The Madness of the UK Elites

Culturally Sensitive Policing

In the United Kingdom this past year systemic abuse and extreme criminal acts over a long period of time have come to light, yet the police and local council officials have turned a blind eye and ignored them.  Some have warned darkly that what has come to light is the tip of a vast iceberg.  If you have not caught up with the explosive revelations, take a look at reports about Rotherham. 

The question is, how could this come to pass?  While the causes are always multi-form it would appear that a large contributing factor is the sea-change that took place in the UK police force fifteen or so years ago.  As a result of the Macpherson Report into the apparently racially motivated slaying of  Stephen Lawrence the police were officially required to become racist in their approach to community policing and crime.  We mean, of course, they were required to apply a filter of “multi-cultural sensitivities” to crime.  Race was mandated as a filter in apprehending and detecting crime.

First of all, let’s define racism.  The Macpherson Report helpfully provided its definition:

A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person. [Maitland Report, p.376]

No doubt, dear reader, you have just fallen off your chair. Racist incidents take place whenever anyone perceives they have.  This bizarre claim was to become part of police and government procedures.  But worse, the police had to take race (that is, the cultures of different races) into account when policing.

A new atmosphere of mutual confidence and trust must be created. The onus to begin the process which will create that new atmosphere lies firmly and clearly with the police. The Police Services must examine every aspect of their policies and practices to assess whether the outcome of their actions creates or sustains patterns of discrimination. The provision of policing services to a diverse public must be appropriate and professional in every case. Every individual must be treated with respect. “Colour-blind” policing must be outlawed. The police must deliver a service which recognises the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society. [Maitland, s.45.24]

Colour blind policing is outlawed.  Instead the police had to recognise “the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society”.  “Recognising” has to do with acknowledging in a positive light.

From that time onwards, the police were not allowed to be “colour-blind”, but they had to be culturally sensitive.  Putting it baldly, since it was a long established cultural practice for Pakistani youth to prey upon young girls and boys, groom them for sex, and systematically rape them, the police clapped the proverbial telescope to the Nelsonian blind eye and saw no evil.  Its just what they do, and police needed to recognise “the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society.”  Behold the mandated and required racism of the modern UK police force.

Consequently, since many of the horrendous crimes being perpetrated in our day can be linked to historical cultural practices, the Police are, therefore, expected to see no evil, hear no evil.  Crimes such as female genital mutilation, honour killings, paedophilia, compulsorily arranged marriages are all wonderful manifestations (don’t you know) of a diverse rich multi-cultural society which the Police must welcome, endorse, and celebrate–along with all the vast machinery of state and its army of bureaucratic functionaries–or, if not, risk being charged with racism.  At the least, this is not the most enlightened career move one could make. 

Peter Hitchens comments:

The Macpherson Report is one of the most extraordinary documents ever to be published by any British government.  Its language, tone and style are quite unlike anything else ever printed by the austere presses of the state.  Its accusation of “institutional racism” against the police is by definition impossible to prove and therefore impossible to refute.  Yet it has highly disreputable origins.  The inventor of this idea and expression was the American black radical Stokely Carmichael, an anti-Semite who was at one time banned from this country and who proclaimed that Hitler was a genius. . . . Despite this tainted source, it has been difficult for anyone to combat the new ideology presumably for fear of being damned as institutionally racist themselves. [Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Liberty: the Decline of Order and Justice in England (London: Atlantic Books, 2003),   p. 209f.]

When secularism overthrew the Christian faith, it did not introduce a wonderfully tolerant society.  Rather, it made room for the re-introduction of idols (secular idols, to be sure, but idols nonetheless).  As will always the case, these particular idols are ruthless, bloody, primitive and benighted as were Bel, Nebo, and Molech.  

Duplicity So Unbecoming

A City of Two Tales

One of the qualities we demand (rightly) from our political leaders is integrity.  Thus it is a sad indictment that for many Western nations the only attribute that enables politicians to lust for and successfully grasp at political power is mendacity.

The following account by Michelle Malkin of Michelle Obama’s egregious attempt at guilt shaming tells us all we need know about the integrity of that particular person.

Michelle Obama’s Tales of Racialized Victimhood

She changes her story about her adventure at a big-box store.

By Michelle Malkin

National Review Online

December 19, 2014 

Woe is she. In an “exclusive” interview with People magazine this week, first lady Michelle Obama lamented the “sting” of “racist experiences” that she and her husband allegedly still suffer. My message for America’s Marie Antoinette? Cry me a river.

To show how she’s down with The Struggle of post-Ferguson agitators, Mrs. Obama cited a supposedly horrifying incident at a Target store where she was treated, in her paranoid mind, as a subservient. “Even as the first lady,” she bemoaned, “not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf.”

A lowly peon asked her for an innocent favor? It’s Jim Crow all over again! ABC News reports that Mrs. Obama said such “incidents are ‘the regular course of life’ for African-Americans and a ‘challenge’ for the country to overcome.”

News flash: Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe that it is part of the “regular course of life” of tall people of all colors (Mrs. Obama is 5-foot-11) to be prevailed upon to reach high on behalf of those of us who are vertically challenged. These are not odious “incidents” of racism between slaves and masters. They’re matters of common courtesy between equals.

So overcome your ridiculously hypersensitive, privileged self and deal with it, girl! (And now don’t get all hot and bothered about the “girl” thing. Sheesh.)

There is, of course, a truly insidious “-ism” at work here: Cynicism. Mrs. Obama’s dissemination of her false racial narrative in a popular celebrity rag is cunningly calculated to pander to America’s aggrieved leftists. We know Mrs. Obama’s victim sob story is a steaming pile of rotten turnips because the last time she talked about The Incident, it was a feel-good late-night talk-show anecdote devoid of discrimination.

On David Letterman’s show in 2012, the haute-couture-clad first lady recounted the same “incognito” Target visit to demonstrate her just-like-you bona fides. She chuckled as she shared how the shopper asked, “Can you reach on that shelf and hand me the detergent?” As the audience laughed with delight and Mrs. Obama grinned from ear to ear, she told Letterman: “I reached up, ’cause she was short, and I reached up, pulled it down — she said, ‘Well, you didn’t have to make it look so easy.’ That was my interaction. I felt so good.”

From overjoyed Regular Mom to Oppressed Martyr, can Mrs. Obama’s shopping fable get any more absurd? To paraphrase a popular slogan of the social-justice mob: Jig’s up, don’t compute.

It just goes to show you: Once a race hustler, always a race hustler. The first lady demonstrated a willingness to employ accusations of racial oppression for political gain from the earliest days of her adult life. Take Mrs. Obama’s senior thesis at Princeton University, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” Decrying her racial otherness, the Ivy Leaguer accused her university of pushing her down the dreaded path toward “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”

Yet, while regaling campaign crowds with complaints about bias, burdensome education loans, and the beastly lily-white corporate world, Mrs. Obama neglected to mention that it was a white male Princeton alum who went beyond the call of duty to bring her from her imagined “periphery” to the center of power.

As I recounted in my book Culture of Corruption, Sidley and Austin corporate law partner Stephen Carlson offered the elite student generous career guidance and mentoring while she was an undergrad and then reached out to her again when she was at Harvard Law. She secured a coveted job as a summer associate in 1987, accepted a full-time job upon graduation, and never looked back. Mrs. Obama, perpetual victim, hopped from Princeton to Harvard to prestigious law firms, cushy nonprofit gigs, an exclusive Hyde Park manse, and a crony corporate board appointment before landing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Only in America is such upward mobility possible by a thin-skinned incessant whiner who has fabricated racial tall tales all the way to the tippy-top of the ladder of opportunity. God bless the U.S.A.

— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies (Regnery, 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. © 2014 Creators.com

 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Racial Animosity

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 23, 2014

The cross of Christ deals with real sins, not imaginary ones. It deals with real sins by offering free and full forgiveness. It “deals” with imaginary sins by enabling  us to see them for what they are — vain constructions of our own imaginations.

When it comes to issues of race, the cross of Christ puts enmity to death. The problem that must be overcome is racial animosity — hatred, spite, bitterness, and envy.

“Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Eph. 2:15–16).

In the cross, God crucified racial enmity. He killed hostility, and because Jesus really died, He killed it dead — but only in Christ.

Because liberals believe that man is basically good, they have identified the culprit as “prejudice,” or “discrimination.”
In this scenario, everybody is supposed to mean well, but must be instructed on the proper ways of staying out of micro-aggressions.

This can work for a time. If you hector people enough about  the little things, they will stuff the big things. For a time.

But then something happens, or a series of things happen, and all the pent-up animosity erupts. Now the thing to remember about an animosity eruption is that by this time in the cycle nobody cares what you think of them. You try to remonstrate with them . . . “but that’s racist!” And they reply, “So?”

Over the last week we have seen anti-cop protesters chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” On the other hand, we have seen a wildly tone deaf misappropriation of Eric Garner’s last words — pro-cop demonstrators wearing “I Can Breathe” T-shirts. If you point out how inflammatory this is, both ways, you will be surprised to discover that being inflammatory was the point.

Liberal bromides cannot deal with this. Feel good gospel coalitiony group hugs can’t deal with it. Those with an impotent message have to pretend that racial animosity is really a matter of petty bigotry, because they think they have a message that can handle petty bigotry. But in order to deal with racial animosity, racial hatred, racial hostility, Jesus had to die and rise. The good news is that He did so.

Because He rose from the dead, black men can repent of their envy, hatred, and resentment. Because He died as a perfect sacrifice for sin, white men can repent of their insolence and contempt. And we have gotten to the point in this story of ours, where this message — the death of race hate in the death of Jesus — is a message that needs to be preached.

Because of the nature of the message, the color of the one preaching it is irrelevant. The only color that matters is how red the blood was.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

On Getting Your Conscience Out of the Dumpster

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 6, 2014

At first I was tempted to call this post “A Little Race Rant,” but I don’t think I will do that. It will be more like a sermon than a rant. It will only seem like a rant to some because I am going to say a few things that it seems to me many people are simply refusing to hear.

“To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox” (George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” All Art Is Propaganda, p. 263).

I want to go straight to the terms of my peroration first, so that there is no mistaking the direction. Outside of Jesus Christ, racial harmony is a pipe dream. Apart from Christ, racial reconciliation is not going to happen, but rather the opposite. In Christ, racial harmony is a theological necessity, a doctrinal requirement, and an eschatological hope.

Not only is the secular dream of “one humanity” far beyond the secularists’ grasp, it is also beyond the grasp of weak sister evangelicals who for some mysterious reason have adopted the secularist vision of racial harmony instead of the Christian one. This, despite the fact that the impotence of the secularist form of it grows more apparent by the minute, and despite the fact that the Scriptures are so plain on the basis for our reconciliation in Christ.

