Thanks for posting that - in my opinion, a fair and balanced summary.
I’m bowing out here for now, mainly because I can see how the temperature is a little high and I’ve no desire to fan the flames. I can be more productive through other channels.
AIUI and translating it into US terms for US dopers …
This is a Republican introducing a bill to have all forms of “affirmative action” outlawed as contrary to fairness. While claiming it’s all about individuality and fairness while it’s actually about keeping the downtrodden down and the uptrodden up. By amazing coincidence, the people introducing this bill are the uptrodden.
With the added gotcha that the historical Maori treaty is one of their Founding Documents revered like the US Constitution or Bill of Rights; not something to be ignored on a whim. And it says the affected minority is to be treated as special in at least some ways in perpetuity.
All I can say to our good friends in NZ is “good luck with that.” This misguided effort is really gonna really rub a sore spot in your society until it’s raw and bleeding.
Thank you for the summary. This is all very interesting.
While I understand the argument about one nation with different sets of rules for two races being Apartheid, I think there are some other factors at play here, too.
I very much sympathize with the Maori situation. It reminds me a lot of ours, in Israel. The Maori deserve, as our anthem says, to “be a free people in [their] homeland”. And while it does sound like this treaty makes the government treat Maori and white New Zealanders differently, isn’t that the deal the British signed up for?
In practice, I’m not sure that all of the policies mentioned in this thread are good ideas. The example you mentioned about pre-med is particularly worrying; are health outcomes for Maori going to get better if the standards for doctors are lowered in this way? That sounds like something that could backfire.
But I do think there’s value in the Maori being treated differently by the government - even if that leads to accusations of Apartheid - because it’s the only way to ensure that the Maori people maintain some level of self determination; and like all people, that’s something they deserve, at a deeply fundamental level.
It worked brilliantly in South Africa. Companies were compelled to employ less educated lower quality people by the government. Those people got enough of a boost that their children were in a better position and went on to earn their places fairly.
All of this happened in the 1930s though, where tens of thousands of afrikaaners were given that unfair advantage via affirmative action. Bringing this up to the descendants of those people can often make them angry/uncomfortable.
…if you are asking for a “pros-and-cons” style analysis that treats ACT’s bill as if it was drafted in good faith, then no.
Because it wasn’t. It’s a racist dog-whistle bill. And the greatest thing about Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s haka in Parliament a few days ago was that firstly it disrupted the ACT narrative (that the bill wasn’t “racially hugely divisive”), and secondly, it made ACT take the “mask off.”
From the official ACT Twitter account:
He called it a “circus menagerie.” Behaving like “barnyard animals.” “That lot.” They needed to be “kicked out.” My understanding is that this is Mark Cameron, ACT MP.
More from the ACT Party:
“Theatrics and thuggery.”
They know exactly who their audience is. They’ve stopped pretending now.
As for opposition to the bill, I’ve shared Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s view on the proposed bill earlier in the thread. 40 Kings Counsel sent this letter to the government:
Regarding principle 2:
The TLDR version is that ACT’s bill is a bullshit bill with no basis in law that seeks to redefine the treaty without the agreement of either of the parties to the treaty. Its virtue signalling. It doesn’t have the support of National or New Zealand First. Its already dead in the water.
Regarding medical school admissions: firstly its important to understand why its there in the first place.
Here is the crux of the argument, from Professor Peter Crampton, former dean of Otago Medical School and now Professor of Public Health:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300013258/medical-school-who-gets-in-and-why
Multiple studies and reports have shown the healthcare system to be institutionally racist and as a result, Māori and Pacific peoples have (often substantially) worse outcomes. So what would be better for the healthcare system in a rural community, a doctor with marginally better grades, or a doctor who can kaupapa Māori? What will deliver better outcomes? We want a “health workforce that meets the needs of society”. That’s the ultimate goal here. The standards “wouldn’t be lowered” to any degree that will endanger patients. That isn’t how the system is set up.
So you’re against equal protection under the laws, as enumerated in our own 14th Amendment?
Not every country is the United States. If the purpose of New Zealand as a country is (at least in part) to be a homeland for the Maori people, then 14th amendment style protections could lead to the Maori losing the only state that they have.
My opinion only, but I believe “equal protection under the laws” is a universally good thing. I find it interesting that some people would be opposed to it.
Define “equal protection”.
Sometimes in order to correct an historic imbalance you have to swing the pendulum in their favour, and hold it there for a long time.
As a Maori person, I was frequently offered assistance and additional help. It was not mandatory, but I was made aware that it was there and was encouraged to use it. I decided not to, I thought it was a bit weird and made me uncomfortable, but in retrospect, when I see how my life turned out, I really should have taken it. It would have given me a leg up and really helped me out, but I was too proud to accept it.
