liberation

[political party social bases] 12: Ethnicity

The social cleavage of ethnicity has not been strongly politicised in New Zealand, apart from a significant tendency in the past for Maori to vote for the Labour Party and now for the Maori Party. And although the ethnic cleavage has been heavily overshadowed by the economic left-right dimension, in recent years – especially since the introduction of MMP – a number of political analysts point to the growing in significance that it has in party competition. [Read more below]

Angela Davis in NZ

American academic, socialist organiser and general revolutionary symbol, Angela Davis has been in the country giving talks in Auckland and Wellington. Being in Dunedin, I wasn't able to make it to the talks, but have received a limited amount of feedback on the events. Her trip was sponsored and supported by various academic and ethnic-oriented groups such as Amokura, Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga, Va'aomanû Pasifika: Samoan Studies and Pacific Studies, Te Kawa a Maui: Maori Studies, and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University. What's more - the Maori Party provided security for her! While it's great to see these groups openly supporting a revolutionary in NZ, it's also kinda ironic for a number of reasons. [Read more below]

New Zealand not so racist

Liberals often despair over the state of race relations in New Zealand, viewing the masses as being particular backward on racism. But a recent comparative survey of countries shows that NZ is less bigoted than most other comparable nations. The survey found that in NZ, 3% of society would not like neighbours of a different race. This compared to 16% in Italy. Apparently we are second lowest (out of 23 countries) for racism, with only Sweden beating us (2.6%). On other issues NZers are similarly bigoted to other nations. When asked if they minded living next to a gay neighbour, the survey found 22% did. The countries with the highest homophobia were the macho and/or Roman Catholic countries such as Greece (26.8), the Republic of Ireland (27.5) Italy (28.7) and Portugal (25.6), although interestingly enough, it was Northern Ireland that easily came out on top, with 36% saying they did not want gay neighbours. In Sweden only 6% said they would object. There's more info in the Herald article, as well as commentaries by NoRightTurn and Kiwiblog.

The problematic nature of ethnicity in NZ

Does ethnicity really exist? Certainly in the field of measuring ethnicity it is proving an increasingly fraught issue for the state. The fact that Statistics NZ has to keep changing the way that it measures ethnicity not only shows that ethnicity is an elastic and amorphous concept, but that it’s generally a highly problematic one which is quickly becoming an unhelpful way of understanding society. Prof Paul Spoonley has been critical of the creation of a new ethnic group called ‘New Zealander’. He calls into question how helpful and accurate such a new category is. Yet the category reflects the reality of how people perceive themselves ethnicly - 429,429 people (or 11.1% of the population) choose this group as their ethnicity in the last census. Raybon Kan has also written an excellent – but less humourous than usual – column in the SST, refuting the way that the state lumps some ethnicities together but not others. [Read more below]