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]

Why the Maori and National parties fit together

Most on the left struggle to see how the Maori and National parties could ever coalesce or even how the Maori Party could help National into power. ‘Surely the parties are mortal enemies?’ they say. This fails to understand the political nature of both parties. These two nationalist parties have much more in common than most realise, and this means that their current repositioning could yet yield a closer working relationship or even a coalition agreement – especially if a repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act is involved. [Read more below]

Maori Liberation vs the Treaty Process

Race relations and Maori politics have been one of the major political issues in New Zealand for some years now. Those on the left that are interested in true liberation need to formulate an alternative view on race relations - a view that rejects both Labour's liberal Treaty politics as well as National's continuing, contradictory and hypocritical “One law for all”. We need to argue against Maori nationalism and identity politics, and instead argue for a solution that unites the working class of all ethnicities and fights for true equality. This blog post aims to get across the alternative ideas on race relations and the Treaty that has previously been argued in revolution magazine and The Spark. [Read more below]

Maori identity - increasingly more complicated

Fewer New Zealanders of Maori descent see themselves simply as 'Maori', with a large proportion aware of their other ethnic identities. New census data on Maori has just been released - see the Statistics New Zealand report. The stats are interesting for a number of reasons, but in particular it is interesting that for the first time in 2006 the census differentiated between those that claim Maori descent and those that actually identify as Maori - and there is quite a gap between the two categories. Those claiming Maori descent number 644,000, but those identifying as 'Maori' number only 565,000. Furthermore, one in six Maori (102,000) aren't able to name which tribe they are descended from, suggesting that there is a significant break of ties between (urban) Maori and the traditional structures of Maoridom.

Also, of the 565,000 identifying as Maori, only about a half claim that Maori is their sole ethnicity, with the bulk of others claiming to also be pakeha (42%), Pacific (7%), Asian (1.5%) or 'New Zealander' (2.3%). Clearly, the concept of 'Being Maori' is becoming more complicated, and only a minority of New Zealanders of Maori descent see themselves simply as 'Maori'. The blending of 'races' is proceeding at full pace in New Zealand, and there is clearly a strong consciousness of this amongst Maori, with a huge proportion of them seeing beyond a 'black and white' identity.

Other important stats (highlighted by the Maori Party and the NZ Herald) include:

• The Maori population has increased by 30% in the past 15 years
• Maori are younger, are earning less, and have fewer formal qualifications than non-Maori
• The gap in the secondary and tertiary educational achievement for Maori versus non-Maori continues to grow

The Treaty and Neotribal Capitalism

Elizabeth Rata of the University of Auckland has written a very good paper on The Treaty and Neotribal Capitalism. You can download the paper below. Rata examines the political-economic context of the orthodox intepretation of the Treaty of Waitangi and says that this arose from postwar economic changes and thr rise of identity politics. She offers a very different interpretation of the Treaty. She says the Treaty now plays a 'crucial role in legitimising the material and political aspirations of the neotribal elite'.

Download treaty_and_neotribal_capitalism.doc

Public policy - analysis and personal background

Following on from the article on Elizabeth Rata in the weekend, the Herald has run a counter to this by one of Rata's colleagues, Alison Jones, who points out that Rata is in fact pakeha and because Rata avoids talking about her background in relation to her views on ethnicity and public policy this means the reader can't properly evaluate her arguments. See the opinion piece below.

I too often like to know who is making an argument and what their background is. But I think Jones' argument is yet again an attempt to say 'You aren't from the group that you are analysing, and therefore you aren't fully entitled to speak about such things'. The fact that Jones states that 'outsider interpretations rarely provide genuinely useful insight' backs this up. And while she acknowledges that Rata is entitled to her point of view, you get the impression that Jones simply wants to close down debate. More than all this, I think Jones is simply politically opposed to Rata's viewpoint and is looking for an easy way to negate it. It's hard to see what Jones thinks someone critically-minded like Rata should do if she's interested in seriously analysing Maori inequality, other than ignore her conclusions.

Ethnicity and public policy

Elizabeth Rata is an outspoken academic critic of the rise of neo-tribalism and its capitalist characteristics. She has a new book out called Public Policy and Ethnicity, the Politics of Ethnic Boundary Making, which makes the argument that public policy that is informed by racial lines rather than social inequality is undemocratic and dangerous, and that we need a new public policy informed by egalitarianism (which none of the parliamentary parties are offering).

A feature on Rata in the NZ Herald, tells of how in the 1980s she promoted the first kura kaupapa while a secondary school teacher, and she originally supported Maori retribalism and treaty policies because it was seen as a means to much greater social justice, yet she now sees such policies resulting in the formation of powerful and wealthy elites and enduring poverty. Although the Herald article reiterates Rata’s image as ‘the female Don Brash’, her arguments are solidly from the left, and much of what she has to say is very similar to what revolution magazine was publishing in the late 1990s.

Evil?

It's quite extradinary that the level of debate in New Zealand politics has dropped to the point that politicians such as Pita Sharples call arguments they don't agree with 'evil' - in regard to Don Brash's view that there are no full-blooded Maori left in NZ and that a distinct ethnic group of Maori still exists. For what it's worth, I think Brash's points are probably correct and hardly that controversial. I'll provide some arguments and links to back up such an idea soon.

It's also interesting to remember that the Maori Party pronounced themselves above personal criticisism, but now label their opponents as 'evil'!

Update: The Sunday Star-Times has published scientific research that showing that on average Maori are at least 43% European. Clearly most Maori have a large amount of pakeha ancestry.

No to all Kings and Queens

Much of the left in NZ loses their critical faculties when the issue of the Maori Queen (and now the Maori King) comes up. Chris Trotter was quick to line up with Paul Holmes in admiration for the indigenous royalty in A queen casts her spell. And then Matt McCarten wrote his Herald column this week on Maori royalty: Now's the time to get rid of the English monarchy and get our own in which he correctly says it's time to ditch the imperial royal line, but then strangely wants us to be subject to yet another (local) one.

Tragic deaths of baby twins used to foment anti-welfare campaign

A few days ago the World Socialist Website published the following article on domestic violence and Maori, as brought up recently by deaths of the Kahui twins. I haven't followed this particular case, but the article makes a good argument about the issues. It says that the debate that has occurred around the deaths has avoided dealing with the deeper social causes of such domestic violence - the pervasive and intensifying immiseration' of recent years has exerted 'a deep corrosiveness on daily life' for many. It points out how the Treaty and 'ethnic empowerment' politics of the last two decades has played into this, and now the entire Maori political establishment lines up with the same essentially reactionary position on issues of violence and 'culture'.

Nationalise the Foreshore and Seabed

Is there really anything progressive about the call for Maori ownership of the foreshore? In this article in The Spark, I argue (under the pen name Huw Jarvis) in favour of nationalising the foreshore, including the foreshore land of rich pakeha, to make it public land, available to all.