September 26, 2016
Real Housewives of the Kermadec’s
Real Housewives of the Kermadec's
MARTYN ' BOMBER' BRADBURY
Much of the media in NZ seemed to have been focused last week on a rich woman from Real Housewives of Auckland using a racist insult against another rich woman. News that research highlighted the justice system is racist however seemed to have been less interesting and received far smaller headlines.
It's odd that rich women racially insulting one another was the frame through which we examined racism in NZ rather than the naked truth that Maori and Pasifika people are treated with far more bias than their Pakeha brothers and sisters.
The lenient sentencing of a rich white teenager for beating a female police officer provoked an angry debate which was less about why Pacific and Maori don't receive the same discretion and more about 'imprison them all' sloganeering.
And one can't shake the ugly feeling that the current fury surrounding the suggestion that prisoners who have been illegally kept inside prison should receive compensation isn't being partly driven by the grim fact that a majority of those prisoners will be Maori.
The ultimate example however of just how out of whack our system has become when it comes to the double standards Maori are asked to endure came in the form last week of the explosion of anger over the Government's decision to just seize Maori fishing rights to build an environmental marine park.
It's funny how it always seems to be the Indigenous people who are just expected to hand over their rights to natural resources for the greater good. It's not the end result of an environmental marine park that is the problem, it's the way the Government just shrugged and stole it off Maori, as if their rights are the least important issue.
That's real racism at its most naked. Simply trampling a peoples rights as a matter of process.
The mainstream media questioning if our system is racist is 176 years too late.
Martyn Bradbury
Editor – TheDailyBlog.co.nz
Waatea 5th Estate
twitter.com/CitizenBomber
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