When I see equal treatment by their fellow citizens I will accept that then and only then we have equal treatment under the law. Until then, no we don’t. The law is what our society does. Not what our government’s documents say.
That seems quite self-evident to me. Why other Americans (or New Zealanders) can’t refuse to see that is the central question of our era.
I don’t mean to turn this into a GD (and perhaps this thread should be moved), but our 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Sure, the Civil War had just ended, but racism was still rampant, and blacks were treated very poorly, unjustly, and unfairly at the the time of its ratification.
At any rate, and as @bengangmo pointed out above, the Maori have privileges not extended to other people (including other minorities). That’s something I can’t get on board with.
…have we now? What would those be?
@crafterman - as a “pakeha” - I’m 100% on board with Maori getting “privileges” I don’t have. The historical disadvantages and the way the system is set up is such that they are absolutely needed balance the inequities that we have in society.
As Banquet Bear has been kind enough to point out with actual research, Maori outcomes in health are significantly worse than non Maori, and when there is a doctor that, for Maori, “looks and sounds like me, and understands my cultural milieu” the results are significantly better. There is no arguing with this.
My 20 year old asked me about the Treaty Principles Bill last night, and I tried to explain that it is all about a dog whistle, and that Seymour is really an integrationist, it is hard for her to understand, because a lot of what are considered the “markers” of Maori disadvantage apply to her.
I have been working on becoming a teacher this year - I can see what happens in the education system and can see how this has in the past, and continues to disadvantage minorities.
I’m lucky enough to have experienced and seen first hand how these sorts of advantages operate and how hard they are to overcome.
What’s difficult for me is that they (very justified and much needed) help that is on hand is also a very blunt tool. When I examine my upbringing, it has much more in common with the disadvantages faced by Maori than it does with the advantages of being Pakeha, yet none of that sort of help is available for me.
My daughter, who is visibly a minority, and has faced racist mocking before, is also locked out of that sort of help.
Coming back to the “pathways” for Dunedin Medical School. They are correct and they are needed. My daughter is flatting now with someone that entered medical school through the pathway (rural), that person has NO intention of fulfilling the pathway, and the “rural” area that person took advantage of has much more to offer than many of the suburbs of my city - which is where the needed help becomes frustrating in its implementation.
There are many anecdotes I could share - the overarching point, from my lens is that the help is offered based on the ability to recite a family tree that qualifies, it is not offered on the basis what sort of person is receiving the help, or the disadvantages that person faced.
I don’t get the idea that you think this is unfair–but it’s a helpful example.
If the point of law is to ensure that everyone gets equal treatment in access to becoming a doctor, obviously this result is problematic.
But if the point of law is to ensure that everyone gets equal medical treatment, this result is almost certainly a good thing.
We face similar situations in the United States–where, for example, there’s overwhelming evidence that Black children do better in school when they have at least one Black teacher, but our teaching staff is disproportionately White, and many Black students never have a Black teacher. The law makes it very difficult to provide these children with Black teachers, because any attempt to do so is treated as unlawful racial bias.
I wish we had something similar to the New Zealand system.
Edit: and I’m realizing that this post might be echoing your post directly above it. Sorry, and I hope it doesn’t come across as arguing with you; I’m kind of trying to figure it out myself, making sure I understand.
That, I disagree with. I think New Zealand’s system is fine for New Zealand, which appears to be a weird hybrid system - half a civic state like the United States, and half a nation state like most countries outside the Americas. I think that’s the source of the weirdness and awkwardness; New Zealand is trying to do two things at once, and in some ways those two things are opposed.
The United States is and always has been a civic state, not a nation state. And that’s exactly how America should be; those are the values it was built on.
Our system leads to places where there are clear solutions (get more Black teachers) that would make our country unambiguously better, but all the paths to those solutions are illegal, all because of an abstract principle. That’s not ideal.
But I can’t really go more into this without being full-on hijack, so I’ll let that drop, and say that I’m not at all bothered by New Zealand’s differential treatment of Maori folks.
In the opinion of the current supreme court; that hasn’t always been the case, and may not always be the case either.
I am not disagreeing that the implementation in the US is not ideal, but as a matter of first principles, the United States and New Zealand are approaching the question of “how to organize a state” and even "why to organize a state" from very different perspectives.
Oh, lots of people are opposed to it. For instance, I can freely enter the US any time I want to, but that’s not true of everyone. “Equal protection under the laws” would require completely open borders. Are you in favor of that?
Or, on the other hand, maybe you think that people should be treated differently based on their nation of citizenship. But then you hit the issue that this is all about a treaty, and some of the people involved have different nations.
This sounds reminiscent of the pervasive notion in American health care that black people have a higher pain tolerance, and therefore don’t need as much pain management. Among, probably, several other racist notions that I’m not aware of.
Yes, I guess I was, but I understand why you can’t provide it. Thanks for the links.