whine
the rantings of a govt someone
Hey, I believe in freedom of speech. Who doesn’t? What I don’t like is theright to freedom of speech being abused so one can make race hate speeches.And what would disappoint me even more is a forum like this buying into thenotion that you must put up with hateful racist expressions because that’sfreedom of speech in action. Freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum.
There are other values we as Mâori – as human beings – uphold. And sometimes we need to balancecompeting values against one another if we’re to be tika in what we do. It might be whining if Rosina didn’t have a point, but I agree with her.Inciting racial hatred has no place here, it’s not a solution. Did we as Mâori really go through all the years of hurt and prejudice that racism and discrimination brought against us, and still does to us, only to do that to Pakeha? Even to entertain the thought, it’s not acceptable. It’s hypocrisy. You become the monster you once detested. There is no mana, no manaaki and no honour in such behaviour. These are not the values we wish to pass on to our children. Attitudes of iwi kç are part of the situation, it is true. It’s fear-based, it’s ignorance, it’s a lot of things – but it’s fixable. It takes time, but with a multi-pronged approach and the right leadership (Mâori and CivilSociety) it can be turned around.
How am I so sure about that?
I’m not!
But I choose to put my hope in that, rather than the unworkable proposal to neglect all Pâkehâ, kill them or send them off overseas. The Crown is breaching the Treaty, not the Pâkehâ – Pâkehâ never even signed the Treaty. With all the bullshit the Crown’s been feeding the public about our historyand the lack of good information about the same, can you entirely blamePâkehâ for what they think? They’re being deliberately kept in the dark. And its not as simple as saying Pâkehâ should go find their own ‘truth’about our history, do some investigating of their own on it – like read theWaitangi Tribunal reports or something. Our true history needs to be astandard, mandatory, integrated part of this nation’s psyche – that means itneeds to be in our schools, and in our constitution for starters. Yes, many of us can set up an email filter and send writers like Geoff to the junk email box never to be read at all.
The problem is, none of his opinions including the good stuff will get read by us. And that would seemto be a waste, don’t you think? A better approach would be for one person -Geoff – to do us all a favour and not to include racist, discriminatorystuff in their emails.
Catherine
Hey, I believe in freedom of speech. Who doesn’t? What I don’t like is theright to freedom of speech being abused so one can make race hate speeches.And what would disappoint me even more is a forum like this buying into thenotion that you must put up with hateful racist expressions because that’sfreedom of speech in action. Freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum.
There are other values we as Mâori – as human beings – uphold. And sometimes we need to balancecompeting values against one another if we’re to be tika in what we do. It might be whining if Rosina didn’t have a point, but I agree with her.Inciting racial hatred has no place here, it’s not a solution. Did we as Mâori really go through all the years of hurt and prejudice that racism and discrimination brought against us, and still does to us, only to do that to Pakeha? Even to entertain the thought, it’s not acceptable. It’s hypocrisy. You become the monster you once detested. There is no mana, no manaaki and no honour in such behaviour. These are not the values we wish to pass on to our children. Attitudes of iwi kç are part of the situation, it is true. It’s fear-based, it’s ignorance, it’s a lot of things – but it’s fixable. It takes time, but with a multi-pronged approach and the right leadership (Mâori and CivilSociety) it can be turned around.
How am I so sure about that?
I’m not!
But I choose to put my hope in that, rather than the unworkable proposal to neglect all Pâkehâ, kill them or send them off overseas. The Crown is breaching the Treaty, not the Pâkehâ – Pâkehâ never even signed the Treaty. With all the bullshit the Crown’s been feeding the public about our historyand the lack of good information about the same, can you entirely blamePâkehâ for what they think? They’re being deliberately kept in the dark. And its not as simple as saying Pâkehâ should go find their own ‘truth’about our history, do some investigating of their own on it – like read theWaitangi Tribunal reports or something. Our true history needs to be astandard, mandatory, integrated part of this nation’s psyche – that means itneeds to be in our schools, and in our constitution for starters. Yes, many of us can set up an email filter and send writers like Geoff to the junk email box never to be read at all.
The problem is, none of his opinions including the good stuff will get read by us. And that would seemto be a waste, don’t you think? A better approach would be for one person -Geoff – to do us all a favour and not to include racist, discriminatorystuff in their emails.
Catherine
posted by karenapuhi at 6:34 PM
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