Yellow Peril: the identity game
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Is that the new Mel "but some of my best mates are Jewish" Gibson's new film?
yes Mel appears to have taken on the indigenous cause with his usual subtlety no doubt, but no it's a french film about how France made use of troops from the North African colonies, promising things like "freedom" and then, once the war was won of course, decided not to honour those promises. In particular, their military pensions were discontinued when those colonies became independent. Quelle irony. There's a bit of subtext about national identity.
the film's caused a bit of a stir and now Chirac is promising to remedy this.
I think there will always be aspects of experience that science will be unable to say much about which is why I've got time for the purely reflective reasoning of some of the post-structuralists such as Derrida and Baudrillard. But that area is getting smaller and smaller with the advent of brain scanning which can show the physiology of thought processes.
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Mmmmm! back to the original blog which was about
the word Asians being non specific as far as race or ethnicity is concerned.I couldn't agree more, and the same applies to European.I was born in the Mackenzie Country , I have never voted National and I have always filled in all official forms as New Zealander because that is what I am.
My 1966 Passport states that I was a British Subject
and New Zealand Citizen my current Passport simply states that I am a New Zealand Citizen. ergo I am a New Zealander. Q.E.D -
john, sure. but.... what about a somali refugee, in nzl for less than 10 years (assuming s/he could get a citizenship in that time), and bearing a passport?
new zealander?
many would say that s/he is not, even with that bit of paper.
so shouldn't the same rule apply to your passport?
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Here's the rub. If someone wants to believe in Tane or Krishna or Jesus Christ, that's just fine. But they can't then use that belief to justify political claims, like who belongs in this country.
That's a part of the ongoing process regarding the level of influence of the treaty on how the country is run.
There are countries where what you believe is very important politically - Israel, most Muslim states, and arguably, the USA.
Depending on who's talking, the treaty may well require us to give as much respect to Maori beliefs such as Manakura's as beliefs like Stephen's are given in Israel.
I personally don't believe we're in much danger of becoming a religious nation of any stripe, but as a nation we are in an ongoing conversation on where the line lies between polite acknowedgement that others have different spiritual/religious beliefs, and giving those beliefs the weight of law. -
I think there will always be aspects of experience that science will be unable to say much about which is why I've got time for the purely reflective reasoning of some of the post-structuralists such as Derrida and Baudrillard.
I'm deeply impressed that you were able to figure out what Derrida was even writing about. I've never been able to make it to the end of any of his sentences, let alone a whole paragraph.
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I'm deeply impressed ...
I can thank, or blame, my partner who has to spend a lot of her time reading such things and had the patience to work thru my hostility to that sort of thing.
But once you get past what seems to be deliberate obscurity there is some interesting stuff about language, power and the mind. Funnily enough it starts to sound remarkably like evolutionary psychology.
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Mmmmm! back to the original blog which was about
the word Asians being non specific as far as race or ethnicity is concerned.I couldn't agree more, and the same applies to European.I'm afraid that is not what the original blog was about John. 'Asian' may not be specific as an ethnic group, but it is broadly *accurate* as a pan-ethnic category that ultimately relates back to ethnicity. Several comments on this thread (and numerous less coherent and/or civilised emails to myself) are functioning under the mistaken impression that I object to the use of the 'Asian' category by Statistics NZ or the media, and that therefore I'm on common ground with 'Europeans' who don't want to be classified as 'Europeans'. This is not the case - I'm pleased and proud to be counted as an 'Asian' in the Census - just constantly aware that many non-'Asians' using the term use it incorrectly and for questionable and misleading purposes. So no, if you're a Pakeha who wrote in 'New Zealander' rather than Pakeha or just ticking 'European', I'm afraid you cannot count on my words to support you.
my current Passport simply states that I am a New Zealand Citizen. ergo I am a New Zealander. Q.E.D
What a coincidence, so am I! But the Census does not ask you to fill in your citizenship in the ethnicity question. It's quite heartwarming to see all the Pakeha here on this thread describing and affirming their national identity, but national identity is not actually ethnicity, and Pakeha ethnicity is not 'New Zealand' national identity. What does the reluctance to draw this distinction say? I mean, for you liberal Pakeha Public Address types, your specifically Pakeha ethnic traits (ie inherited from Europe and modified for New Zealand, such as speaking *English* as your mother tongue, having *Christmas*, dressing your schoolgirls in *tartan*, eating with *knives and forks*, promoting Humeian *empiricism* and various forms of *positivism*) are probably far less important to your sense of personal identity than your national identity as a New Zealander (apparently based on the psychology of landscape? Okay, we'll take it for argument's sake). Fine and dandy! No-one's telling you that your ethnicity has to be more important than your national identity, and no-one's forcing you to choose one over the other simply by asking a Census question - we have plenty of other opportunities to state and affirm our national identity. So why pretend one *is* the other? That's actually rather unfair to the rest of us.
