Ladies, I stand by that statement 100%. I'm fucking insulted by the idea that you think I'm a racist: I'm a member of the Māori Party, and I had (and have) plenty of friends from widely varied ethnic backgrounds.
I might put my foot in my mouth, but that's because I despise PC language. That, and my obvious indifference to identity politics, isn't inherently racist.
Read my AMPP policies, which include specific provisions for Asian Mental Health and improving immigration settings so that we can get more doctors that speak Asian languages into Aoteroa. 👍🏻
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Bluntly, New Zealand Asians with no accent face less discrimination than those who do.
And everyone from higher socioeconomic backgrounds faces less discrimination than those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
However, we're likely to be more educated, and therefore to complain about it more. 🤣https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/84371683/significant-name-and-accent-discrimination-by-nz-employers
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Plus, this was a fact-based assertion.
'wealth or being able to ‘pass’ as white makes a difference' [...] 'This challenges the conventional wisdom that systemic and interpersonal racism affects all minorities equally.'
[...]
'Wealthier ethnic youth were less likely to experience the effects of institutional racism. This means they lived in affluent neighbourhoods, attended better-resourced schools and had fewer worries about meeting daily basic needs.'
[...]
'In what may be a first in New Zealand, we provide quantitative evidence for “colourism”, or biases against dark skin tones. Thus, anti-racist interventions should include wider education against the implicit and widespread advantage of whiteness in society.'
You are rich: I'm not going to go into all the details, but suffice it to say that I know Salina, Cassandra Tse and Michelle Cameron come from backgrounds of similar or greater privilege than mine.
Plus 2 out of 3 of those examples are half-European. I'm just saying.... don't throw stones if you don't want me to do these rants.
I'm also very confident that Cadence Chung is from a similar background.
Virtually everyone I know in the arts comes from families that own at least one house, and probably more than one. That includes myself. 🤣
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Of course, my family virtually disowned me, which gives me some leverage to cry poor.
Genteel poverty, but obvious poverty. I've never made more than $40,000 p.a. because people dislike me and I'm temperamentally unsuited to full-time work.
Now that I'm out, I'd say that much of my work fell under the unpaid labour category when Riddell Productions was a business.
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Lucinda comes from a lower-middle class family.
Her parents still have an investment property, so that's why I say 'middle-class'.
I think of my own background as upper-middle class, though I mostly got there via merit.
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To answer the implicit question within my assertion:
I trust Michelle Kan and Kimberly regarding angles that cut, but sadly they haven't replied to me regarding my requests to do some filming.
Michelle K is highly underrated as a director and filmmaker. 👋
Check this out: https://www.moveparkourdocumentary.com/
That's how we met Michelle: Stephen did the post sound, and then we collaborated on the script for Portrait of a Knight.
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I'm honestly appalled when people call me a racist: I'm nothing if not fair, and this is about explaining that privilege is intersectional.
Plus we're all well-educated adults with virtually no accent (in fact, my accent is stronger than some of yours), and most of you are in paid employment while I'm not, so that feels like people punching down.
Let's put this in perspective:
'The Prism report, released today, revealed between January 1 2008 and 31 December 2019, the Commission received nearly 2000 complaints on the ground of sex and 377 related to sexual orientation.
According to the report 11 per cent of the instances of discrimination because of sex were made by people who identify as transgender, gender diverse or intersex.
Trans and gender diverse people were the most commonly discriminated against by government activities.'
https://www.1news.co.nz/2020/06/19/lgbt-commmunity-continues-to-suffer-from-discrimination-human-rights-commission/
And then there's the absolutely appalling violence and sexual violence statistics that I ranted about not too long ago...
https://amandariddellmusic.wixsite.com/amanda-michelina-inc/post/queer-joy
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However, I'm not saying there isn't any discrimination against Asian New Zealanders: I'm just saying this specific instance is somewhat pathetic. An off-hand remark, and someone feeling hurt that I don't trust their shots to cut together.
Newsflash: Meesh, you're the one getting paid by VUW to make films, so maybe use some of that money to alleviate your anger that I lack faith in you to direct me.
I'm not doing that script; I want to make it a comic book.
Here's a good one:
'Given the depth and breadth of research showing evidence of discrimination against Asians in New Zealand, one might be hard pressed to explain the high levels of life satisfaction reported by Asians in a recent national survey (84%, trailing only NZ Europeans). In fact, Asians are accustomed to using secondary control strategies, that is, coping strategies that involve changing oneself to accommodate external pressures rather than engaging in a confrontational and costly campaign to change external circumstances beyond one's control (Yamaguchi, 2001).
There is evidence to suggest that Asians cope with prejudice and discrimination directed against them by putting it out of mind or minimising the experience. For example, the Human Rights Commission's 2009 Race Relations report found that 752 of the 1253 race-related complaints directed towards it were for comments by MP Hone Harawira, and were typically filed by male NZ Europeans.
The group that complained the most about racial discrimination were NZ Europeans, the ethnic group that experiences discrimination the least in NZ society. Even excluding complaints following the Harawira incident, 25% of complaints were by NZ Europeans, 13% by Māori, 7% by Indians, and 10% by other Asians. This does not fit well with a portrait of whingeing ethnic minorities in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but rather ethnic minorities coping with a dominant and vocal majority. 🤣
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'The experience of discrimination, while common, is not frequent enough to spoil other aspects of the lifestyle they have chosen. Some people report feeling less stress in New Zealand and having more time to spend with their families than they had in their home countries (Meares, Ho, Peace & Spoonley, 2010b) and report similar current levels of stress to other New Zealanders (AC Nielson, 2008). They also have comparable high levels of subjective wellbeing to Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika (AC Nielson, 2008).'
https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/cacr/research/intergroup-relations/barriers-to-asian-equality/Confident,-equal,-and-proud.pdf
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Here's another interesting factoid:
'Some studies suggest that ethnic minority people are healthier when they live in areas with a higher concentration of people from their own ethnic group, a so-called ethnic density effect.'
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'Our findings show that whereas ethnic density is protective of the health and exposure to racial discrimination of Māori, this effect is concealed by the detrimental effect of area deprivation, signalling that the benefits of ethnic density must be interpreted within the current socio-political context.
This includes the institutional structures and racist practices that have created existing health and socioeconomic inequities in the first place, and maintain the unequal distribution of concentrated poverty in areas of high Māori density. Addressing poverty and the inequitable distribution of socioeconomic resources by ethnicity and place in New Zealand is vital to improving health and reducing inequalities.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3725420/
I think it's important to highlight that Māori get the sharpest end of the stick regarding racist discrimination by a significant margin, and also have terrible outcomes that are driven by poverty, so forgive me if I'm not particularly keen to 'apologise' to a bunch of privileged people that have good jobs and social status.
Come visit my boarding house. Then you'll learn something about poverty.
✍🏻🥝🐝
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