White and black cannot get along because their blood is red in common, but they can get along because Christ’s blood was red  and uncommon, and was shed for the express purpose of making one new man out of the two, and in addition to make one new man out of the seventy. God is building a new humanity in Christ, and there is no new humanity outside of Him.

“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;” (Rev. 5:9).

“Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col. 3:11).

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28).

We serve and worship a cosmopolitan Christ, and there is no cosmopolis apart from Him.

But in order to come to Him, we must repent and believe. Repent of what? We must repent of the sinful things we were doing. Whites must repent of white sins, and blacks must repent of black sins. You can repent the other guy’s problems all day long and at the end of the day there is no forgiveness for you.
I am writing as a minister of Christ, so on one level my color is irrelevant. My commission to speak was not color coded. But it also happens that I am a white man, so let us begin with white sins.

Let us begin with the slave trade, which was obviously no bagatelle. Let us point to the willingness of the South to receive a particular kind of human soul as chattel, contrary to the Scriptures they appealed to, and we also point to the high hypocrisy of the North, which was willing to get rich off a trade that it simultaneously pretended to despise. In the aftermath of Reconstruction, a host of restrictive laws and customs enforced by bigots helped solidify and institutionalize the love/hate relationship of whites and blacks in America. Anybody who thinks it is all hate doesn’t get out much, and anybody who thinks it is all love lives under a rock.

With the rise of progressivism, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood as a way of dealing with all these black “human weeds,” and co opted numerous race quislings to help her encourage black people line up quietly so that they would cooperate with this eugenics sanitation crew. The end result is that down to the present day a hugely disproportionate number of black children — let us call them “unarmed citizens” — are chopped up into bits in America’s abortion mills. These abortion mills were authorized by a predominantly white Supreme Court, and have been regularly funded by an overwhelmingly white Congress.

And then, if a black child successfully runs this gauntlet and makes it into America alive, a bunch of insufferable white people have conspired to subsidize a system whereby young black mothers are given strong financial incentives to not marry the father of their baby. And so we have gotten what we have paid for, which is a pandemic of fatherlessness in the black community. That pandemic is the bottom layer of our cycle of crime and lawless behavior

All this whiteness is hard to fathom. More help on the subject can be found here and here.

So then, black sins.  I am just going to mention three. When you have been terribly wronged, as blacks certainly have been, the temptation — and it is a pressing one — is to give way to bitterness. But God’s solution to these things is forgiveness, not settling scores. Bitterness offers no salvation whatever. And outside of Christ, there is no such thing as forgiveness. The problem with settling scores is that they never ever get settled. We have more than a few ethnic groups in the world still fighting over things that started many centuries ago. This goes back to the point I made at first, which is that Christ’s forgiveness is the only gospel that can enable anybody in this sorry world to start over. There is no other regeneration. Grace can get at things that law cannot.

Second, in grip of bitterness, it is easy to forget everybody has to operate in their own micro-corner of this great macro-story, and that, however objectionable the large narrative is, not every instance at street level is an instance of the same thing. What hard evidence is there that the attempted arrest of Eric Garner was racially motivated? Give me more than that it can be made to fit in a racialist narrative.

Let me give you a thought experiment. For some reason you are in a strange city, and you have to use the subway to get back to your residence, and it is late at night. You go down to the subway platform, which is completely deserted with the exception of three young black men in hoodies, leaning against the wall. They could be waiting for the subway, just like you, or maybe not. Note that I have not in any way indicated the race of the “you” in this thought experiment. Now if you quicken your pace, even if just mentally, or if you in any way brace yourself, if you make a mental note of possible escape routes — is all this coming from the wickedness of a prejudicial heart?

I don’t think so. Every human brain has a department of risk assessment, and the guys down in that department are running their calculations all the time. It is a simple fact that black males are disproportionately incarcerated for violent crime. Is this because discrimination disproportionately targets them? Or because they are disproportionately more like to be guilty of such crime? Or a combination? Whatever you personally believe the answer to those questions might be, you are still down in the subway at 1 am, and you still have to decide what to do.

Third, in addition to bitterness and resentment, there is another temptation to give way to opportunism. Too many blacks allow race-hustlers like Sharpton and Jackson to speak for them, and in their name. Those men are not pursuing justice, but rather the main chance. And whenever someone like Voddie Baucham speaks the truth about it, he the one who gets assaulted as a race traitor, with all the real collaborators left alone.

This opportunism is willing to have things given when what blacks really needed was to be given a true and honest opportunity to earn them. Affirmative action represents the triumph of the soft bigotry of low expectations — resulting in a cloud of suspicion cast over every genuine black accomplishment. Affirmative action — another grievous white sin, just us being our patronizing selves.

The end result of that blindness is that we have President Obama, wafted to the highest office in the land on the gusts of a group hug approach to racial reconciliation. Once he got there, two things became immediately apparent. One was his lack of any real competence, and the other was his ideological commitment to the agenda of the Left, up to and including the abortion industry’s contempt for black lives. So anybody who voted for Obama — whose legal vision on abortion is simply a more sanitary version of Kermit Gosnell — has absolutely no right to the phrase “black lives matter.” If you voted for Obama, then shut up, leave the protest, and go home. Throw your “black lives matter” sign in the nearest dumpster, and try to retrieve your conscience from that dumpster. If you think that partial birth abortion, performed on a black child, ought to be fully legal constitutional act — like your man in the White House does — then you need to come to grips with the fact that the race problem in America is not ultimately cops in NYC, the race problem in America is you. And if you are a white evangelical working on racial reconciliation, and you voted for Obama, especially the second time, then all this goes double.

When the apostle Paul was once guilty of an ethnically insensitive slur, he said, quoting a Cretan prophet, that Cretans were evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and liars. This testimony, he said, was true. Therefore, he said . . . rebuke them sharply so that they may be sound in the faith (Tit. 1:13).

So anyone who believes that any racial group cannot be sound in the faith — that’s a racist. And ayone who believes that any racial group gets a free pass and does not have to respond to the authoritative Word of the Lord Jesus Christ — calling every color of sinner to repent and believe — that’s a racist too.
I do not say any of this as a race pundit, but rather as a race prophet. Thus saith the Lord . . .

Thus saith the Lord. It is true that whites don’t understand the problems and temptations that blacks confront. It is equally true that blacks don’t understand the problems and temptations that whites do. The only one who perfectly understands our tangled lives down here is our great high priest. This high priest, who actually does understand “what it is like,” is our Lord, and He has told us how to live. The only one who understands has told us what to do. We are to repent our sins, believe in Him, follow Him, and love one another. If we don’t want to do any part of this, we do not get to say that it is because “He doesn’t understand.” Because He does.

Industrialised Crime Meets Multi-Cultural Self-Loathing

Let God Arise

A retired senior policewoman involved in the Rotherham crime scandal in the UK has gone public, exposing more of the terrible state of affairs which permissively tolerated the rape and slavery of thousands of young girls.  Yes, this is the UK we are speaking about.  (A couple of pieces addressing this evil can be found here, and here.)

There are two main points which come out of this new piece.  The first is the potential of police targeting to be perverted by venal, time-serving, careerist police bureaucrats.  The second point she makes reinforces one already made in the media–that is, the terrible fruits of political correctness and the political and social ideology multi-culturalism.  In this light, the worst thing we could do is shrug our shoulders at the outrage and conclude that Rotherham is an extreme outlier, not an avatar of a perverse trend. 

Firstly, the background:

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, retired Detective Inspector Merial Buglass said she had had “many sleepless nights” knowing that the abuse was ongoing but lacking permission from her superiors to investigate further. . . .

In April 2010, whilst in her role as head of Rochdale Police’s public protection unit, Ms Buglass compiled a report detailing how predominantly white children, some as young as 12, were being groomed by gangs of Asian men as sex-slaves, and were violently abused. It has since emerged that some of the girls who were attacked in Rochdale between 1997 and 2013 were murdered at the hands of the men. The report included the details of 35 children, ten perpetrators and a further 40 suspects, and contained a plea for more resources to be granted to further investigate the heinous crimes.

It transpired that these crimes were not top of the priority list for Rochdale Police at the time.  Other, less severe, crimes were.  Police had become fixated with burnishing their crime fighting statistics.  Property crimes were believed to provide the biggest bang for their bucks.  It was relatively low-hanging fruit. Rape and murder took up too many resources, the cases were too complex, results were hard to come by.  

We believe that police targeting is an unavoidable necessity and can be extremely effective when administered by senior police officers with a dedicated and proven passion to fight, detect, and prosecute crime, rather than burnish their cv’s with falling crime statistics.  An organisation which is unable to focus its resources becomes wretchedly inefficient.  But, targeting can be a double edged sword in the wrong hands.  Far too often the “wrong hands” are senior police officers who have long ago left the front line for lard accumulating desk jobs which amount to little more than an endless cycle of “management meetings”.   Undue political pressure to “get results” for reason of making the politicians look good is also usually a major factor.

The force claims that it came under pressure from the Home Office five years ago to cut acquisitive crimes such as car theft and burglary, although the targets were removed in 2012.

 The second problem is the evil consequences of the ideology of multi-culturalism and its “attendant lord”, political correctness.

“Management appeared not to be interested, they were only interested in targets, it was a completely target-driven culture,” she said. “The main priorities were acquisitive crime – robbery, burglary and car theft. Money was being piled into [the investigation of] these crimes.  They didn’t want to class the abuse as Asian [Pakistani] on white girls. They didn’t want to cause a fuss. I took the view that this wasn’t about racism, it was about child abuse – but political correctness and cultural sensitivities were important to management.”

The ideology of multi-culturalism  elevates racism into the list cardinal sins, more important than murder and rape.  If police arrest a black person or focus on offending by a group which just happens to be Pakistani or Indian, the multi-culturalists and political correctors cry, “racism”.  Sadly, the police do not appear to have the corporate moral fibre to confront this slur head on and shame everyone who voices it.  Possibly it may be due to the police being guilty of actual racism in the past.  The upshot, however, is that organised crime in non-white communities gets an easy pass.

The day after the report was filed, Buglass met with Superintendent Martin Greenhalgh. During the meeting, she alleges he essentially told her “If I choose to investigate it, we will,” and that she replied “This is huge, there are massive threats and it will come back to bite us if you don’t do something!”

The response of the multi-culturalist infected police has been to say, yes, mistakes were made, but they are in the past.  We are no longer what we once were. But others reject that:

Commenting on the scandal, Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk said “The scandal of how police and other agencies failed children being raped on an industrial scale is getting worse every week. Police leadership have completely lost touch with ordinary people’s values.”  In 2012, nine men from Oldham and Rochdale were convicted of running a child sexual exploitation ring and were sentenced to between four and 19 years for their parts in the crimes. However, it is now clear that many responsible have still not be brought to justice. 