Che: Why have you said that there isn't a 'name' for nationalism and national identity, as opposed to ethnicity? I don't understand. And haven't we been through this "kiwi" thing already? When Asians say it to each other, we are generally talking about Pakeha. Until the New Zealand white folk can agree that other people should just call them Pakeha, we can't use 'kiwi' amongst our minority communities to mean 'everyone'. Or we won't have a name for Pakeha. If you see what I mean.
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Damm, I was meant to re-affirm my ethnic identity in this topic? If only I could edit my posts!
National identity can become an ethnic group - at least according to my reading of the ethnicity definition used by Stats NZ (See bottom). Sure, it makes things a little confusing, but in a well designed questionaire one should be able to select multiple identities as most people do have multiple ethnic or other identities.
Otherwise what we are really saying is that ethnicity is always about things one cannot change, like skin colour, or geographic origin of one's ancestors - which to me seems like a overly restrictive definition of ethnicty and one that jars with a liberal perspective. Sure there are some ethnic identities that one can never belong to if not born into it, but there are some that one can chose to belong to, despite origin.
(refer to page one for Stat's definition)
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National identity can become an ethnic group - at least according to my reading of the ethnicity definition used by Stats NZ (See bottom). Sure, it makes things a little confusing, but in a well designed questionaire one should be able to select multiple identities as most people do have multiple ethnic or other identities.
That is certainly a fair point. Still, despite all the definition and invention of 'New Zealand' identity and/or ethnicity going on in this thread, it does still look, walk, smell, swim and quack like good ol' postcolonial Pakeha to me.
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That's right, I am a good ol' post-colonial pakeha, and as proud of it as a white middle-class male liberal can be.
Sure, ethnically, I am european - I tick that box on the census where it says ethnicity. However, on other forms, where its less clear what they're interested in, or why, I quite happily & validly tick New Zealander.
What I was querying was Manukura's qualifying specs for being indigenous, a different thing to ethnicity, I consider myself ethnically European, but I don't feel indigenous to there. Manukura doesn't feel indigenous to Hawaiiki or asia, but ethnically, there's no box to tick for one, and the other would be stretching it. My point for him was, it does matter who was there first.
Then again, I suppose the possums in the gully out back don't feel indigenous to Australia, & they've been around for more generations (if not years) than my people have. So I'd be classifed as indigenous to Europe and endemic to varying extents in the rest of the world - kind of like rats. -
it does still look, walk, smell, swim and quack like good ol' postcolonial Pakeha to me
Post-colonial? I didn't realise colonisation in Aotearoa was over, when did that happen? Maybe that was what all that horrendously loud fireworks in the vicinity of Mt Eden was about on Saturday night.
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No-one's telling you that your ethnicity has to be more important than your national identity, and no-one's forcing you to choose one over the other simply by asking a Census question - we have plenty of other opportunities to state and affirm our national identity. So why pretend one *is* the other? That's actually rather unfair to the rest of us.
The problem (for me) is that you can't state both. You are asked what your ethnic group is and there is nowhere to put what you identify as. I made a political statement I guess by ticking New Zealander. As I suggested in my post on page 5? they should allow room for people to express who they are in one question and what the colour of their skin is in another. What would the harm be?
They would get their nice table showing the skin colour (or shades of) of every bugger in NZ and then they could have a nice revealing graph showing what people identify as which I would be WAY, WAY more interested in. People could tick New Zealander if they were Korean, or New Zealand Korean if that's how they felt, or they could tick Korean if they didn't feel like either of the first two etc etc.
Lets make statistics fun!!!
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tze ming, what i was driving at is the uneasy collapsing of the two ideas. national identities always contain ethnic identities, but they are by their very definition not ethnicities.
nationality is a modern construct. one often imbibed with ethnicity to give it greater coherence for it's members, but a construct all the same. but ethnicity itself isn't a modern construct, it's been around far longer. it's an uneasy relationship for liberals, because they want to think they're not ethnic, but have to be to make their nation-states work.
so as you say, the census is asking for your ethnicity, not your nationality. but, if you're a national, you're likely to be a particular ethnicity, as you also say (i.e. 'kiwis' are pakeha. but new zealanders are also pakeha. but, nationals are also pakeha).
there's an interesting rider though, because if you accept that you are a member of a nation then you are also buying into being a member of the majority ethnicity. soooo... accepting citizenship means, accepting that you should be a particular ethnicity, because citizenship and nationality go hand in hand.
it's a weird, confusing little muddle.
i think what i'm trying to get across is that if you take up citizenship, you're automatically buying in to being a majority national. or, your children will be, when they're assimilated by the education system, TV, and popular culture, whether their parents like it or not.
