Dialogue: United we stand, divided we fall

By SANDY BURGHAM

Aren't we supposed to be in the Age of Aquarius - harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding? Well, there's another early 70s hippie prediction gone wrong.

Today, if anything we work with less harmony than before. Take the mutterings of many Pakeha middle New Zealanders last week that had them sounding increasingly like red-neck New Zealand.

They go something like this: "The Budget didn't really mean much to me except that bit about giving Maori and Pacific Islanders all that dosh."

Dangerously controversial to raise unless anonymously on talkback radio, but it's the issue getting under the skin of many a Pakeha New Zealander (who incidentally now hate being referred to as such).

"I'm a New Zealander and it doesn't matter what colour my skin is." True, but it's so easy to classify by ethnic identity because that's exactly what they do themselves.

Is that racism that seethes below the surface of New Zealand occasionally rearing its ugly head in a sea of suppressed political correctness? Or is racism just a symptom of a deeper cause - tribalism. As the world gets smaller and we are forced to work more as one market, the concept of a national identity is under threat.

Thus, to serve our biological need to belong, national affiliation is being overtaken by tribalism - the tendency to bond in smaller, intimate groups. And blood is thicker than anything else is. Hence in Fiji and the Solomons ethnic conflict flares up where multi-culturalism was supposed to reign as tribes seek to protect their own interests and their own identity. It feels like a reality television concept - When Good Tribes Go Bad.

The contradiction is that as our races blend and we see more people with dual nationality, the less we operate as one big, harmonious, multicultural melting pot. Our country changed so radically in the final few years of the past century that repercussions were inevitable.

The re-emergence of Maori culture, the first sign of a predicted Pacific Island population explosion and arrival of the new kids on the block, Asian immigrants, have left the white, middle New Zealander, in particular, a little nervous. They feel squeezed from both ends - aggrieved with supposed "handouts" to the Maori and Pacific Islanders who are at the poorer end of the scale, and irked by the new wealthier-than-they Asians at the upper end. Today it's the white New Zealander who is becoming a little disenfran-chised - with a "hang on a minute, what's in it for me?" sort of attitude.

In science fiction we are presented with glimpses of the future where humans are almost oblivious that their team members are a hotchpotch of various alien groups - they simply play to each other's strengths.

The chances of this happening, of course, are ridiculously slim. Where ideally we could all be pitching in for greater good, one common goal is becoming a rarity as we operate first and foremost through our immediate tribal affiliations.

Auckland is a classic case. We manage as five cities not one. So, much as I admire Bob Harvey's and Christine Fletcher's individual pleas for more central Government attention on Auckland it would be more powerful if they just pulled together as one. But we're far too tribal for that.

The Government's $175 million grant to Maori and Pacific Islanders has the honourable intention of "closing the gap" as these groups are ridden with the issues of lower New Zealand. However, it could accidentally serve to widen it further by provoking the tribal sentiment of those of a paler colour.

So closing the gap in terms of health and education may possibly be an outcome, but joining tribes together to become one seamless nation isn't on the horizon.

As other tribes seem to be sticking together and gaining traction, Pakeha New Zealand may be looking for
clues as to what binds them together.