The police now say that they are planning to arrest hundreds of suspects in a “day of reckoning.”

Ms Buglass told reporters “I had many sleepless nights over this. We tried our best but the fact is the police failed those girls. I could not have been more vocal about the threats and risks… but I was appalled at the response.”

The idea that all cultures are equally valid and good, and that political correctors and multi-cultuaralists decry anyone who makes well reasoned distinctions between the good and bad in cultures, bears rotting fruit.  As always, it is the most vulnerable and easily preyed upon that suffer.

There are two tap-roots of these evils.  The first is a pervasive doubt and uncertainty about one’s own culture that verges on self-loathing.  Stripped from a Christian foundation, modern secularism predominantly sees the cultural values of the West as a factory of evil.   It is so consumed with the huge log of doubt and uncertainty in its own eye that it knows itself to be myopic and blinded–and hating itself all the while.

The second tap-root is like it: the self-loathing leads to a militant demand that no criticism should be made of other cultures and their values and traditions. Thou shalt affirm all cultures and their values and deny none.  Behold the wondrous works of postmodernism.

When these two tap roots become institutionalised to the extent that they shape the classrooms, the community authorities, the universities, the police, the law courts, the media, the churches, and the Parliament  then evil itself becomes institutionalised and “industrialised” whilst the community becomes riven with double standards and a wretched “hear no evil, speak no evil” cowardice.

May the Lord Jesus arise to break the arms of predatory Pakistani gangs and extend mercy and compassion to the young girls preyed upon by such evil men.  May the blood of those murdered children and young women cry out to Him from the ground.  May the respective UK authorities humble themselves in the dust before Him.

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered;
and those who hate him shall flee before him! . . .
Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
(Psalm 68: 1, 5)

Letter From America (About Black Violence)

WSJ’s Jason Riley On Obama, Black Leadership And The Media Over Ferguson

The Daily Caller
Brendan Bordelon
18th August, 2014 

[No doubt there are plenty of issues to be addressed one way or another in the United States over the relationships between blacks and the police.  For our part, we remain sceptical of the “crowd” which would use the tragedies in Ferguson as a pretext for looting and abusing their neighbours, claiming their acts are moral because of the oppression they face.  As for the attention hungry faux-celebrities that cruise into town in the attempt to exploit the issues as part of their PR spin they are bottom barrel scrapers.  There is no doubt that the issues have to do with morality and ethics–a reality which crosses all ethnic distinctions.  In the piece below, Jason Riley brings his moral compass to bear upon the Ferguson rioting. We are intrigued because it is a perspective not often voiced. Ed.]

Normally soft-spoken Wall Street Journal editor Jason Riley became heated during a rant on the Ferguson crisis, calling President Obama’s most recent statement “a dodge” and slamming the “false narrative” that black men are targeted by white cops.  Riley appeared on Fox News’ “Special Report” on Monday to discuss the White House statement about the riots ravaging Ferguson, Missouri since the death of black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer.

Riley was happy that Obama brought up black crime, “but then he attributed that black criminality — he suggested it stems from poverty or a racist criminal justice system, which is nonsense.”

“The black crime rate in 1960 was lower than it is today,” he said. “Was there less racism or less poverty than in 1960? This is about black behavior. It needs to be addressed head-on. It’s about attitudes toward the criminal justice system in these neighborhoods, where young black men have no sense of what it means to be a male or what it means to be black. And he needs to talk about that head-on,” Riley repeated, “not dismiss it as a product of poverty or racism, which is a dodge.”

The WSJ editor also took aim at black civil rights leaders and the media campaign they’ve created. “There’s this false narrative being pushed out there by folks like Michael Eric Dyson and [Al] Sharpton and the rest of the hustlers,” he said, “[and it’s] that black men live in fear of being shot by cops in those neighborhoods. That too is nonsense.”

“I know something about growing up black and male in the inner city,” Riley explained, “and it’s not that hard to avoid getting shot by a cop. They pull you over, you answer their questions. you’re on your way.”

“The real difficulty is not getting shot by other black people, if you are a young black man in these neighborhoods!” Riley continued. “And again, that is something we need to talk about more! Cops are not the problem.  Cops are not producing these black bodies in the morgues every weekend in Chicago, in New York and Detroit and so forth,” he concluded. “That’s not cops. Those are black people shooting black people.”

Ah, yes.  Sadly what Riley says is true.  Black on black crime is the real oppressor and killer of blacks.  Running a fast second is a false narrative–the idea that “the devil made me do it”, only the “devil” in this case is the “system”, whitey, the police, the rich, Wall Street fat cats, anybody, everybody, but definitely someone else.  “All of them are to blame for me picking up my gun or knife and killing my black neighbour.  If the collective “devil” did not exist, I would not be doing what I am doing right now.”  

Two things.  Firstly, where does that false narrative come from, and which people and entities peddle it constantly?  Secondly, the Christian Gospel will always, always press for moral responsibility and accountability to be laid firmly at the feet of the violent perpetrator (self-defence excepted) regardless of what temptations the system may throw up.  (Matthew 5: 38-42) 

Beware the Yellow Peril

Baser Instincts

In New Zealand we have had our share of muck racking, venal, xenophobic politicians who pander to the worst instincts of the bitter and twisted.  Immigration seems to hit all the right buttons for these closet racists and the populist politicians who exploit them.

Racism is a strong word–sadly overdone in many quarters.  It is not an epithet to be used lightly.  We struggle to avoid its use here.  It’s hard to come to any other conclusion, but we will try.  David Cunliffe, erstwhile leader of the motley crowd of divisives, temporarily coalesced under the Labour party banner, has come out opposing the sale of a large North Island high country farm to a Chinese company.  This is normally the political territory of the one or two populist politicians who can find electoral traction few other ways.  Anti-Chinese sentiment–which is racist insofar as it appears to apply to no other immigrant ethnic group or nation–is the final bolt hole of a desperate, cynical politician or one who is a genuine racist.  Now it has become the resort of the Labour leader. 

We prefer to believe the evidence points to a cynical, desperate politician, rather than a genuine racist.  Surely Cunliffe cannot be that degenerate.  Its his desperation that is leading him to play the race card, and the xenophobe card, and any other card, for that matter.

It turns out that China, the Chinese, and New Zealand have a long history.
  There is evidence that New Zealand was visited by Chinese explorers in 1421, long before Abel Tasman and James Cook.  Chinese gold miners flocked to Otago during the great gold rush in that province in the 1850’s and 60’s.  Few made it rich; many others settled here and have become valued citizens.  More recently, Chinese investment in New Zealand has been making significant contributions to our well-being and economic development.  For example, Haier bought the iconic Fisher and Paykel appliance company and have helped transform it into a greater commercial power than it was.  F&P, as it is widely known, has expanded some of its business operations  in this country under Chinese stewardship, taking on more staff.

Another recent example has been provided by a Chinese company buying up one of our largest waste disposal companies, Waste Management.  Ironically, Waste Management was a premiere listed New Zealand company bought out firstly by an Australian conglomerate, Trans Pacific Industries.  Recently, the Australian group sought to downsize due to overcommitments.  It sold to a Chinese company, Beijing Capital.  So one of our largest waste management companies is now owned by a Chinese company.    Not a peep of concern or scintilla of objection from one David Cunliffe.

But the Lochinvar Station–a large North Island high country farm–is apparently in a completely different category.  Cunliffe has stupidly come out to say that if elected to govern he would squash the sale by fiat.  We cannot have such iconic New Zealand assets transferring into foreign ownership.  Maybe land is in a different category from highly successful New Zealand businesses, such as Waste Management, or iconic New Zealand companies, such as F&P.  Well, maybe not.

When Canadian film director, James Cameron bought a significant farm in the Wairarapa, David Cunliffe and his raggle taggle Labour Party said nary a word.  When Cameron acted like a rapacious capitalist and bought more farms in the area, Cunliffe’s silence was deafening.  And then there is  the “small matter” of Shania Twain–who, of course, along with James Cameron, just happens to be Caucasian, and, along with Cameron, one of the glitterati–buys up a large South Island high country farm, it’s nothing at all.  Not a peep from the principled Mr Cunliffe, except, no doubt a behind-the-scenes request for a photo-op.

But a Chinese company buying up New Zealand farmland–that’s got to be stopped.  It’s wrong.  It’s unjust.  It’s evil.  It’s going to be declared illegal.  

What on earth are we to make of Cunliffe deploying this populist xenophobic bovine scatology?  Either the man is a racist at heart with an abiding dislike of the “yellow-peril” or he is an unprincipled, desperate, base politician.  We believe the latter to be the case–otherwise Cunliffe would have protested long and hard against F&P and Waste Management being sold to the dreaded Chinese.  No, he is just manipulating the baser instincts of some of our residual xenophobes in a venal attempt to get more votes.

Any wonder why politicians are held in such low regard?  Helen Clark at her worst was never so base.  Cunliffe is a sad poster-boy of the degeneracy the Labour Party now represents and seeks to exploit.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Their Temples of Reason

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

It is usually no fun when people play the race card, but when evolutionists do it, the results can be highly entertaining, at least after a few million years.

My brother Gordon is Senior Fellow of Natural History at New St. Andrews. He was recently engaged to teach a one-off course in microbiology at the University of Idaho, which drew this protest, and then this one.

There is a kind of evolutionist who insists that his theory can only be falsified with rabbit fossils in the precambrian, and then rests easily in the full assurance that anything with a rabbit fossil in it can’t be precambrian by definition. This method works swell for them, and so they try to use a similar approach to journal articles, terminal degrees, and teaching slots. Creationists are clearly not equipped to be in the proximity of any of those things — for are they not all cornpones? — and so whenever they see a creationist they chase him out promptly, and then use his strange absence as an argument. His absence is an argument, and his presence is an outrage. What my net don’t catch ain’t fish, and if it does catch one on accident, we can always throw it back immediately and pretend it didn’t happen.

The second protest, the one from P.Z. Myers, was the more flamboyant of the two.
This post, coming from someone who is simply unwilling to engage an adversary straight on, supplies multiple opportunities for our continued diversion, provided we wish to go down that road. What is it with evolutionists and dates? For example, and this is just a suggestion, we could talk about how many NSA faculty have terminal degrees in 2014 instead of 2007. And where do these degrees come from? Do they fall out of the unaccredited sky onto our uneducated heads, or do we get them from places that Myers acknowledges as temples of reason?

But let us not get distracted. I mentioned the race card. In the course of his screed, Myers said this: “That’s right. The University of Idaho has just hired a young earth creationist, biblical literalist, and racist evangelical Christian to teach microbiology.”

Racist? Got that? My brother is a racist because he is related by blood to someone who thinks that race-based slavery should have been ended peacefully, instead of with a monster war. What is it with these guys and their monster wars?

