Years ago, I interviewed a kaumātua about the history of his hapū in Hawke’s Bay and it was a history of trauma. Multiple layers of it over generations.
He traipsed through an account of confiscation, environmental destruction, economic upheaval, poverty, disease, death and legal fights that came to nothing. On and on it went. Only 20% of their population survived the onslaught.
He relayed this tragedy almost monotonously. But then he got to a certain point and his tone shifted as he reached a conclusion on it all. He said the worst thing that had been taken from them – and his voice cracked – was their history. It was like it had never happened.
I’ve been reminded of this conversation by Donald Trump’s attempt to destroy anything that even mentions race. The anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programme is considered a veiled attack on race and even an article on baseball legend Jackie Robinson who served in US Army in World War II was temporarily removed from the Department of Defense’s website. What’s Trump going to do about books mentioning that institution called slavery, that was built on racial violence and white supremacy? How will he cope with any mention of the genocide of indigenous peoples and theft of their lands? Label it as woke ideology?
It’s simply an evolution of something that has gone on in the US for a very long time.
Campaign consultant Lee Atwater, who advised Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior, was caught on tape explaining in 1981 how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves.
On the recording he says in 1954 you could use the N word but by 1968 that would backfire: “So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing.”
Atwater was essentially admitting that racism survives by changing terminology and tactics. When it’s no longer fashionable to explicitly practise racism, just deny it exists or ever existed at all.
There’s a similar, albeit diluted, version of this creeping into our political discourse. Recently the Treaty Principles Bill was finally defeated. But as law expert and former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer pointed out, the bill “in no way” qualified as a “serious legislative proposal”. Palmer added: “New Zealand cannot change its history and neither can we ignore it. The [treaty bill] is disingenuous. It will produce division and polarisation and achieve nothing but confusion.
“The notion that Māori constitute a privileged minority is risible when one examines statistics on poverty, education, income, rates of imprisonment and health.”
He goes on to say a great historical injustice to Māori by governments of the 19th century led to the New Zealand wars and land confiscations.
That history carried on into the 20th and 21st. But ignoring our history or distorting it is exactly what Act leader David Seymour does. He continues to peddle the idea that there’s some kind of reverse racism going on.
“Targeting services like healthcare and education based on race is lazy and divisive. The emphasis for the public service should be fitting services to the needs of every New Zealander,” he says.
At one point in my career I had a look at health and found without much effort statistics that showed clearly the major disparities in health and they were indeed related to race. When I asked bureaucrats why, they ducked for cover.
Yet I’m not aware of Seymour getting agitated by this need, the reasons for it or the failure of the health system to address it. So who is being lazy and divisive? Why is he not concerned that one group of New Zealanders dies seven years earlier than others?
Speaking of death, when will Seymour fit services to the needs of Māori when it comes to suicide? Suicide rates are nearly twice that of Pākehā and almost three times for young Māori.
But if the treaty bill has died a death, National is still captive to Seymour’s election gimmick. Nicola Willis was minister for the public service when cabinet last year put out a directive to create a “colour-blind” public service that focuses on need, not race.
I’m pretty sure if Willis was asked to promise that the disparities along racial lines would disappear by the end of this term, she’d fall back on the excuse that these problems have deep historical roots. Which would be right, but the rest of the time this is ignored.
At the time, Willis said any targeting needed to be “based on empirical evidence”. But there’s a mountain of evidence that government agencies are failing to meet Māori needs.
The term “colourblind” sounds like a way to whitewash history. That history includes the targeting of Māori with policies that disadvantaged them and benefited Pākehā.
Seymour and Willis have played with slogans while ignoring the history and outcomes that Māori are still living and dying with today. History hasn’t stopped.
Aaron Smale is a journalist specialising in te ao Māori issues.
