Posted by alexandra_k on November 8, 2018, at 19:13:35
In reply to Re: one of my favorite FDOTM, posted by alexandra_k on November 8, 2018, at 18:42:23
There is a lot of resistence to people identifying as 'New Zealander'.
But 'Australian' is considered a perfectly good / acceptable ethnic category.
In New Zealand, people would need to pass over 'NZ Maaori' 'NZ European' and a few other listings in order to check 'Other' and then they would need to write in the slot 'New Zealander'.
And quite a few did.
And ethnicity coders, in some instances, *reclassified* them as 'New Zealand European'. Because ethnicity coders know better than the individual does, of course.
They said that (though I don't know that any actual study was done) that people who regarded themselves to be 'New Zealanders' were (all?) New Zealand European males from southland who were trying to... Undermine... An attempt to compile Maaori vs non-Maaori statistics.
Which doesn't make sense to me. Becuase I... And a number of my friends (since I was a teenager in the North Island) regarded ourselves to be 'New Zealanders'. And some of them were New Zealand European (ancestrally) and some of them had Maaori ancestry.
I think the reason why there is a... Refusal to accept 'New Zealander' as an ethnic group is because then we could start to consider how oppressed (or otherwise) New Zealanders are - on the world stage.
New Zealanders are a people, in other words.
Only we simply refuse to be. Preferring to engage in localised warring / petty squabbles Maaori vs European or Northland Maaori vs Waikato Maaori. Or whatever. Keeping the focus on local squabbles and preventing (people with often very little brain) from seeing the bigger picture...
Who profits?
?
The people I knew who thought of themself as New Zealanders were of the opinion that we are all in this together and need to figure a way to work together into the future. Immigrants are particularly fond of regarding tehmselves to be New Zealanders esepcialy when they are new and bright eyed and still believing that here mgiht give them a better life. Pacific Islanders (who on all stats are doign worse in New Zealand than Maaori are in New Zealand) are likely to prefer to be regarded as New Zealander. Not least because being identified as Pacific Islander means they are a target for Maaori opression.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1101828
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20181106/msgs/1101937.html