KEY POINTS:
A high school student asked me recently how the media should cover stories about ethnic minorities. Same as any other story, I replied. In as fair and accurate and balanced a way as possible.
I suppose I should have added that we don't always live up to that.
Some of those who wrote to me after last week's column on Massey University economist Greg Clydesdale's paper on Pacific migrants seemed to think I would have required something else of my colleagues: an extreme of political correctness.
No, but it wouldn't hurt to acknowledge some responsibility for the enormous power that the media have to shape public perceptions and, consequently, political action.
Take the kerfuffle over that Housing New Zealand conference. Is $700 per person for a two-day conference, including travel and food, extravagant? No. It would have cost more to fly staff up to Mangere to a more "appropriate" looking venue that would have inspired no one to do a better job. Does pretending that it's extravagant help a single state house tenant? No. But we are driven by perceptions, especially in an election year.
And perceptions, once embedded, can be difficult to shift. One reader insisted last week that it was a "sad fact" that the majority of criminals are Pacific Islanders, even after being presented with evidence to the contrary. What was sad was his blind racism and yes, I think labelling Pacific Islanders "scum" entitles me to call him a racist.
If I thought it would have made any difference to his unlovely view of us, I would have pointed out that in June 2007 there were 679 Pacific Islanders in prison, which works out to 0. 4 per cent of the Pacific population aged over 16, which means, dear racist reader, that the vast majority of Pacific people are law-abiding citizens.
I don't know if this will make any difference for Grant, either, who accused me of playing the PC card. He told me he works "very closely" with the Polynesian community in South Auckland and that every nurse, midwife and financial adviser he's talked to agrees 100 per cent with Clydesdale. Where was my proof that Clydesdale was wrong? Where were my facts?
If only I had the space, Grant. But here's one fact. In 2006, the proportion of Pacific people not in the labour force was 35 per cent. We'd all like it to be lower but it's not far behind the 31 per cent of European people who also weren't working for a living. Asian people, in fact, had the highest proportion at 38 per cent. In fact, if being out of work and not having any formal qualifications (a quarter of all Europeans) signal membership of the underclass, the majority of the underclass in this country would be white.
It's worth noting that 20 years ago, before the harsh economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s ripped the heart out of our communities, the proportion of Pacific Islanders in the labour force was higher than in the total population.
Like all immigrants, we came here to work, to go to school, to improve our lives. There's no denying many of us are starting from further behind, but it's wrong to suggest we haven't gained any ground. My mum cleaned office buildings and my father was a storeman; not one of their seven children has failed to improve on those humble beginnings.
"We are phenomenal," says Dr David Schaaf of the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs. He's a Tongan immigrant, by the way, who's had to overcome considerable odds to get to where he is.
Schaaf says Pacific Islanders show faster rates of improvements than the general population on a broad range of indicators. Between 1996 and 2001, for example, the proportion of Pacific aged 25-29 with a degree or higher almost doubled from 4.4 per cent to 7.1 per cent. Since 2001, the median income for Pacific people has increased by 38 per cent.
Which is not to say that we don't currently occupy a lowly position in New Zealand society; just that most of us are working hard not to remain there.
This is contrary to an article cited by Clydesdale, which supposedly concludes that New Zealand is unique in that, on average, second-generation immigrants' achievements are worse than that of the first generation. In fact, the article shows worse outcomes for the Netherlands on one measure, and the same for Australia on a couple of others. And doesn't identify country of birth or ethnicity, so says nothing useful about Pacific migrants.
Does a responsible media organisation owe it to its readers to subject papers like Clydesdale's to more critical scrutiny before turning it into a front-page lead with an incendiary headline? Is it politically correct to ask that media reporting a proposition as controversial as Clydesdale's take the trouble to examine his evidence and provide context?
It's tiresome having to defend my right to be here. I grew up under the shadow of the 1970s dawn raids, and I don't want another generation of Pacific kids to feel as I did.