Since Myers was kind enough to bring up the question of race in a discussion of evolution, let us see how it goes for us, and how quickly it gets there. Gordon and I are both young earth creationists, which means that we believe that all the races of men are cousins, branching out from one another at the Tower of Babel no earlier than 4400 years ago. In evolutionary terms, that’s a nanosecond. “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26).

Myers, in the meantime, thinks that all of us are blood related to the lesser simians, and the biological odds are that some of us are significantly closer to the trunk of that particular family tree than others are. It is only out of politeness we will not enquire too closely as to what Darwin and all those Smart Guys thought about this subject — but I think it safe to say that they were the ones who produced the prayer book that the Grand Kleagle Wizard uses for his evening devotions.

Look. If I were an evolutionist, I would make a serious attempt to avoid talking about race at all for another couple hundred years. And if I had to talk about it, I most certainly would not have the effrontery to accuse creationists of racism. Fremdschämen is the word the Germans have for getting embarrassed on behalf of somebody else who does not know to be embarrassed for himself — as what happens when an evolutionist chides other people about racism.

The equality of the races before God is a creationist doctrine. We were not endowed by a blind, impersonal process with certain inalienable rights. Right? Those who claim to be following reason need to work a little harder at following out the premises their arguments.

Antidotes to Bigotry and Hate Speech

More Free Speaking, Please

There is a controversy broiling in Australia over free speech.  That country has moved radically away from free speech rights in recent years.  The present government, under Tony Abbott is seeking to redress the balance.

The issues are now familiar to us all.  Advocates of spurious human rights have promulgated the radical curtailing of free speech by proscribing “hate speech”, otherwise known as bigoted speech, offensive speech, racist speech, anti-Islamic speech, and so forth.  In reality all these proscriptions seek (and achieve) curtailing certain kinds of speech.  The Commentariat is agog and aghast in Oz over the government’s intentions to reform the current anti-free speech regime in Australia.  Consider the umbrage taken by a Sydney scribe, printed in the NZ Herald:

It’s all part of Tony Abbott’s vision of a new Liberal dawn. The Australian Prime Minister’s conservative Government intends to dilute racial vilification laws to enshrine the right of Australians to be bigots.  Amid fury and concern even within his own party, Abbott has invoked the greater goal of free speech to amend the Racial Discrimination Act to allow offensive, insulting and humiliating abuse so long as it does not incite hatred or violence.

Do people have a (freedom) right to be bigots?  Of course.  To be ignorant?  Of course.  To be a venter of spleen?  Of course.  Everyone has a right to go down to the pit in their own way.  It’s called freedom.
  But, says the caviller, there are always limits upon freedom.  Too right–for the purpose of protecting the freedom rights of others.  Curtailing so-called “hate speech”  does not fit into that category.

The fundamental flaw in anti-free speech laws springing up like mushrooms all over the place is that free speech is deemed (or imagined) to be in the ear of the hearer.  Hate-speech, bigoted speech, offensive speech is “proven” to be such if the hearer finds it to be hateful, bigoted, or offensive.  If the hearer takes offence, the speaker is thereby proved guilty. 

Imagine a parallel.  It is a crime to act with murderous intent.  A thug loses it, and hits his wife.  The state prosecutes and the courts convict with the crime of acting with murderous intent.  What was the evidence and proof of the intent to murder?  The wife believed it to be the case.  Or worse, the court rules it was likely the wife believed it to be so.  Therefore, the thug is guilty beyond doubt. 

The situation in which Australians now find themselves with respect to speech, (as do citizens in the UK, and much of Europe, and Canada), as bad as  the parallel cited above.  Andrew Bolt, a columnist in Australia, was found guilty in 2011 of “race hate speech” because of

his ”offensive” 2009 article accused ”fair-skinned” Aborigines of choosing their racial identity to get certain benefits. [Sydney Morning Herald]

A judge decided that some folk would likely take offence, and hey presto, Bolt was convicted of hate speech.  

The right to freedom of speech took something of a battering today after Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt was found guilty of breaching the racial discrimination act.  Bolt’s crime was to suggest that some people of mixed racial heritage, whom he described as ‘fair skinned aborigines’, only declared themselves as such in order to claim govt benefits.

Justice Mordecai Bromberg, who presided over the case, found that such a statement was likely to cause offence to those at whom it was aimed, and were not made in ‘good faith’.  This judgement was probably inevitable because of the manner in which Victoria’s Racial Vilification Laws were drafted. Because they proscribe statements that might cause offence, it’s now very difficult for anyone to debate the issue of race without getting themselves into trouble. [Tom Elliott, 3A Radio commentary.  Emphasis, ours.]

One struggles to imagine how folk can endorse and champion free speech rights, on the one hand, and yet applaud such censorious law and decisions, on the other.  Free speech rights in the West have rapidly devolved into free speech for moi, and curtailment of everyone else who offends moi.  It is this travesty which the Abbott government is seeking to redress and reform.

A victim of this infamous curtailment of free speech, Andrew Bolt has written the last word on the matter:

But is a law against free speech really our only and safest recourse [against racial hate speech]? Six years ago The Sydney Morning Herald allowed Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, then Mufti of Australia, to peddle a bit of denialism himself: “I, like many researchers in the world, shy off the number of innocent victims that had been estimated at six million.”

Hilali already had a disgraceful record of hate speech. He’d called women who wore no hijab “uncovered meat’’ for rapists.  He’d accused Jews of using “sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world’’. He’d praised suicide bombers as “heroes’’ and the September 11 terror attacks as “God’s work against oppressors”.

How did Hilali get away with that when we’ve had the RDA for two decades? Answer: because we had failed to use our free speech.  SBS journalists actually filmed Hilali praising the September 11 terrorism but destroyed their tape to avoid giving the “wrong idea”. Other journalists, likewise cowed by social and threatened legal sanctions against criticising Muslims, looked the other way until the radical threat became too obvious. Even today, news reports often delete ethnic descriptors such as “Middle Eastern appearance” from police appeals to help identify wanted men.

Even so, what muzzled Hilali since has been not the law but public opinion.  Media and talkback criticism finally became so much that the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils dropped him as Mufti.  Yet again, the best antidote to bad speech was free speech and the worst has been the law.

The proof is in. Australians can be trusted to maintain the moral code. Say no to racism, yes to free speech.

The best antidote to bigotry and hate speech is more free speaking.  The alternative is too ruinous to contemplate.

Letter From America (About Interracial Adoptions)

No Time for Identity Politics

Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, is the author of “Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches.” He is on Twitter.  [We consider Adopted for Life to be an excellent book, worthy of wide readership amongst Christians and churches. Ed.]

Updated February 3, 2014

New York Times

The same arguments against transracial adoption have been made before, against interracial marriage. In both cases, the hard social adjustments of living in a racist society are used to suggest that it’s better, for the children, if families are racially segregated, separate but equal. I reject that wrong-headed logic, in both cases.

I hold this view not because I believe we live in a post-racial, “color-blind” society. We don’t. The legacy of racial hatred and bigotry is real, and continues. But the families I’ve known who have parents of one ethnicity and children of another — including many of my fellow evangelical Christians — are among the most aware of this situation, and among the most motivated to work for racial justice and reconciliation.

Untold numbers of children are tangled in the foster care system or languish in orphanages and group homes all over the world.

Minority parents of white children teach their kids that the world outside often, sadly, isn’t as loving and diverse as the one they’ve come to know. White parents of minority children are often diligent to teach their children to take pride in their ethnic heritage, and try to prepare them to combat the evils of the bigotry they will face on the outside. These families learn what really every family ought to learn — how to celebrate differences while also celebrating a common belonging, in love.

Right now there are untold numbers of children tied up in the foster care system, or languishing in orphanages and group homes all over the world. There is no place for racist bigotry or identity politics in solving this crisis. What matters is the welfare of children who need a Mom and a Dad.

Can any of us honestly suggest that it would be better for a child to remain in this bureaucratic limbo than to be a son or daughter to loving parents whose skin is paler or darker than his or her own?

Chardonnay Racism

Ignorance and Unintended Self-Parody

Every culture has its list of capital sins and petty sins.  The latter, whilst being deemed wrong, are less serious than capital sins , which are regarded as the “big ones”.  Under the tutelage of Western secularism ironically racism has become one of the “big ones”. 

Racism can be defined strictly as a world-view which sees life and human existence through a racial prism.  One’s race (or more strictly, one’s genes) are seen as the determinative cause of one’s thoughts, words, and deeds.  Racism is thus a sub-set of the false religion of materialism. 

One does not need to dislike a particular race in order to be legitimately termed a racist.  To qualify one simply needs to see human existence reduced to racial causation.  For example, at its least offensive, racism may attribute certain musical forms to race.
  The blues might be de-constructed so as to be deemed black music–which given its provenance might seem reasonable, until someone like Eric Clapton comes along.  People afflicted with racism might persist in seeing blues music in racial categories, and argue that Clapton’s music is not authentic, not actually the blues, because he is white.  At this juncture, however, racism is just dumb, rather than evil.  Racism becomes evil when it elides into categorisation of inferior and superior human beings. 

To the Christian, genes and culture are not the same; they are equally ultimate within the creation.  All cultures contain elements of good and evil.  All human races are admixtures of the same.  Moreover, all human beings are created in God’s image and are therefore implicitly sacrosanct.  Racial differences and cultural differences are a cause for celebration, sin notwithstanding.

It is to play the part of the racist when race is understood to determine one’s being, so that actions, thoughts, words, deeds, motives, and goals are seen to be caused by race.  “He tells lies because he is white”; or “He is rich because he is Asian” are racist statements because of the reduction to a racial, or genetic cause.  To accuse others of being racist, however, may well expose the accuser himself as the racist, particularly if it is the accuser, not the accused who is thinking in racial categories.

Real life provides us with an example.  Consider the following:

Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei is accusing National Party MPs of “pure racism” after comments in Parliament about her home and clothing. 

For the record, Turei is part Maori; Tolley is not (as far as we know).  Also, note the phrase “pure racism” which implies unadulterated, extreme, without qualification.  We proceed . . . .

East Coast MP and Police Minister Anne Tolley said today that Turei, lived in a castle and wore designer clothes. Speaking during the debate on the Prime Minister John Key’s opening statement to Parliament, Tolley said she was insulted by Green Party claims that she was out of touch. She said said her role as an electorate MP included meetings with constituents who were among the poorest in the country. “I’m actually insulted to be lectured about how out of touch I am with average New Zealand by a list MP who has no constituents, lives in a castle and comes to the House in $2000 designer jackets and tells me I’m out of touch,” Tolley said.