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Just an interesting (to me) tangent... Some people have asserted that New Zealand is the sum total of their ethnic identity, and have said they feel no connection to their European ancestry.
So why is it that this only seems to be expressed by white kiwis; that is, the feeling that they're no longer part of the legacy that conceived them? I can't really think of any non-white race for whom a significant percentage wish to abandon their heritage, at least not without good reason. Perhaps south america...how long ago did the spanish colonise? Is it the lot of the primary colonisers that they lose their original identity in favour of contriving a new one?
Does that make any sense? Just somewhere along the line the question in my head moved from being "should new zealander be considered a new ethnicity?" to "what on earth did we do with our old ones?"
BTW Manakura, my gmail.com address is my name, without the space. Would be good to hear from you!
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But the Census does not ask you to fill in your citizenship in the ethnicity question.
Prior to the last census, I did not understand the difference between citizenship and ethnicity. I was one of those people who wondered why it was suggested that I call myself a "European" when I'd never been to Europe, and since my passport said I was a New Zealander, didn't that make me a New Zealander?
But then I started thinking about things. If there was a descendant of a, say, Chinese immigrant who'd come to New Zealand for the Otago goldrush (and let's assume that her whanau all married other Chinese New Zealanders), it would seem very obvious to me that even though she might be a third or forth generation New Zealander, that her ethnicity was still Asian.
And the same goes for me. I may be a fifth generation New Zealander, but my ancestors still came from Britain and Ireland, so therefore, I am ethnically European.
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Heather, I'm not sure if people are saying they feel no connection to their European ancestry, just that they feel more "New Zealand" than a vague term like "European". I can only really speak for myself though.
I have a fair knowledge of my ancestry back several generations thanks to my father compiling the family tree from hell (historians are a strange lot). In 2001 we even managed to find the exact houses where my great great grand parents lived in Glasgow where they worked in the docks building ruddy great ships. We also stayed with distant relatives in the Lakes District and located other spots where rellies lived.
All that is wonderful and I am proud of my ancestry and where I have come from. But I still remember that they all upped and left to travel in leaky boats for months around the world to a place they new nothing about to get away from the flammin place and to start a new life.
Anyway, regarding this Heather:
I can't really think of any non-white race for whom a significant percentage wish to abandon their heritage, at least not without good reason.
An example that sprang to mind when I read the quote above: My wife is Korean and she has cousins, uncles, aunts etc living in California. So she has a bit of a handle on issues facing Koreans in the US. According to her there is quite a firm divide there amongst Koreans who have recently gone to live in the US and those who have been there for a generation or more. There is quite a lot of hostility between them and my wife has even used the word "hate" to describe the two groups feelings towards one another. Many young Koreans in the US who are 2nd generation cannot speak Korean and really have no real idea about Korean society, culture, lifestyle etc. They don't feel Korean. I'm not qualified enough to talk any more on that issue but it's a rough fit to the argument.
One of the obvious reasons why it's more of a 'white' thing to say you are a NZer is that Europeans have come to NZ a fair while ago now. Other 'ethnic groups' have arrived in more recent times ie. 1950s onwards with many only arriving in the last 2 decades. In 100 years time when we have had several generations of Pacific Islanders, Asians, Africans... born in NZ and our population makeup is massively different ie. white NZers makeup much less than 50% of the population and other groups make up a higher percentage then I expect a NZer will simply be considered anybody who was born in NZ or who has been here long enough to think of themself as one.
Whether you consider yourself to be part of a 'new country' depends largely on how welcome the 'occupants' make you feel. Having spent 4 years in Korea it is something that was constantly on my mind. I used to wonder how long I would have to live there until I would feel as Korean as I feel a New Zealander. I speak a bit of Korean, I love Korean food, I cheered for them like a nutter during 2002 WC, I supported my two local professional sports teams hardout, I have Korean friends, Koreans were very friendly towards me and welcoming. All that adds up and after a while you start to even become more like those around you. But in the eys of a Korean I don't think I would ever be considered Korean simply because 99% of the population are ethnic Koreans so it would be too hard for them to overcome unless I won a gold medal for them at the Olympics or was the Superbowl MVP (check that guy out).
