Touching a racial nerve
p. 13 · Read in the full issue
I’M NOt sure whether it’s because New Zealand is a multi-cultural society or in spite of the fact, but we do have a depressing ability in this country to stir up racial hornets’ nests with all too great a frequency.
The most casual comment on differences between the races can touch racial nerves and explode a barrage of recriminations which sel dom clear the air or clarify the issue but inevitably make the situation worse.
For this reason, racial questions which probably need to be discussed in any healthy society are often ignored, shoved to the back of the nation’s
consciousness or only lightly touched upon before being hurriedly dispatched to that Pandora’s box of subjects which are not polite to talk about.
Nobody likes to be tagged a racist or to be unpopular, and if there is anything else certain in this world other than death or taxes, it is that it’s impossible to raise a racial issue in New Zealand without being put into one of thos categories.
Social Welfare Minister Jenny Shipley found this out recently when she reported on the dramatic increase in child abuse and the disproportionate number of Maori and Pacific island cases.
She produced statistics showing that reported child abuse cases had jumped from 10,600 to nearly 25,000 in five years.
She said Pacific island people accounted for nearly eight per cent of the family group conferences called when a child was deemed to be in need of care and protection, although they were only 3.6 per cent of the population.
Maori (about 12 per cent of the population) figured in 42 per cent of the case conferences, while pakeha (79 per cent) accounted for about 47 per cent of the meetings.
“We know that culturally as the Pacific island population increases in New Zealand there may be a factor there... that is unspoken,” she said. “But it is an issue that must be spoken about in New Zealand society.”
Although she was at pains to say there were significant amounts of unreported child abuse in all three communities, the reaction was predictable.
She was accused of naked racism, vilified on talk-back radio and made subject of a volley of complaints to the Race Relations Office. Few critics echoed her concern about the rising number of child abuse cases; most centred only on her references to a possible link with the rising Pacific island
population.
The real issue that more and more New Zealanders are beating the hell out of their kids was obscured as the racial nerve was exposed. Sadly, as all too often happens, the subject
Wellington
was quickly dropped because of its racial sensitivities, and that means the country has again evaded a debate on a pressing social issue that it needs to have.
“If abuse of our children is to be dealt with, we cannot continue to gloss over, blame, justify or walk away from the hard facts,” Shipley said.
Pacific Island Affairs Minister Don McKinnon moved to calm the row, pointing out it was culturally inappropriate to use a pakeha defi nition of child abuse when studying Pacific island communities. The island peoples were traditionally strong disciplinarians, he said, with
a strong sense of family which was lacking in some pakeha communities.
“There are differences between what Pacific island communities and others might define as discipline or abuse.”
McKinnon said Pacific island people had different social values which should not be “shoe-horned into a pakeha set of values of what is right and what is wrong”.
But the fact that the Pacific island community was growing rapidly did mean the incidence of child abuse as defined in pakeha terms was increasing too.
Significantly, Shipley did win support from an Auckland based island social worker, Amalaini Ligalevu, who con gratulated her for raising an issue she said had been swept under the carpet for far too long.
She said a lot of child abuse was not reported because the women were too afraid and church ministers said reporting cases would reflect badly on the Pacific island community.
“Child abuse is child abuse and there is nothing cultural about it,” she said.
She was backed up by Maori author Alan Duff who accused school principals of covering up Maori parental neglect and abuse because they were afraid to speak out for fear of being labelled racist. He said they were better placed than anyone to know what was going on in families.
Where Shipley was vulnerable was in ignoring the impact of her government’s economic policies, which have hit Pacific island people harder than most, on the child abuse question.
Critics pointed out at least one in four Pacific islander is unemployed (againsst a national rate of 10 per cent) and said hardship and poverty put stresses on families that created tensions and increased the likelihood of abuse.