The 'R' Word (Patreon)

ACT had been the wunderkind party. Its polling had gone from like 0.5% to around 16%. The party thought it had a chance of becoming the main opposition. But then oh no, National got its shit together, became viable, and most of ACT's gains went right on back.

This has been the source of much frustration within ACT ranks.

ACT thinks that National just steals its ideas a week or two later and rolls them out. This is a wee bit true but is also tough shit. That's politics.

So with ACT's polling on a very slippery slide, I've been surprised to see David Seymour hit the panic button so quickly.

Yesterday we saw this headline:

And I mean come on. That's like pulling all the lunatic right-wing levers at once. Except for one, racism, which I'll come to in a second.

ACT pledging to decrease sick leave entitlements while we are still going through a pandemicis absolutely bonkers. It's actually bad for business. My firm operates on an unlimited sick leave policy, because if you're unwell we don't want you coming into the office and infecting people. We want you at home, resting and recuperating. ACT wants people to work even when sick. Idiots.

The minimum wage hikes and public holiday repeal will be defended by saying they're saving businesses' costs, but it's just bullshit far right dog whistles.

But the stuff I'm most excised about is the racism. Seymour has pulled the racism card.

I did a tweet yesterday with the above headline in it. I said:

Between this and the racism, I am surprised that Seymour has hit the panic button so quickly.

Got a lot of reply guys, as I always do. Most of the opposition to my tweet came from people bristling at the accusation of Seymour being a racist. Nobody likes to think they're a racist, so as soon as they're accused of being a racist, they shit the bed.

Most people would say something along the lines of "what's racist about wanting equal treatment for everyone?". Which is a fair point, if everyone is starting from the same place.

So here's a concept explanation for why Seymour's criticisms of the Government's "race-based policies" is actually racist.

For the past 180 odd years, Māori have been treated like shit. Deliberately. By government after government. Nobody denies this. Well nobody sane. This has seen Māori over-represented in negative statistics, anything to do with social deprivation, crime stats, etc Māori feature high. Now the racist will go "this is because of something to do with Māori", the progressive will ask why they are overrepresented, and the conclusion that's easy to come to is that it's due to being in a lower socio-economic class that leads to all these negative outcomes.

And Māori are over-represented there because of colonialism and all the subsequent racist treatment that some after.

If you come to today, and you were to assign a starting point you might say that Māori are on -100, while Pākehā are on 0. So if you start from now treating those two parties equally you are doing nothing to address the gap in outcomes between them. Pākehā will remain on 0, and Māori on -100.

But it's actually even more insidious. Because Government interventions are used to, not just leave people at the status quo, but are effectively investments so that people make returns to get ahead.

So to further stretch my analogy, if you invest in Pākehā say +5, given where they currently are in their own privilege, they might be able to turn that +5 into +10. If you give Māori +5, because they're already at a disadvantage they might not be able to increase that benefit, or if they do, it's by a smaller margin. So they end up on -93.

This is a mess I know. But the upshot is that with Govt investment, Pākehā have gone from 0 to 10, while Māori have gone from -100 to - 93. And so inequality actually gets worse. You are further entrenching racist outcomes.

Seymour is not a dumb dude, he knows this. He knows he's wilfully being racist. And he's doing it because his poll numbers are sliding and he's desperately casting around for attention and something to boost him. Ironically, this is the Winston Peters' playbook, and Seymour and Peters loathe one another. They just both love a bit of populism.

I don't think many of my reply guys are likely to be subscribed to my patreon, but that's why your "one law for all" bullshit is racist.

This hasn't even touched upon the fact that whenever Seymour starts down this path it emboldens truly racist individuals to harass Māori - Te Paati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has said that she gets an increased amount of racist abuse whenever Seymour gets back on his bullshit.

There's no ending to this. Because there doesn't seem to be an ending to racist bullshit. Our politicians will use it as a device to get attention all the time. Chinese Sounding Names? Orewa? Two wongs don't make a white? New Zealand politicians have a revolting history of racism, and that's just in the 21st century.

I'll close on an anecdote I've told a lot. I was on a plane, flying from New Orleans to San Diego. I was in my seat next to some dude who heard me talking to Kim.

"Funny accent you got there, was this your first time in N'Orlins?" he asked me.

"Yes" I said. "I absolutely loved it".

"Did you go up Bourbon Street?"

"Oh absolutely" I told him.

"I hope you didn't go too far up Bourbon Street" he said conspiratorially. "That's the fag end of town."

I said nothing. I buried my face in a book I was reading and just allowed his bigotry to wash over me.

I am now ashamed of myself for that. And so I vowed that I will always speak out when I hear racism, or bigotry of any kind. So that's what this is.