But the situation is a bit different in NZ. And give it 20 years and it might be a whole heap different.
If you read to here then you probably need a panadol and a lie down.
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Prior to the last census, I did not understand the difference between citizenship and ethnicity. I was one of those people who wondered why it was suggested that I call myself a "European" when I'd never been to Europe, and since my passport said I was a New Zealander, didn't that make me a New Zealander?
But then I started thinking about things. If there was a descendant of a, say, Chinese immigrant who'd come to New Zealand for the Otago goldrush (and let's assume that her whanau all married other Chinese New Zealanders), it would seem very obvious to me that even though she might be a third or forth generation New Zealander, that her ethnicity was still Asian.
And the same goes for me. I may be a fifth generation New Zealander, but my ancestors still came from Britain and Ireland, so therefore, I am ethnically European.
I agree with all that. But to throw a spanner in the works though if I may. My daughter is half korean, half European (or at least I hope she is or my wife has some explaining to do).
So what does she check in the box?
What about the those who are a combo, who are part African, part Chinese, part Scottish?, or 3 quarters Chinese and 1 quarter German...? etc etc
They tend to get told to pick whichever one they feel most strongly (or maybe two if it's your lucky day), but that contradicts the whole thing. Because if you are suddenly being asked to choose your ethnicity then I think it opens the way for you to choose "New Zealander" with Gay Abandon (assuming she was born here or migrated with her husband Roger Abandon a very long time ago).
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But to throw a spanner in the works though if I may. My daughter is half korean, half European (or at least I hope she is or my wife has some explaining to do).
So what does she check in the box?
I think you can tick as many boxes as you please. The notes attached to the table up top says:
"1. People were able to identify with more than one ethnic group, therefore percentages do not add up to 100."
so presumably you can acknowledge your whakapapa to your heart's content if you wish.
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Heather said:
So why is it that this only seems to be expressed by white kiwis; that is, the feeling that they're no longer part of the legacy that conceived them?
It's fitting you should pick Latin America as a comparison - this whole denial of 'legacy' seems very much a colonial settler nation thing. I think that deep in the heart of this "I am an ethnic NZer" thing is an insecurity over one's claim to belonging. And I say that as a Maori who is also Pakeha.
Back to the census, Sonal said:
I think you can tick as many boxes as you please.
I think that is the problem right there - the box. Clearly many/most people's identity matrix is much to complex to be reduced to small boxes that one can tick. Perhaps that section should be a very on very large box that you can fit, say, 500 words in? We could turn it into an essay competition and give out prizes.
Che said:
because if you accept that you are a member of a nation then you are also buying into being a member of the majority ethnicity.
Really? I must be misunderstanding you, but I can't see a lot of Maori agreeing to the premise that because they are NZ citizens then they are Pakeha. Many would point to the fact that although the Pakeha tried their very best to force just that assimilation for nigh on 100 years, most Maori still insist on being Maori, or Tuhoe, or Tainui etc.
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manakura said:
I can't see a lot of Maori agreeing to the premise that because they are NZ citizens then they are Pakeha. Many would point to the fact that although the Pakeha tried their very best to force just that assimilation
and that's the kicker, and why i recommended you read david pearson.
nzl operates this unique bicultural and multicultural blend you don't see in other liberal democracies. it stems partly from 1970s realisation that maori wouldn't assimilate, and partly from pragmatism (i.e. 'we have to find a way to get on').
so the multicultural idea, that all recent migrants assimilate as part of their social contract ('if you come live here, be as ethnic as you want, but your children will assimilate') extends to one part of the non-pakeha citizen population.
meanwhile, the bicultural idea, that article two of the treaty will be upheld, operates independently, and only to maori.
distinctions between the two completely different types of 'minority management' often bleed into one another, and are confusing to anyone but experts.
but in shorthand? "maori welcome to remain distinct, anyone else better learn english and start drinking leon rouge"
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I think that deep in the heart of this "I am an ethnic NZer" thing is an insecurity over one's claim to belonging.
Spot on.
However, I don't think we should look to South American for analogies. On the one hand, the upper classes still claim their pure descent from Spanish antecedents as part of their cachet. On the other hand, South America is also where the lovely idea of La Raza Cosmica comes from. On a third hand they have a legacy of slavery and genocide that we don't have to deal with. It's a whole continent that's way too diverse to draw conclusions from.
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Che said 10 years residency for a Somali means he is a New Zealander based on my statement about what it says on my current passport.
My error, I left out the other part that is vital to this discussion , Place of Birth.Tse,your March 29 blog definition of Ethnicity stated:-
Okay, and one more time kids: the received definition of an 'ethnic group' from Michael E. Brown's 'Ethnic Conflict and International Security', p 4-5.
