Garth George: Name calling won't stop me airing views

I was pleased when I read Dame Susan Devoy had been named as our new Race Relations Commissioner.

At last, I said to myself, we have a level-headed, down-to-earth, no-nonsense person to oversee this constantly vexed jurisdiction.

She would not, I mused, be prone to the knee-jerk reactions of most of her predecessors, nor would she be moved by the posturing of those among us who suffer from a thin-skinned hyper-sensitivity, a bastard child of our poisonous political correctness.

These are the ones whose eyes burn and ears twitch at any reference to matters of race, earnestly seeking something to bewail loudly, and in whom the epithet "racist" is ever on the tip of the tongue.

And so far, Dame Susan has lived up to my expectations. She has let it be known that it is taking her time to learn the job - an unusual admission for such an appointee, but not in the least surprising coming from her.

She has faced just two public challenges since she was appointed: the Al Nisbet cartoon complaint; and Winston Peters' remarks on the Chinese influence on Auckland. And in both she has shown a natural, thoughtful moderation.

Of the Nisbet cartoons, which depicted Maori and Pacific Island children and parents rejoicing in the food for schools programme, Dame Susan has admitted they were racist, "but it doesn't meet the threshold and the limits of freedom of speech".

She is right. The cartoons were derogatory of a certain underclass of Maori and Pasifika families, whom we know exist in too great a number, and ignored the fact that too many Pakeha families are of the same ilk.

All the same, they made a perfectly valid point.

As for Mr Peters' outburst that Chinese immigrants were turning Auckland into a "super city of sin", I had to laugh out loud.

Auckland has been a city of sin ever since it was founded, and certainly in the 35-odd years I lived there.

Once again, Dame Susan's was a measured response: "Winston has carried on this tirade for a long time and I don't think that anything that I'm going to say is actually going to make a leopard change his spots."

But, she warned, she was keeping an eye on him and would act if he continued to stigmatise one section of the population.

Thus, in both cases, did she leave the field clear for reasoned discussion on the merits or otherwise of Mr Peters' remarks and Nisbet's cartoons.

Too often these days that doesn't happen, either in racial matters or some others such as equality of the sexes and homosexuality.

For it is a ploy of those thin-skinned, hyper-sensitive buffoons mentioned above to throw epithets at any reference which causes them irritation - "racist!" or "sexist!" or "homophobe!", for example.

And what that does often is stifle any possibility of reasoned debate on the issue at hand.

It seems - and this is another repercussion of our indoctrination by the politically correct - that the moment "racist" or "sexist" of "homophobe" is thrown at an argument, we take it for granted and switch off.

I am proudly Ngati Pakeha; I am a male in an age when the role of women in society has been turned upside down; and I am, and always have been, an enthusiastic heterosexual.

I therefore have opinions, some of them quite firm, on race relations, on gender issues and on homosexuality. I am entitled to air them and to have them reasonably considered.

I am also more than happy to have them criticised, disagreed with, laughed at or discounted. That's what human discourse is all about. I will not be censored by the casting of epithets.

And just by the way: I have never met Dame Susan Devoy.

garth.george@hotmail.com