Now, that’s not a bad ad hominem response.  Tolley is counter-volleying Turei’s accusation that she is out of touch with poor people. Tolley presents some evidence that she is not, then alleges that it is Turei that is out of touch, living a life far removed from the experience of average New Zealanders.  So, maybe Tolley could be accused of richism or poorism or classism in her ad hominem riposte.  Maybe.  But that would make it all a bit silly, wouldn’t it. To stretch it to racism goes way beyond silly. 

Asked about Tolley’s comments, Turei said racism was behind the attack. “I’m shocked that the National Party would attack me and my home and my appearance. I think it is a racist attack,” she said. “I think they seem to think it is all right for them to wear perfectly good suits for their professional job but that a Maori woman from a working-class background is not entitled to do the same. I think it is pure racism.”  Ask how the attack was racist, Turei said she shopped at the same place some of her opponents did.

“They do not think that a professional Maori woman from a working-class background should be able to wear good suits to work,” she said. “I buy my clothes from some of the same shops they do. I think they find that they can’t cope with that and I think it’s because I’m a Maori woman from a working-class background.”  Turei said it was unfair to attack her home.  “MPs’ homes have always been outside of the acceptable realms of debate, and so this very personal, very explicit attack, I think, comes from their inability to cope with my work and the effectiveness of my work, and an inherent racism.” 

Tolley got the final word:

Tolley described Turei’s comments as “absolute nonsense”. “The Greens’ co-leader is entitled to turn up in Parliament every day in expensive designer clothes, and good on her for doing just that,” Tolley said. “But don’t then lecture everyone else about poverty.”

We believe this is a clear example of someone alleging racism who by the allegation betrays their racist frame of mind.  Turei has taken something completely unrelated to discussions or discourse about race and  alleged that her opponents are disagreeing with her, and rhetorically attacking her, because of her race.  It is Turei that is playing the role of the reductionist, of reducing the discourse to racial categories, even as she accuses her opponents of the same. 

This kind of racism is not so much evil as dumb and stupid.  Turei’s ignorance at this point amounts to self-parody.  But underneath it all is an equally serious matter.  We conclude that Turei is embarrassed about her wealth and her (relatively) rich life-style because the Green Party is ardently socialistic and egalitarian when it comes to property and riches.  So she has sought to deflect the expose by alleging racism of her opponents. 

Sadly, Turei is exposing herself to be not just a false-accuser, but a hypocrite, and a sanctimonious one at that.

Alive and Well

Racial Stereotypes

Today’s proposition for discussion is whether some people think the way they do because they are degenerate or because of their race.  The stakes are high.  If people genuinely think and act a certain way because of their race–that is, if their race is a causative factor in who they are and what they think and do–then racism is legitimate in at least some some senses and cannot be condemned or rejected out of hand.  For example, if we were to observe that all women have ovaries that result in certain determinative effects, who could accuse us of sexism?  It is simply a descriptive statement of biological fact.

So, is race determinative  of people’s actions, thoughts, and words? Apparently lots of people think so–so much so, that many folk get apoplectic if they find someone of a particular race not acting and thinking the way they believe their race determines them to act or think.
  Michelle Malkin describes some cases:

This made my heart ache and my blood pressure spike: Actress Tamera Mowry, who is black, wept in an interview with Oprah Winfrey over the vile bigotry she has encountered because of her marriage to Fox News reporter Adam Housley, who is white. Misogynist haters called Mowry a sellout and a “white man’s whore.” International news outlets labeled the Internet epithets she endured “horrific” and “shocking.”  Horrific? Yes. Shocking? Not at all. What Mowry experienced is just a small taste of what the intolerance mob dishes out against people “of color” who love, think and live the “wrong” way.

Probably one of the worst instances is the opprobrium and hatred of Clarence Thomas–a US Supreme Court Justice and man of colour–who just happens to be married to a lady of pale colour.  Apparently Thomas did not think and act the way is race required and determined him to think and act. 

Have you forgotten Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was excoriated by black liberals for being married to wife Virginia, who happens to be white? The critics weren’t anonymous trolls on the Internet. They worked for major media outlets and institutions of higher learning. USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds slammed Thomas and his wife for their colorblind union: “It may sound bigoted; well, this is a bigoted world and why can’t black people be allowed a little Archie Bunker mentality? … Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman.”

Howard University’s Afro-American Studies Chair Russell Adams accused Thomas of racism against all blacks for falling in love with someone outside his race. “His marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community,” Adams told The Washington Post. “Great justices have had community roots that served as a basis for understanding the Constitution. Clarence’s lack of a sense of community makes his nomination troubling.”

California state Senate Democrat Diane Watson taunted former University of California regent Ward Connerly after a public hearing, spitting: “He’s married a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black.”

Are these kind of condemnations heaped upon those entering mixed race marriages a result of degeneracy of heart and mind, or are they, themselves, the product of the condemners’ race?  Merely to ask the question is sufficient to find the answer.  Such views are not the product of one’s race, but reflect a bigoted, degeneracy of heart–a rebellious denial that all men are created in God’s image, equally so.  Such views are evil, wicked, sinful.  Such views, opinions, and actions are truly racist. 

Racism is alive and well on planet earth.  And it is always the product of a degenerative heart.  Sin, after all, is no respecter of  race.

Extenuation by Race

Wretched Argument for Racial Inferiority

If we were Maori, with just the slightest smidgeon of self-respect, honour and decency, we would right now be hanging our head in shame and boiling with righteous anger, both at the same time.  On what provocation, we hear you ask? On this:

Christchurch defence lawyer James Rapley said Maori should receive shorter prison sentences because they come from an environment of social deprivation and inequality.  “Fifty-one per cent of the prison population is Maori,” he told the Court of Appeal. “Everyone says everyone should be treated alike and equally, but not everyone is equal.”[NZ Herald]

Rapley was arguing before the Court of Appeal to get the sentence of one Fabian Mika reduced by ten percent on the grounds that he was Maori.  Not, notice, on the grounds of Mika’s remorse over his crime, his early guilty plea, his efforts at restitution of his victims, or extenuating circumstances, but because of his race.
 

The three Court of Appeal judges said they struggled with the concept of reducing a sentence based on race. . . . “You’re asking us to take a pretty radical step and we just won’t do it on a wing and a prayer,” Justice Rhys Harrison said. “Because he has some Maori blood – and we’re not sure how much – he’s somehow less blameworthy or culpable. That’s an extraordinary proposition.”

We should think so.  What Rapley was arguing must be deeply offensive to all honourable Maori.  He is asserting a principle of Maori being morally deficient and defective.  He is asserting that Maori are morally inferior–as a race! 

But Rapley went on to explain that Maori criminality was plainly evident in the prison statistics:  Maori make up 15 percent of the general population, but 51 percent of the prison population.  Why might that be?  Well Rapley is certain that the fundamental causes are not to be found within the hearts and minds of Maori people, but in external circumstances. 

“Everyone recognises there has been a history of colonialism, displacement, high unemployment, lower educational attainment and high level of incarceration for Maori,” Rapley said.

Colonialism made me do it, your honour.  Displacement has suborned me to a life of crime. High unemployment of Maori people has led me into criminal paths.  Lower educational attainment of my people has made me set my sights on theft and rapine.  In sum, I have been conditioned to evil by my socio-economic-ethnic matrix.  At that point, Rapley is implying that Fabian Mika is more like a dog, not a grown, mature human being.  At this juncture, Rapley may evoke feelings of pity towards Mika, or guilt because we have all treated Mika like an animal, but–and here is the rub–such appeals to pity can only be traded upon if we all accept (including the accused himself) that Fabian Mika is sub-human.  That is the problem.  That is why the argument is so offensive.  But worse, it requires that all Maori be so regarded–as an inferior race.

Now, to be sure, Charles Darwin would readily have accepted such a notion. He believed that primitive humans were less human, less evolved than more educated and sophisticated races.  But we utterly deny the proposition.  We join with all Maori who rightly are outraged by Rapley’s arguments.  We refuse to entertain, even for a moment, the idea that Maori should be regarded as animalistic or sub-human.  

None of this is to say that Mika’s circumstances and matters which may extenuate or magnify his guilt ought not be taken into account by the courts.  But to argue extenuation on the grounds of race is an entirely different proposition which can only proceed on the basis of some form of Maori inferiority and reduced moral culpability–something we do for children, the insane and animals. 

If Fabian Mika is a human being, and he is, then he is properly and rightly to be held responsible for every thought, word, and deed.  That is what is means to be in God’s image.   To argue otherwise is ethically bent and an egregious insult to Mika himself and his race. 

Letter From Australia (About Child Protection Apartheid)

End Child Protection Apartheid

Miranda Devine 

Sunday, July 28, 2013 (7:31am)
Daily Telegraph
 
IN response to last week’s column on tragic Kiesha Weippeart, bashed to death by her mother at six, a social worker contacted me. She wanted to add her voice to the chorus demanding an end to the child protection apartheid which condemns indigenous children to subpar care.

For fear of creating another “stolen generation” state and federal agencies persist with policies which keep indigenous children too long in abusive homes, and require indigenous foster carers, despite chronic shortages. In Kiesha’s case, a court overturned a decision she be kept in foster care for reasons which are shrouded in secrecy but which are suspected to include her indigenous heritage.

“We work with this every single day,” said the NSW Family and Community Services caseworker, who asked to remain nameless.
  “If little Kiesha was not Aboriginal she would be alive and well today, thriving and being cared for by loving carers. Her mother would not have been given the opportunity to murder her.
“Caseworkers do their best to keep families together but when this puts a child at risk of serious harm we have no choice but to keep that child safe and sometimes that requires removing the children from their family.

“[We] make recommendations to the court, but in the end that magistrate who has never met the children, and never seen the abuse they have endured, makes whatever decision they feel like. The fallout from the stolen generation and National Apology is a ridiculous. Aboriginal placement principle policy that we have to follow constantly leaves Aboriginal children in unsafe situations.

“This policy shows Aboriginal children that they are second-class citizens because the abuse and neglect they endure has to far exceed that of a white Australian child before we act. This policy restores Aboriginal children to unsafe situations or to family members that are not fit to look after a dog, let alone a vulnerable child, just because they are Aboriginal.  This policy removes children from loving, safe, secure foster families and places them back with ‘family’ just because they are Aboriginal.

“The same families that have generations of severe abuse and neglect are given the opportunity to continue this.  How can this be in a child’s best interests?”

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

A Final Wrap-Up: Thabiti Anyabwile and Douglas Wilson 

The Bible, Culture, and Race
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 18 April 2013

Introduction
When our discussion first started, we were both surprised at how well it went, and both of us are very grateful to God, and to one another, for this great blessing. We have also been grateful to the readers and commenters who participated in this discussion in the same spirit, praying with us, and laboring to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3).

