Posts by dc_red
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@Sasha
It's kind of useful if you don't wish to retain a childish belief that we're all exactly the same. Oh, and to measure inequality - which is why skepticism is correlated positively with the colour of one's neck.
All class.
No one has claimed, or suggested, "we're all exactly the same". Although that's perhaps a slightly healthier world view than that of Paul Henry. What I do claim is that people should be able to identify themselves as New Zealanders (and any other ethnicity) if they wish to do so, without being subjected to abuse from the likes of you.
Your categories tend to collapse under the weight of their own absurdity, anyway.
My son is both a New Zealander and a Canadian.
If his mother was, for want of a better term, a "white Canadian" (I have never in 7 years heard the term "European Canadian" in conversation or debate) he could in New Zealand presumably attain the sense of belonging unique to "Pakeha", which you deploy as a rough synonym for "European New Zealander".
If his mother was, say, a Japanese Canadian he would be a redneck if he didn't write in "Japanese", or at least "Asian", or perhaps "Eurasian" ... maybe in combination with "Canadian" too.
If his mother was an Aboriginal Canadian, you might tell him that's a "race" (sic), and he should write in his "real ethnicity", which could be Cree, Blackfoot, Ojibway, Squamish, etc. etc.
Or if he wrote in "Canadian" perhaps you'd remind him/me that that term originally meant "French Settler" and should not be used by him.
Whereas I'm happy for him to write in any group he belongs to. Which is, after all, what the question asks.
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@Sasha
You're confusing ethnicity and race.
The only race is the human race.
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@Sacha
Perhaps we need a bit longer so that it becomes obviously distinctive from the belonging of Maori New Zealanders, Indian New Zealanders, Samoan New Zealanders or Korean New Zealanders. Some of us Pakeha New Zealanders see it. How short-sighted or narcissistic must I be to leave off the first bit?
What good is done by compartmentalizing people in this way? I'd be more than happy for an "Indian New Zealander" like the GG to identify simply as a "New Zealander" if he wished to do so, and I suspect our sense of "belonging" is fairly similar.
Your 'logic' suggests that someone whose great-grandparents immigrated from Samoa or India, and someone whose grandparents immigrated from the amorphous mass known as "Europe" can never have the same sense of belonging to New Zealand.
What was that about short-sighted and narcissistic?
p.s., by some definitions "Pakeha" means "not Maori" and so does not distinguish between people in the way you think it does anyway.
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@TraceyMac
"New Zealander" was not listed as an ethnicity in the 2006 census. People who wished to identify as New Zealanders had to write that in by hand.
Here's a screen capture of the question here.
As I've noted before the question does not maintain or encourage some pure separation of 'ethnicity' and 'nationality'
Five of the tick boxes, and one of the other examples, arguably relate to one ethnicity = "Polynesian." These include two nationalities (Samoan, Tongan), and various types of New Zealand citizens (Maori, Cook Island Maori, Niuean, Tokelauan).
"Dutch" is also listed as an example, suggesting that "European" is more complicated and more diverse than a single ethnicity.
I've been to Holland and seen it's a pretty diverse place, too. Not everyone is tall, fair-skinned and blue-eyed. What's a person of Eurasian Dutch background, who is a 3rd generation citizen of New Zealand to do?
What does Tariana Turia do? ;-)
More generally, I chose in good faith and after quite a bit of thought to indicate "New Zealander" (by writing it in), and I would almost certainly do so again in the future.
I make no negative judgements of other people's choices in this regard (whether they tick "New Zealand European" or write in any number of European nationalities like "Slovak" and "Greek", or supra-nationalities like "British").
Perhaps the same courtesy could be extended to those who consider themselves "New Zealanders without qualification"?
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@Andre
when (usually) white New Zealanders describe themselves as "New Zealanders" without qualification.
I do identify as a New Zealander without further ethnic/racial/national qualification. You are free to identify otherwise.
It's the underlying assumption that being a New Zealander means belonging to a very specific ethnic background that is nevertheless only ever implied.
Anyone who wishes to identify as a New Zealander without further qualification should be free to do so.
I still get pissed off remembering all the times I was asked to provide "proof that [I was] a New Zealand citizen" when applying for jobs for no other reason than the way my name sounds.
Are you sure it wasn't standard practice for applicants who didn't specify their citizenship/immigration status in their application?
One application I dealt with recently included a required question: "Are you the holder of NZ permanent residency or a valid work permit?"
There wasn't even the option of specifying NZ citizen.
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I'm pretty much with Kyle on this one ("You just don't expect that sort of crap...") - I would have come up with an appropriately scathing response 10 minutes later.
I would hope the PM's office has had subsequent "discussions" with TVNZ though. Something along the lines of: "The PM's not going on that f7cking show again..."
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In some ways I think Henry's latest "apology" is worse, in that it defames Gypsies (lower on the racial pyramid than true British stock, y'know) ... for no reason in particular.
It's one thing to say something stupid and racist live on air. It's another thing to follow it up with a considered statement that is also stupid and racist.
Two wrongs make a...?
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the insistence of 11% of Census respondents on describing themselves as "New Zealanders", as if it were an ethnic identity in itself – or, really, as if being of European extraction and being "a New Zealander" were actually equivalent and identical claims.
But we'll have that discussion another day.
Just a quick note that this issue has been debated at length around these parts in the past. Here, for example
Without re-litigating the issue, I stand by my view that "I can't think of a better term than 'New Zealander' to describe myself"
And as another contributor (Yamis) put it: "I put a fair amount of thought into it in the period leading up to the census and for the life of me I couldn't think why I should put 'European' ahead of "New Zealander."
It is also worth noting that a number of people wrote in "New Zealander" as well as ticking the boxes for other ethnicities (incl. Maori).
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@ Glenn Pearce
Thanks for the overview of some of the classes of exemption, and possible reasoning.
I do find it curious though how commonly the negative reactions centre on "Current exemptions good and rational; any other exemptions fiendishly complicated and irrational."
Given that consumption taxes serve to discourage consumption, and that such discouragement is often inappropriate with respect to particular types of goods and services (fruit and vegetables being as good an example as any), exemptions are often worth considering.
Put another way, if you told Canadians that the various "good goods" currently exempt from GST (from fruit and veges, to milk, to physiotherapy, to prescription medicines) were going to be taxed, there would be an outcry.
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As a friend of mine just put it, if an exemption is good enough for precious metals, surely it's good enough for bananas.
I look forward to the purists, and believers in "universal" GST, extending it to rents, mortgage interest, currency exchanges, transport of imported household goods, bank fees, etc. etc.