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The Spinoff is spinning like a top on “diversity” with their latest spin entitled “Why diversity matters (and no one should need to write this headline in 2020)”
Before I even started reading the article, the headline had inspired me to write this post as I am so sick of condescending racists/bigots telling me that we should select people based on their skin colour or minority status rather than the content of their character or CV.
Seriously, have these people never heard of Martin Luther King? Do they really think that he would approve of their racism of lower expectations? Do they not think that he would be angry with their covert opinion that people with brown skin aren’t clever enough or capable enough to compete with people with white skin on a playing field of equal opportunity for all?
Just like ANTIFA, who claim to be anti-fascist but act like fascists, people who push the “diversity” wheelbarrow are the worst kind of paternalistic bigots. They want to take care of people with brown skin as they see them through victim tinted glasses. They have no respect for people with brown skin as they believe at their core that shades of brown make human beings less able and more childlike and in need of support and mothering from white people who are more able and in the parental role. What could be more racist and insulting than that worldview? To quote Great Thunberg, “How dare they!”
Because I am 50% Lebanese and have olive skin and tan dark enough to be mistaken for a Maori in summer, according to these racists my IQ and abilities are less than theirs. I need to be given a step up and over those with paler skin regardless of whether or not I earned it or am better than them.
That makes me angry and it should make every brown-skinned person angry. Here is how the Spinoff article spins their worldview.
Why it matters
[…] “If you see yourself represented, whether it’s onscreen or in parliament, you believe you have a right to exist, a right to be heard, a right to be seen.”
Right there is a deeply condescending statement. I don’t need to see Lebanese faces on screen or in parliament to know that I have “a right to exist, a right to be heard and a right to be seen”. Being part of a vibrant democracy where I have equal rights is what makes me feel represented. If I choose to move to Fiji to live when I retire, being a minority there will not worry me one little bit. Why should it as long as I have equal rights and the right to vote? The above statement is painting minority groups as having incredibly fragile egos and incredibly low feelings of self-worth. It paints all minority groups as being weak and in need of cotton wool and mothering.
How dare they!
The reality is that people from every minority group have exactly the same rights in New Zealand as anybody else. To demand that they are included in anything for diversity’s sake is bigoted, condescending twaddle.
I will leave you all with a little story from my youth. After completing my BA in English and History at Waikato University I applied for Teacher’s training college. That year there were very few places available so I knew that I would have to have an edge to get in. I was told that if I wore a Maori bone carving around my neck or my Dad’s pounamu tiki at the interview it would give me the edge I needed as I have often been mistaken for Maori.
I made the decision not to wear a bone carving or a tiki and when they asked me at the interview if I was Maori I answered honestly. I did not make the cut. I rang them up and asked why I didn’t get in. They told me that my grades were excellent and normally I would have been accepted but that year they only took those who had an edge over the others. I asked what I had to do to have that edge the following year and I was told to get some teaching experience. I got a full time job working for the IHC in a sheltered workshop and the following year off the back of that work experience got in. My point is this. I did what it took to get my edge and to be chosen but I refused to get the edge by playing on the colour of my skin. When I got in I knew it was because I had more to offer than those who missed out, not because I was given a step up and over better applicants for an accident of nature.
That is the difference between an attitude of victimhood where the world owes you a living and someone who has a strong sense of self-worth. I don’t need to see people who look like me in top jobs to know that I have what it takes or to feel good about myself. Success (genuine success, not success handed to someone on an affirmative action platter) is what makes someone feel good. Diversity cheerleaders like Leonie Hayden at the Spinoff with their bigotry of lower expectations simply don’t get it.
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