A friend of mine, academic Dr Melissa Derby, for whom I have a high regard, is a University researcher and promotor of literacy.
Being of Maori ancestry she cops cowardly abuse from the small coterie of Maori purported academics, mainly located at Waikato University, for not playing the game and her taking a Don Brash approach to special treatment for Maori students.
Melissa’s gutsy and takes it on the chin, therein maintaining her dignity. But bugger dignity. She’s due to come and stay soon so I’ll give her some training in throwing dignity to the winds and substituting counter-punching. I’ll also give her a bollocking for one of her past research papers referring to education being a natural human right. It’s no such thing for the very good reason there are no natural human rights, just wish lists of desirable aspirations.
Tell someone it’s their human right to say have a home and understandably they will then expect society to provide it for them. Nevertheless, Melissa’s paper published below should hearten those of us despairing on this issue.
She wrote this for the New Zealand Association for Research in Education on special privileges, or in other words, lower entry and expectation standards for Maori students which rightly she views is patronisingly insulting to maoridom.
Melissa is young and destined to be a big name in public affairs in the future.
5 Comments
The term “benevolent racism” seems to equate with another term “bigotry of low expectations” that I have read elsewhere. If students are not academically inclined then why are they going to university in the first place? If endless concessions are made based on background, they will emerge with a piece of paper and no discernible education or skills. It would be better for them to gain a qualification in a practical trade that will engage their interest and provide a stable future income in my opinion.
“Pakaha in our thinking”, in America the equivalent is the accusation, leveled against black students that take their schooling seriously, of “acting white” such a charge from ones peers I suspect contributes greatly to the failure of black Americans scholastically – to the extent that the black student population at many US universities is dominated by the children of immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, children who were not accused of “acting white” by their peers from a young age, but rather were looked up to by their peers in their home countries for their academic success.
I’ve come to the conclusion that once you go down the road of buying into identity politics (in which I include everyone from white supremacists to minority activists and misogynists to misandrists) you cannot avoid a mindset in which bigotry becomes a significant aspect of your ideological beliefs.
the soft bigotry of low expectations
Excellence is a human trait. I see no reason to define it racially. Those Maori who don’t wish to be human harm themselves.
No such thing as reverse racism. Everybody wants to be white.