First, the group must have a name for itself. This is not trivial; a lack of a name reflects an insufficiently developed collective identity. Second, the people in the group must believe in a common ancestry[my emphasis]... Third, the members of the group must share historical memories... Fourth, the group must have a shared culture, generally based on a combination of language, religion, laws, customs, [etc]. Fifth, the group must feel attachment to a specific piece of territory, which it may or may not actually inhabit. Sixth and last, the people in the group have to think of themselves as a group in order to constitute an ethnic community; that is,they must have a sense of their common ethnicity. The group must be self-aware."
You have stated that you are happy to be classified as Asian. This simply means that you are from the continent of Asia one of the seven Continents (NZ & the Pacific have no continental classification, possibly because the Pacific was of no interest to the Geographers
who named the seven)Stretching from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and the North Pole to just below the equator, Asia is the largest continent containing many countries and ethnic groups. It seems to me that Asian fails your quoted definition above.
In spite of all that, you were born in New Zealand as I was, and you can call yourself what you choose, as I can, and get involved in discussions such as this one which you started. I think that is what makes New Zealand quite different to any other part of the world.
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John, thank you for taking the time to think about this, however I must again point out (as I've had to do every time I've popped up on this thread) that 'Asian' is not an ethnicity, but it *is* a pan-ethnic category that I am happy for my ethnicity to be placed within by Statistics NZ. 'Asian' is a group that has relevance to specific ethnicities that StatsNZ acknowledges and counts inside of it. 'Asian' is not a tick box on the Census: 'Chinese' and 'Indian' are. And yes, New Zealand is a very nice place, and a liberal democracy, like many other parts of the world.
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I can't really think of any non-white race for whom a significant percentage wish to abandon their heritage, at least not without good reason.
On this point, and Yamis' comments about 2nd generation Koreans who don't 'feel Korean' - I'd still doubt that they wouldn't put in 'Korean' on their Census forms. There are certainly plenty of diaspora Chinese in New Zealand who don't 'feel' Chinese, and who have no particular connection to China - probably as little connection as most Pakeha feel to Europe. It is in fact, directly comparable. But when asked, they'll never deny it.
One reason those people will never say they aren't Chinese, is because even their vestigial cultural practises that they place very little identity-emphasis on, and their physical appearance, are still marked as 'other'. This is something Pakeha have never had to deal with, and as meaningless these indicators of difference are for very assimilated minorities, to pretend like no-one's ever treated you differently and evilly for them would be a bit grating. This is why claiming 'New Zealand' ethnicity comes across as such a marker of white privilege.
A second reason is a linguistic ability to differentiate between Chinese as citizenship (ie of Mainland China), and Chinese as an ethnicity that goes anywhere and everywhere. In Chinese, there are different words for each. You can quite easily have no connection or interest in being zhongguoren (Chinese citizen), and, you know, hate China and try to destroy it, but always be huaren or huayi (ethnic Chinese, though not necessarily of the Han 'race', which is a whole other story).
Another reason they will not deny that they are ethnic Chinese is because they will sooo get it from their parents.
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Tse Ming Mok said:
But the Census does not ask you to fill in your citizenship in the ethnicity question. It's quite heartwarming to see all the Pakeha here on this thread describing and affirming their national identity, but national identity is not actually ethnicity, and Pakeha ethnicity is not 'New Zealand' national identity.
Err ... let's look at what the Census actually says, by way of tick boxes under the Ethnicity Question (Q11).
Samoan, Tongan, Niuean are all listed as ethnicities. Tokeleauan is provided as an example of an "other" ethnicity. Aren't these actually just citizenships? The ethnicity would be "Polynesian" (also encompassing Maori and Cook Isl. Maori) or "Pacific Peoples" (as eventually reported by Stats NZ). Yet their separation in the question implies they are separate ethnicities.
Members of this group, I suspect, would have as much, or more, in common in terms of "a combination of language, religion, laws and custom" - to quote ME Brown - as people with ancestors from one of the 30-odd(?) countries which make up Europe?
And before someone leaps in to point out the simply massive differences between, say, Samoa and Tonga ... let it be emphasized that Europe is a pretty diverse place too. By way of example, I don't understand the French language, or the French civil code, or the French attitude to food, or French foreign policy. I don't emphathize or associate with the French any more than any other subset of the human species. I suspect the same is true for 99% of "white/ish" NZers. And yet ... we're supposed to associate with this large, diverse, foreign continent?
I can't think of a better term than "New Zealander" to describe myself.
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