Claire Harvey: Mapp must take care in symbolic territory

In her police mugshot, taken the day in 1955 she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on an Alabama bus for a white man, Rosa Parks is smiling.

Not a big smile, just a firm little set of the mouth. She is holding up the card on which is printed her police booking number - 7053 - rather than hanging it around her neck. The sign's neck-cord is coiled in her lap.

She is wearing a natty little suit with small spectacles and her hair is pinned up in a bun at the top of her head. She has a white flower in her hair.

This photograph, and the smile, and the sign, show us that Rosa Parks knew the power of symbols.

She knew exactly what she was doing when she sat down on the bus.

She is not distraught or tearful, even though she is to be jailed and fined $14, approximately US$96 ($134.57) in today's money; a considerable penalty for the 42-year-old seamstress and her barber husband.

She knew that appearing calm and composed in her mugshot was a symbol of her defiance.

She knew she was proud, too proud to hang that sign around her neck like a symbol of shameful criminality.

After her arrest, Rosa Parks volunteered to let her case become a symbol for black people's rights to sit anywhere they liked on the buses of Montgomery, Alabama.

She approached the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and offered her story as the impetus for the NAACP's plans to stage a bus boycott.

That boycott - led by the little-known Martin Luther King, then a 26-year-old pastor recently arrived in town - lasted 381 days, nearly crippled the city bus company and made Montgomery's buses a symbol of the nationwide struggle for racial equality.

Parks' role made her a lifelong symbol of dignified resistance to injustice and of the non-violent campaign that spread across the country, as black Americans staged lunch counter sit-ins and marches and rallies.

The Montgomery bus boycott ended only when the US Supreme Court ruled in a symbolic test case that Alabama's bus segregation was unconstitutional, following a precedent set in another symbolic case, Brown v. Board of Education.

The point of all this is that symbols are important measures of our society, and that with a little thought, we can see how language, space and action assume greater meaning than might first be apparent.

This might be worth remembering for the National Party's newest appointment, "Political Correctness Eradicator" Wayne Mapp.

He wants to "stamp out" political correctness in public institutions, and that means putting an end to what he sees as symbolic cultural carry-on like having Maori elders perform opening ceremonies for New Zealand's overseas embassies.

"There needs to be a clear political programme to reverse it; to remove the viewpoints and language of the politically correct from the institutions of government," Dr Mapp says.

"New Zealanders expect their public institutions to fairly reflect the values that underpin our country. This is not the case under Labour."

But what exactly is wrong, or misleading, about having a Maori ceremony at an overseas embassy?

An embassy is a symbol of this country. A ceremony is a symbol of its unique culture. And doesn't a Maori ceremony at an embassy symbolise a few of the things that New Zealand is, a proud, independent, inclusive South Pacific nation with lots of spunky inhabitants who look good in feathers?

If Dr Mapp doesn't think that kind of symbolism is worth much, maybe he should ask the former Australian defence chief General Peter Cosgrove.

When the New Zealand Defence Force arrived in East Timor in 1999 to jointly run peacekeeping with Australian troops led by Cosgrove, there was only one way to announce their arrival.

The New Zealanders stripped their shirts off and performed a stirring impromptu haka - an experience Cosgrove would later describe as spine-chilling and unforgettable. Photographs of the event show sunburned Australian soldiers standing around looking a bit sheepish in their slouch hats, possibly wishing they had a cultural symbol better than Waltzing Matilda to offer in return.

Cosgrove said when he saw that haka, he knew that with the Kiwis on his side everything was going to be all right.

The decision to perform that haka might have meant the troops took an extra 10 minutes to start unpacking their kitbags and keeping the peace, but the symbolic power made it more than worthwhile.

So let's hope Wayne the Eradicator chooses his battles wisely, and that when he rails against cultural carry-on, he thinks about how powerful symbolism can be.