Agreements
We wanted to bring our discussion to some sort of formal close, and so this is it. As we understand it, our points of agreement are:

1. Mankind is one in Adam, which means we share a common humanity, and a common slavery to sin. We together believe that mankind cannot come together in a true unity until they do so in the second Adam, the only one who is capable of overcoming the sorts of things that divide us.

2. We both believe that racism is a grievous sin, and we believe that it is a sin that has the practical effect of undercutting the gospel.
Jesus came to cast down the middle wall of partition, not only between Jew and Gentile, but also to cast down any other walls that exist between any other races, nationalities, tribes, or tongues. Worthy is the Lamb, for only He could do this. But even He had to do it with the price of His own blood (Rev. 7:9).

3. The logic of the gospel is jubilee logic. This means that the messianic promises all looked forward to the day when the liberation of the world from every form of slavery would begin, and the arrival of Christ was the inauguration of God’s kingdom. This liberation from slavery begins with liberating men from their slavery to sin, but it necessarily and inexorably includes all other forms of slavery as well—whether the forms of slavery as they existed in the ancient world, or the more recent forms in our country.

4. We agree that the letter of Philemon is saturated with the idea of koinonia fellowship, one that Paul and Philemon and Onesimus all shared, and that Paul uses this spiritual reality as the foundation of his argument, urging manumission for Onesimus.

But Differences Remain
In the areas where we continue to differ, those differences are significant, although some of them may well be differences of emphasis.

Thabiti continues to believe that:
1. The history of slavery—even the existence of American chattel slavery, especially among Christians—represents a far more egregious transgression of love, the gospel, and humanity than represented in Black & Tan, which attempts a dangerous revision without sufficient historical evidence. He believes privileging man-made constitutional arguments over the liberty and full flourishing of fellow human beings betrays the gospel, betrays the command to love our neighbor, and fails to consider the balance of all the relevant biblical texts. That combination of revising the record of slavery’s inhumanity and privileging only the prima facie reading of texts compatible with one’s position leads to gross misjudgment and siding with the oppressor against the oppressed in the case of American chattel slavery.

2. A defense of “state’s rights” or the South’s withdrawal from the Union is tantamount to a defense of American chattel slavery. The inevitable consequence, had the South won the War, would have been the perpetuation of race-based slavery and all its concomitant evils. There’s no way to credibly defend the South’s position without also providing means for the continuation of its sins and oppression of Black people. There’s no way to credibly defend the South as a “Christian nation” while tolerating its practice of race-based chattel slavery, even if we hold to an emancipative gradualism. Only an immediate end to slavery would have been consistent with the “jubilee logic” of the gospel and repentant of the “grievous sin” of racism upon which the practice was based.

3. We need an unembarrassed and stalwart acceptance of every jot and tittle of the Bible, including difficult texts that pierce and challenge our own favored positions and cherished histories. After all, the word of God is a piercing double-edged sword which heals by slashes and cuts. We need to embrace what Wilson calls the “angular texts.” But we need not do that in a way that makes us impervious to charges (i.e., racism, insensitivity, etc) that we ought to hear or forgetful of the fact that different “angular texts” challenge each side of a dispute. “Angular texts” and all, as servants of the Lord we must be gentle, not quarrelsome, and certain that what we’re defending is the truth of scripture rightly understood and not just our favored positions or our pride.

4. The Constitution of the United States was never a perfect document. Its guidance then (antebellum South) as well as now (battles against abortion) is insufficient and in need of modification from time to time. To assert that the Constitutional issues at the time of the Civil War are directly contributory to the Constitutional issues surrounding abortion is a massive logical mistake. Despite some parallels, it’s better to recognize that the document has and continues to fail us at various critical points in history—slavery, women’s rights, and now the protection of unborn life. The Liberty Bell has been cracked from the beginning, a crack put there by the hypocrisy of ringing for liberty while holding slaves. The fix is not to root our current discussion in debatable matters involving the country’s racial past, but to pursue “a more perfect union” by more fully applying and defending the high ideals and values the Constitution does embody. We don’t need to look back to go forward, especially if we’re looking back with a biased eye to a “history” that did not exist. We need to be faithful in our own day, and that means not sticking your finger in the eye of people who would and ought to be cobelligerents but showing genuine love “in word and deed” (1 John 3:18) as we work together on life-and-death matters of mutual concern.

Douglas continues to believe that:
1. The “angular” texts of Scripture must be handled and understood in a way does full justice to them on their face. I believe this is possible to do in the light of redemptive gradualism, but this in turn means that not every Christian slave owner was bound to the duty of immediate manumission. After all, how do we interpret the text that says that the Israelites could hold foreign slaves forever? We can’t just agree to face these texts in principle — we have to actually face them and say out loud what they mean. Are these some of the words that are profitable for instruction (2 Tim. 3:16)? Further, because in our present day, such commitment to all the texts of Scripture is sufficient to get any Christian tagged as a racist, any a priori commitment to avoid charges of racism at all costs will necessarily morph into a regrettable softness when it comes to the issues of biblical authority on the controversies of our own day — abortion and homosexuality chief among them.

2. We have allowed our indignation at sins committed one hundred and fifty years ago to hide our complicity in the atrocities of our own day. I believe that the constitutional implications of the War and the Reconstruction amendments paved the way (in the realm of constitutional interpretation) for Roe v. Wade, and has resulted in a far greater evil being perpetrated on blacks in the 21st century than slavery ever was in the 19th. While it is good to be correct about idols toppled long ago, it is far better to be right about the idols that are currently demanding the blood of innocents, including many millions of black innocents. Our obedience before God will be reckoned in how we dealt with the sins of our own era, not the sins of another. My central interest in all these historical issues has to do with how the legal principles that were laid down then are being understood and applied today.

3. I do understand the point that support for the South would have had the downstream effect of continuing the institution of slavery, at least for a time. While the point is easy to make from this distance, it imposes, I believe, an extra-biblical requirement, and furthermore, it is one that nobody practices in our current situations. I believe it is too simplistic and is unworkable. For an American soldier to go the Middle East today and fight for “democracy” is also to fight against nations that don’t allow abortion-on-demand, and it is to fight for a nation that does. To help America is therefore to help abortion. Well, we would say, quite rightly, it isn’t quite that simple. I completely agree . . . but would also add that it wasn’t that simple in Virginia one hundred and fifty years ago. We really must use equal weights and measures. The Lord was quite insistent upon it — the judgment we use will be the judgment that is used against us (Matt. 7: 1-2).

Conclusion
In conclusion, we believe a fair summary of our conclusions would be this. It is possible for Christians to disagree about volatile issues. Moreover, it is possible — indeed necessary — to do so charitably. The strong disagreement makes us feel like enemies and strangers, while the charity reminds us of our brotherhood in Christ. The strong disagreement tests the bonds of our fellowship and love for one another, while genuine love covers over a multitude of sins and holds all virtues together. We believe we have experienced both the testing strain of strong disagreement and the preserving bonds of biblical love. We thank God for it even as we disagree about some things, agree about others, and hope to be faithful to our common Master in it all. We believe that this is what it looks like to labor to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace — it is kind of messy sometimes, but we believe it pleases God.

A Small Blow for a Free Society

Political Correctness Takes a Hit

A new Race Relations Commissioner has been appointed in New Zealand.  The position has gone to Dame Susan Devoy, one of our great sportswomen.  Some Maori have been up in arms.

The problem is that Dame Susan has had the temerity to express her frustration over Waitangi Day.  She also has particular views about women wearing burquas.

What is amusing and telling in the splenetic eruption are the arguments and reasons for objecting to Dame Susan’s appointment.  Firstly, the Maori brigade, as reported in the NZ Herald.

Maori groups in particular questioned enlisting someone who had been outspoken in her disdain for New Zealand’s national holiday. . . . In Parliament, Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell queried the choice, noting that Dame Susan had “already courted controversy with her views”.
Mana Party president Annette Sykes went further, demanding that Dame Susan stand down because she was not fit for the role.  “It’s so disturbing that someone with a clearly expressed … viewpoint can be appointed to a job that’s about providing independent leadership and advice on race relations, including public education on the Treaty of Waitangi,” Ms Sykes said in a statement.

Then there is the Islamic response:

President of the Federation of Islamic Associations Dr Anwar Ghani said Dame Susan should tread carefully with her new responsibilities.  “She’s entitled to her opinions, and I hope she would not bring that into her new role as the race relations commissioner.  You have to realise that this is a very diverse country, and you have to respect every diversity,” he said.  Mr Ghani said he hopes Dame Susan has changed her view on burqas.

OK, so what are the views expressed by Susan Devoy that has folk in a tizzy?

Dame Susan wrote a column in the Bay of Plenty Times last year which criticised the way Waitangi Day had been “marred” by protest.  She expressed her frustration that New Zealand’s national holiday was not a day of celebration.

In a separate column, she described burqas as “disconcerting” after witnessing an Auckland bus driver refusing to let a woman board a bus because she would not remove her burqa to be identified.  “Muslim women need to respect the need to sometimes de-robe in order to allow identification while New Zealanders should respect the personal choice made by these women without being ignorant and abusive,” she said.  “I wouldn’t want to see us legislate the ban of the burqa, as much as I find them disconcerting.”

There is a view amongst some that good race relations means agreeing with and kowtowing to everything they (the minority) do and say.  Annette Sykes appears to hold this view: the Race Relations Commissioner is to her mind a public official who would mouth and support all her particular views on the Treaty of Waitangi and Maoritanga.  Mr Ghani also appears to be of this mindset, but in his case he wants the Commissioner to respect every diversity: that is, he wants the Commissioner to mouth and support all the views of himself and his associates.  Anything less would be a defalcation of her duties.  Any contrary opinions she has need to be kept strictly private.  In the public sphere, what we say goes.  You keep your views private and out of the public sphere.

We have presented here the sad and dangerous face of political correctness and the increasing attempt by many to restrict the free speech of others with whom they disagree.  For our money, we hope that Susan Devoy continues not just to hold her apparently reasonable views, but brings them to bear in her role.  If nothing else it should result in the dismissal of frivolous and time wasting complaints from self-perceived victims of racial discrimination.  Many of these have more to do with attempts to make political points than with genuine racial discrimination. 

Secondly, it is not appropriate for pressure groups and minorities to insist that public officials hold the same views and express the same concerns that they may hold.  If Devoy were to use her office and position to persecute those who disagreed with her, that would be one thing.  But to criticise an appointment just because the appointee has views with which you disagree is something entirely different. 

To our mind, Minister Judith Collins (who made the Devoy appointment) had it exactly right when she was quoted as follows:

Mrs Collins said it was not unreasonable to hold views that were not “politically sanitised”.

