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.
