A WOMAN OF COLOUR?

Iranian born Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, in a newspaper interview, described herself as “a woman of colour.” What colour she did not say.

That term usually applies to people of negro, Indian, Polynesian and Melanesian ethnicity. Sometimes it’s said of Orientals although the vast majority are as white skinned as Icelanders. The exceptions are peasantry, as with many weather beaten white farmers everywhere.

I imagine Golriz would love to claim “Morrie” blood, this being the stock fantasy of New Zealand left-wing females, but as it’s well-known that she’s Iranian born and thus white, she has to forego that pleasure. Anyway, the much sought after “Morrie” female slots are already taken by the party co-leader Marama Davidson, with Elizabeth Kerekere hovering in the wings.

This lefty female “look at me” attention seeking practice of claiming minority racial heritage is not peculiar to New Zealand. It happens in Australia regularly with female politicians claiming to be aboriginal on the basis of a great grandmother and the like.

When tennis player Ash Barty rose to the top three years back some commentators made ludicrous claims of her as the greatest ever aboriginal sports person. Ashleigh, I hasted to add, was not responsible. Enquiry revealed she was, as her appearance made clear, European, although several generations back a distant relation had a smidgeon of aboriginal blood.

A well publicised case in America a few years back saw a prominent female black advocate who claimed negro ethnicity, blown out of the water when her fed-up parents spoke up and advised she hadn’t a scintilla of black ancestry.

Or consider mad Elizabeth Warren, at one stage a front-runner for the 2020 Democrat Presidential nomination. She claimed American Indian heritage. When that (and other background fantasies) were exposed as fiction, her campaign fell apart and she duly pulled out of the race.

So what can poor Golriz, suffering from being white skinned, do to achieve a desirable minority image?

One obvious possibility is to become lesbian but alas, that critical Green slot is already taken by both Elizabeth Kerekere and Chloe Swarbrick. Another would be deemed excessive.

I think I have the answer. When I asked our top political commentator Jane Clifton about Golriz she spoke warmly of her and said she’s a very nice person. That being the case taking up a sensible white woman role seems obvious.

But Golriz would then rightly argue Eugenie Sage fills that role and two sensible white women Green MPs could massively harm the Party’s sought after radical image. Co-leader James Shaw, although not a woman, is already hurting the party image by appearing relatively normal, if somewhat wet, and as such, as recent events showed, upsetting the membership for these reasons. Given Jane’s remarks about Golriz, taking up nudism or cage-fighting and such-like to obtain an off-beat image, plainly are not goers.

So what to do? Eureka! The Greens have an obvious current fashionable, vacant slot, namely Golriz becomes a trans. Being a Green however disqualifies her from adopting too butch an approach otherwise I’d offer to help with swearing lessons and pay for a season ticket to Warriors matches and instructions on how to roll your own cigarettes and such-like.

No; that blokiness won’t do at all for the Greens. Rather, Golriz simply announces she’s a trans, shaves her head and wears smart men’s suits which should solve the problem nicely and stop any more “women of colour” desperate measures to show she belongs with the Greens.