Letter From America (About College Hate Crimes)

The Coddling of College Hate-Crime Hoaxers

 

 

By Michelle Malkin

March 6, 2013National Review Online

American college campuses are the most fertile grounds for fake hate. They’re marinated in identity politics and packed with self-indulgent, tenured radicals suspended in the 1960s. In the name of enlightenment and tolerance, these institutions of higher learning breed a corrosive culture of left-wing self-victimization. Take my alma mater, Oberlin College. Please.

This week, the famously “progressive” college in Ohio made international headlines when it shut down classes after a series of purported hate crimes. According to the Oberlin Review (a student newspaper I once wrote for), anti-black and anti-gay vandalism/“hate speech” have plagued the campus since February 9.

“‘Whites Only’ was written above a water fountain, ‘N****r Oven’ was written inside the elevator, and ‘No N****rs’ was written on a bathroom door” at one dormitory, according to the publication.

Swastikas and epithets were drawn on posters around the school. Activists implied the incidents were tied to Black History Month. The final straw? A menacing presence on campus who allegedly donned a “KKK hood” and robe near the segregated black dormitory known as “Afrikan Heritage House.”

Oberlin president Marvin Krislov and three college deans ostentatiously published an “open letter” announcing the administration’s decision to “suspend formal classes and non-essential activities.” The campus body immediately jumped to conclusions and indulged in collective grievance-mongering. The New York Times, Black Entertainment Television, and the Associated Press all piled on with angst-ridden coverage of the puzzling crimes at one of the first U.S. colleges to admit blacks and women.

Oberlin alumna Lena Dunham, a cable-TV celebrity who starred in a pro-Obama ad likening her vote for him to losing her virginity, took to Twitter to rally her fellow “Obies.” The Associated Press dutifully reported Dunham’s plea as news: “Hey, Obies, remember the beautiful, inclusive and downright revolutionary history of the place you call home. Protect each other.”

But what the AP public-relations team for Dunham and the Oberlin mau-mau-ers didn’t report is the rest of the story. While Blame Righty propagandists bemoaned the frightening persistence of white supremacy in the tiny town of Oberlin, city police told a local reporter that eyewitnesses saw no one in KKK garb — but instead saw a pedestrian wearing a blanket. Yes, the dreaded Assault Blanket of Phantom Bias.

Moreover, after arresting two students involved in the spate of hate messages left around campus, police say “it is unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred or — as has been suggested — were attempting a commentary on free speech.”

Color me unsurprised. The truth is that Oberlin has been a hotbed of dubious hate-crime claims, dating back to the late 1980s and 1990s, when I was a student on campus. In 1988, giant signs reading “White Supremacy Rules (Kill All N****rs)” and “White Supremacy Rules, (F*** (slashed out and replaced with “Kill”) All Minorities)” were hung anonymously at the Student Union building. It has long been suspected that minority students themselves were responsible.

In 1993, a memorial arch on campus dedicated to Oberlin missionaries who died in the Boxer Rebellion was defaced with anti-Asian graffiti. The venomous messages — “Death to Ch***s Memorial” and “Dead ch***s, good ch***s” — led to a paroxysm of protests, administration self-flagellation, and sanctimonious resolutions condemning bigotry. But the hate crime was concocted by an Asian-American Oberlin student engaged in the twisted pursuit of raising awareness about hate by faking it, Tawana Brawley–style.

Segregated dorms, segregated graduations, and segregated academic departments foster paranoid and selective race-consciousness. While I was on campus, one Asian-American student accused a library worker of racism after the poor staffer asked the grievance-mongering student to lower the blinds where she was studying. Call the Department of Justice!

A black student accused an ice-cream-shop owner of racism after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table because she hadn’t purchased any items from his store. Alert the U.N. Commission on Human Rights!

In 2006, I went back to Oberlin to confront the campus with the hate-crime-hoax phenomenon. As I told students back then, liberals see racism where it doesn’t exist, fabricate it when they can’t find it, and ignore it within their own ranks. I documented case after case of phony racism by students and faculty, from Ole Miss to Arizona State to Claremont McKenna, and contrasted it with the vitriolic prejudice that tolerant lefties have for minorities who stray from the political plantation.

The response from “students of color”? They took offense, of course, and characterized my speech as self-hating hate. Just as their coddling faculty and college elders have taught them to do.

I repeat: Mix identity politics, multicultural studies, cowardly administrators, and biased media — and you’ve got a toxic recipe for opportunistic hate-crime hoaxes. Welcome to high-priced, higher mis-education, made and manufactured in the U.S.A.

— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. © 2013 Creators.com

Revolution by Stealth

Divisive Politics; Destructive Outcomes

In a recent hearing at the High Court the attempt by the Maori Council and Tainui to get a court judgment that Maori have de facto proprietary rights over water by virtue of being Maori was rejected.  No doubt Maori will pursue the case to the Supreme Court.  The way the case played was interesting. 

Justice Young found (amongst other things) that the Government (which the Maori Council was seeking a judgment against) had been acting according to the law of the land.  Here is a key part of the judgment:

No review of Parliament by the Courts is permitted in law. This is effectively what the claimants have asked this Court to do in these proceedings.

That particular statement goes to the heart of a matter which has been festering in New Zealand for years.  Maori have told themselves, and persuaded many others, they they have authority and mana which is equal to that of Parliament.  This is the implicit consequence of claiming that Maori, as signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi, are Treaty Partners or co-Regents with the Crown. 

There are two kinds of treaties.
The first is a treaty amongst equal partners.  Free trade agreements (treaties) are modern example.  The second is a treaty between a superior and an inferior party.  The Treaty of Waitangi is clearly the latter: Maori ceded sovereignty to the Crown.  For the past forty years Maori have increasingly asserted the Treaty represents an agreement between co-equal partners.  Most people in New Zealand have simply nodded and shrugged.  We are all being duped by revisionist history being propagated to give one component of the population special powers and higher rights.  This contention has been acceded to by successive governments and has been reflected in numerous court decisions. 

It has been a soft revolution.  Justice Young’s decision throws a monkey wrench into the Maori propaganda machine.  We will await the outcome of a review by any higher court.  But clearly Justice Young is correct: the constitution of New Zealand has Parliament as the supreme court of the land, our highest authority.  The courts cannot override Parliament, or review decisions taken by Government under legislative authority.

Maori and its supporters have been arguing for a different constitution: Maori and Parliament as co-equal authorities.  They have won lots of hearts and minds amongst the Left, the Commentariat, and the universities: it has been constitutional overthrow by stealth.  Since Maori don’t have enough votes, they have sought to use the courts (successfully to a significant extent) to recognize rights and powers not granted to them by voters. 

Dr Elizabeth Rata is an associate professor in the Education Faculty at Auckland University and a member of the Independent Constitution Review Panel.  She has written a very important piece in the NZ Herald confronting these very issues.  It is so important, we reproduce it in full.

Dr Elizabeth Rata: Treaty no longer symbol of national unity

5:30 AM Thursday Dec 13, 2012 

 

Concerns over erosion of democracy are behind opposition to inclusion of the pact in governing arrangements.

I was surprised to read in Deborah Coddington’s recent Herald column that the Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand’s founding document. Of course some New Zealanders mistakenly believe that is the case.

Where the belief becomes a problem is when a member of the Government appointed and funded Constitutional Advisory Panel such as Deborah Coddington states that this is so.

In describing the Treaty as our founding document she has jumped the gun somewhat in anticipating the panel’s recommendations about the status of the Treaty. And she is certainly premature in gauging New Zealanders’ opinions on the subject. Attempts by successive governments since the 1987 Treaty re-interpretation as a “partnership”, including the expensive 2006 Treaty Roadshow, seemed to have been based on the misguided assumption that if New Zealanders knew about the Treaty then they would accept its increasing inclusion in the nation’s political system.

Deborah Coddington appears to think along similar lines.  However the rejection of Treaty politics by many is not from ignorance but from being only too aware of the profoundly undemocratic nature of political arrangements proposed by Treaty activists within all levels of government.

This rejection of Treaty politics has been the case for some time, despite the Road Show and an education system dedicated to promoting a Treaty-based biculturalism. Following two decades of biculturalism a 1999 survey of attitudes to the Treaty and the Waitangi Tribunal found that the Treaty “is a major point of division within the country”. Only 5 per cent of those surveyed “think that the Treaty should be strengthened and given the full force of law”. About 34 per cent want the Treaty abolished.

Ten years later, and despite considerable promotion, the Human Rights Commission’s annual progress report on Treaty issues for 2009 found declining numbers who agree that the Treaty is the country’s founding document. Since 2009, claims for public resources such as the foreshore and seabed and fresh water, along with claims for political control over those resources, has fuelled this widespread disquiet.

The entrenchment of attitudes opposing the inclusion of the Treaty in our governing arrangements is not based on a Maori non-Maori division. There are Maori and non-Maori of various ethnic backgrounds and cultural affiliations who are troubled by the implications of Treaty politics for democracy.

I consider it more accurate to put the dividing line between those who can be loosely grouped under the term “biculturalists” and those who maintain that “we are New Zealanders”.

For the latter New Zealand citizenship comes before ethnicity, cultural affiliation or religious belonging, although commitment to those identities may still be considered important. What guarantees a person’s political and legal status is what matters and that guarantee comes from being a New Zealand citizen, not from being a member of an ethnic group.

Biculturalists have morphed from the inclusive biculturalism of the early 1980s with its idealistic commitment to difference in unity to a separatist iwi politics. The first stage of iwi politics began in the late 1980s with the reinterpretation of the Treaty as a so-called “partnership”.

This saw the insertion of partnership principles into almost all New Zealand legislation. We are currently in the second stage – one that is hotting up with proposals before the Hauraki Gulf Forum for “co-governance” of the Gulf. This will cement in the so-called Treaty partnership and justify a place for the Treaty within a New Zealand Constitution.

Those who object to this, and I am one of these, do so for two strong reasons. Co-governance establishes a political system where the power and authority of one party, iwi, is unchallengeable.

That party is not appointed by the people and is not therefore accountable to the people. The undemocratic nature of co-governance is made worse by the criteria for belonging to the Treaty partner. Membership of iwi is fixed in genetic ancestry. Unlike democracy which allows for all comers, a group whose membership is fixed in the past has no room for newcomers.

The Treaty partnership model of co-governance will subvert the fundamental principles of democracy. Democracy is a political system of equality no matter what your heritage, and a system of accountability no matter what your race or religion. As equal citizens each of us can call our political leaders to account. If iwi as Treaty partner was co-governor we could not do so.

This makes the matter of the Treaty’s status of great importance to us all. To simply assert that the Treaty is our founding document, as Deborah Coddington has done, is not good enough.

Not only are there other contenders for the status of founding document (if we want one); the 1852 Constitutional Act springs to mind, but the strategic use of the Treaty in iwi politics to undermine democracy at all levels of our political system means that the Treaty is tainted as a symbol of national unity.

