture will be marginalised. Europeans should also look to protect their culture by managing immigration carefully to ensure integration rather than displacement of the host culture(s).
Also, I doubt that the Chinese are likely to look kindly on welfare & treaty payments :)
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Chinese tend to vote National so they should be welcomed.
I'd like to see some empirical evidence of that, personally.
Europeans should also look to protect their culture by managing immigration carefully to ensure integration rather than displacement of the host culture(s).
And this is where the neo-Yellow Peril argument almost becomes too absurd to be offensive. Which "European" culture are we protecting from the Barbarian horde? I don't see how anyone with even the most superficial grasp of New Zealand's cultural and social history could confuse the place for Little England on the South Pacific. The reality is much more complex and interesting.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Also, I doubt that the Chinese are likely to look kindly on welfare & treaty payments :)
Re. welfare, a visit to Mangere Bridge or Upper Riccarton would likely demonstrate that the NZ end of the Chinese diaspora is a little more nuanced than your stereotyped view. And if there's any truth in the stories of Chinese money bankrolling Iwi enterprises, you're a bit late to the party on the treaty settlements thing.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Chinese tend to vote National so they should be welcomed.
If anything, they're splintered across the political spectrum, just like modern Maoridom.
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Tom Beard, in reply to
Personally, I would prefer to see a little more tolerance for some of these older folks who haven't been brought up in our more enlightened times.
Sorry, I don't buy that. My father is older than Des, brought up English in a time when there was still an Empire and racism and other prejudices were assumed to be common sense. Not only is he not a bigot, he brought me up by taking me on HART anti-Tour marches and instilled in me the importance of fighting for social justice in all its forms.
Generational cultural pressure and the values taught in childhood are powerful, but they're never an excuse for vileness, and they are not insurmountable unless they are constantly reinforced and allowed to go unchallenged. That generation lived through WWII, the Cold War, the sexual revolution and several economic booms and busts; they learned how to deal with television, mobile phones and the Internet. They should be able to learn to treat people with a different language and skin colour as human beings.
If they were my grandparents I'd be well pissed-off at you guys' attitudes.
If they were my grandparents, I'd be well pissed-off at their attitudes.
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