Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Discrimination

Before I start to chunter on about my views on discrimination let me make one thing clear, I am only prejudiced against one thing – discrimination itself. I firmly believe that people are people no matter their race, gender or creed and hopefully that will keep the self-appointed arseholes of the world off my back.
Now, having said that I hate discrimination, I also hate positive discrimination just as much. In fact I can think of few things that cause negative discrimination as quickly as the positive kind. It’s just not fair. Just because I’m not a black lesbian single mother doesn’t mean I don’t have rights too. And more importantly, surely my rights are just as valid as theirs. It’s not going to be long before we’ll have to have a white heterosexual men’s group because we are probably the only people you can take the piss out of who still do not have a voice in the world.

Culture
You’ll have gathered I’ve bounced around the world a wee bit and therefore I have had the joys of seeing positive discrimination causing injustice in many different forms and sometimes it makes me seethe. Now I always thought that one of the great things of western civilisation was democracy, but when it comes to positive discrimination that all goes out the window.

In New Zealand it is the two sets of laws for the Maori and the Pakeha (non-Maori). I think Maori culture is great and that’s what it should be – culture. It should have no bearing on the way New Zealand runs today, democracy is about the majority’s rights. If my kid commits a minor crime the punishment should be exactly the same whatever ethnic group they belong to. I love fishing and willingly pay to fish trout from a river or lake and accept the bag limit. If I’m Maori, free fishing and a stick of dynamite is pretty quick and fits in with my traditional rights. The fact that Maori didn’t have dynamite or indeed trout (introduced by those evil Pakeha) doesn’t seem to enter into it. Tradition used to be jade hooks and a bit of flax for fishing line - that is culture and tradition.
If you claim to be Maori (you can be 7/8th English and still be Maori) and get a new job you have to have a wee party at the workplace for your friends and relatives. That’s cool, in my culture we go to the pub to celebrate so why isn’t work paying for us to get shit-faced?

In Australia there is a Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. I didn’t realise they had so many affairs they needed a minister; condoms yes, minister no. Now what happened to the Aboriginals in Australia was awful but excuse me that wasn’t us. I agreed with John Howard that the government shouldn’t apologise because after all they didn’t do it. I know there are lots of problems with poverty, child and alcohol abuse but I bet there are more people in Sydney with those issues than there are Aboriginals in all of Australia. How about setting up a ministry to solve poverty, child abuse and excessive drinking? Probably too radical an idea.
We should all just get real and say this is the world of today, stop whinging and get on with it.
Another wonderful traditional right is the hunting of Dugongs. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders have hunted them for thousands of years and deem it part of their culture. Fair enough, I don’t have a problem with that even though I get fined if I clip one with my boat. But nowhere in my reading about pre-European culture have I read about the hunt using 150hp boats and shooting them with .202 rifles.

And why is it that the limelight loving Maori and Aboriginal activists all seem to be whiter than I am? The one advantage of the white boy go-home attitude would be none of these self appointed natives would exist. I’m sure if people of German descent were entitled to some advantage over the rest of society they’d be proud of their German ancestors instead.

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