Soft Racism From the Top

 Whanau Ora’s Legacy Is Taking Shape

An opinion piece critical of a flagship Maori Party policy, Whanau Ora has appeared in Stuff.  More specifically, Andrea Vance has taken the responsible minister, Tariana Turia to task over her handling of the policy. 

A core concept of Whanau Ora is commendable.  It bulk-grants tax payer money to Maori social groups and organizations and devolves to them the responsibility to spend it appropriately, whilst holding them responsible for outcomes and performance.  Decentralization, making decisions closer to the coal face, is much more preferable to centrally controlled decisions made by (inevitably) incompetent bureaucrats more interested in ticking boxes and ensuring forms are filled out correctly than in actual outcomes.  In almost all instances decentralisation and devolvement of authority and responsibility is preferable.  But to be successful it is often more costly requiring a highly disciplined process of checks and balances.  The quid pro quo is that usually decision making in a properly managed decentralised model is of a much higher quality and order. 

But. . . .
In order to work properly, one requirement  is clear guidelines within which local parties can make decisions.  Boundaries have to be transparent.  Another is a very strict and ruthless auditing regime.  Yet another is severe consequences for breaches and failures and incompetence at the local level.  Gaming and freeloading of the system must be as intolerable for the guilty as for any line staff member in a tight, well-managed business. 

Complaints about Whanau Ora are beginning to burgeon.

In the past few months a series of mini-scandals and criticisms have been levelled at the social welfare fund, largely thanks to digging by Winston Peters.  Most damning has been the conviction of Mongrel Mob member Korrey Teeati Cook for supplying drugs he bought with a $20,000 Whanau Ora grant. At first, Turia insisted there was no proof – until Cook was jailed this month, which she dismissed as a one-off.  Peters revealed last week that an immigrant with a history of family violence, child neglect and drug abuse got help from the fund for his residency application. He has also uncovered a $60,000 grant to a rugby club to research “whanau connectedness”, and highlighted a $3000 grant to a hairdresser to hold two family hui.

It is inevitable that sin-riddled human beings will attempt to game any system.  Audit, discipline, controls and sanctions are, therefore, essential.  The no-mistakes standard needs to be led from the top.  If Tariana Turia does not speak up and require and insist upon high standards the scandals will multiply exponentially.  But it is reported that Turia has not fronted.  In fact, she appears to be conspicuous by her absence.

Around $5.5 million was paid out last year – $164m has been allocated over four years. The grandiloquent NZ First leader wickedly calls Whanau Ora a “bro-ocracy”, a “touchy-feely slush fund” and “a circus with no accountability”. Yet, when called on to defend her policy baby, Turia rarely fronts up.

When Cook – who was already on bail for violence offences – was jailed for four years, she failed to turn up to a Taranaki event where reporters were waiting for her to explain the misuse of funds. A quick search reveals this is not unusual – she didn’t show up to deliver at least 18 speeches this year, relying on someone else to read them out. One ministerial aide this past week told me this behaviour was “extraordinary”.

We are not aware of all the circumstances that have had Turia fronting by proxy.  But what is clear is that she is not leading the ethics and accountability charge in her department and ministerial responsibilities.  Because she is not, because she is not insisting upon honesty, integrity, strict compliance with guidelines, and a no-mistakes standard, with transparent consequences for breaches, Whanau Ora has been doomed to repeated malodorous scandals such as those now bubbling to the surface more pungently than a Rotorua mudpool.

Why might Turia be failing in this rather basic requirement of good governance?  Vance implies that soft-racism is at work:

The Maori Party co-leader is disdainful of non-Maori media. Instead of countering criticism, she attacked reporters for not covering Whanau Ora’s “good news” stories.  (Emphasis, ours). 

Unfortunately this would be consistent with a mentality Turia has demonstrated before.   She has a clearly expressed conviction that Maori have been ruthlessly exploited.  She has used the term “holocaust” to describe the “suffering” they allegedly endured.  Presumably all criticism of Maori is a continuation of this “holocaust”.  She appears to believe that Maori should be judged by a different standard.  Expectations should not be high.  Applied standards of accountability would only serve to continue the racial inferiority complex caused by centuries of racist oppression in Turia’s version of low-expectation, soft-racism. 

We suspect that to Turia, positive discrimination is a good thing as long as it favours Maori.  One manifestation is cutting some slack for Whanau Ora beneficiaries and being publicly tolerant of fraud and graft. 

At this point all Maori with even a modicum of integrity and self-respect will be hanging their heads in shame.  At this point, Turia has become their betrayer. 

Letter From Australia (About Racism)

Recovering Self-Respect

In New Zealand we are afflicted with a form of gross institutionalised racism.  Maori are legally and societally a privileged, higher class position.  Of course this does not mean they are superior in socio-economic terms, nor moral terms, nor in terms of family structures, or compliance with the law.  Rather, it means that as far as the government and the Commentariat are confirmed they are in a position of privilege, far beyond any other people or race.

Imagine two counters before which people line up to secure favours, handouts, support, special consideration, and institutionalised respect from the government and its mammoth tax-extorted, redistributive money spigot.  Each counter has a sign up: the first says “Maori Only”; the second says “All Others”.  Discrimination pure and simple.

The “Maori narrative” where Maori are considered a specially privileged people in all things touched by the Crown and government (which covers just about every human activity except what is performed by the rear end) is universally accepted now in law, education, the courts, the welfare machine, local and central government, offices of state, media, and the Commentariat.  The worst feature of all in this racist narrative and its fruits is the long term damage it does to Maori, let alone to the meaning of fundamental concepts like justice upon which society is constructed. 

Here is an Aboriginal voice from Australia telling it like it is in that country.

27 September 2012

Why I burned my ‘Proof of Aboriginality’

Kerryn Pholi

After a career spent in jobs reserved for Indigenous Australians, Kerryn Pholi has had enough of being a “professional Aborigine”. Far from closing the gap, she now believes these strategies are racist.
I am a person of Aboriginal descent. This is nothing special; all it means is that I could trace my ancestry back to a stone-age way of life more easily, with far fewer steps, than most readers.

When I think about my Aboriginal ancestry, I feel gratitude. I feel gratitude because modernity has given me a life of ease, pleasure and privilege beyond anything an Aboriginal woman in pre-invasion Australia could possibly imagine. As a person of Aboriginal descent, and a female at that, I am grateful that I had the good fortune to be born here in Australia in 1975, and not here in say, 1775.

Perhaps life for my Aboriginal ancestors (the Bundjalung people of what is now northern NSW) had its good points prior to invasion, just as European life around 5,000 BC couldn’t have been all bad … though nobody seems to miss that particular lifestyle much or yearn to have it back.

Perhaps some readers are disgusted that a person with Aboriginal ancestry would be grateful to the ‘white invaders’, given the historical horrors they brought upon ‘my people’. Nonsense; I can feel gratitude for my personal good fortune without needing to be grateful to anyone in particular.

I don’t feel particularly proud to be Aboriginal. No-one likes to see a skinhead thumping his chest and saying he is proud to be white; how is pride in an Aboriginal racial identity any different? And yet in a way I am proud of my Aboriginal ancestors.

Some Aboriginal people say they are proud to be survivors. They are proud to be members of a (somewhat nebulous) racial/cultural group that has survived (sort of) for thousands of years.

I don’t share that perspective, but I have my own version of ‘survivor pride’. The fact that I am here, with a bit of Aboriginal in my genetic mix, means that at some point my Aboriginal ancestors had the wit to take advantage of what was on offer, and so they survived where others did not. I feel pride that my forbears had the sense to discard unhelpful traditions and cultural attitudes, and make the best of their lot for themselves and their offspring.

Unfortunately for me, I did not inherit the smarts of my Aboriginal ancestors. While they were obviously willing to do what they could to make the best of their situation, I simply can’t do it anymore.

I used to identify as Aboriginal, and I have worked in ‘identified’ government positions only open to Aboriginal people.  As a professional Aborigine, I could harangue a room full of people with real qualifications and decades of experience with whatever self-serving, uninformed drivel that happened to pop into my head. For this nonsense I would be rapturously applauded, never questioned, and paid well above my qualifications and experience.

I worked in excellent organisations that devoted resources to recruiting, elevating and generally indulging people like me, simply because other people like me told these organisations that’s what they needed to do to ‘overcome Indigenous disadvantage’.

In these organisations I worked alongside dedicated, talented and highly skilled people – and there may have been room for one more dedicated, talented and highly skilled person if I hadn’t been there occupying a position designated for someone of my ‘race’.

In my years of working as a professional Aborigine, I don’t think I did anything that really helped anybody much at all, and I know that I was a party to unfairness, abuses of power, wastefulness and plain silliness in the name of ‘reconciliation’ and ‘cultural sensitivity’.

Aside from a nagging sense of feeling like a complete fraud, things were reasonably OK until I made the mistake of reading works by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence and Thomas Sowell’s Affirmative action around the world: an empirical study. (Please – stop reading what I have to say right now. Go and read this instead).

After that, I could no longer ignore the fact that my career was built on racism. Not ‘reverse racism’ or ‘positive discrimination’ – just plain racism, of benefit to nobody except a select gang of privileged people with the right genes and a piece of paper to prove it. In other words, of benefit only to people like me.

About 18 months ago I burned my ‘proof of Aboriginality’ documentation (a letter from the NSW Department of Education acknowledging that I was Aboriginal, on the basis that my local Aboriginal Lands Council at that time, circa 1990, had said so). I walked away from the Aboriginal industry for good.

It hasn’t been easy, and I am still working out what to do with myself from here, but it has been rewarding. It feels great to simply identify as a human being, and to work alongside colleagues that only know me as another ordinary wage-slave, and not as a pampered mascot with the power to ruin a career with an accusation of ‘insensitivity’.

It also feels good to do proper work; sitting around a government office essentially being paid to be Aboriginal is both undignified and boring. I miss the money of course, but I don’t miss the racism.

If you are an Aboriginal person with the literacy and media access to be reading this, you are not ‘disadvantaged’; you are one of the most fortunate people on the planet. You don’t need special assistance because you are Aboriginal, you are not owed recompense because you are Aboriginal, nor do you possess special powers to perform tasks that others could not.

To accept preferential treatment on the basis of one’s race – in employment, academe, the arts, the media – is to participate in racism. It does not ‘close the gap’, promote role-models or let you ‘challenge the system from within’.

To genuinely challenge racism we need to stop rationalising our individual self-interest, reject preferential treatment, compete in the open market for jobs, grants and audiences, and accept the financial and career consequences of refusing to be bought.

Kerryn Pholi has worked in Indigenous research and policy in various government agencies and NGOs. View her full profile here.

Hat Tip: Whaleoil