On giving a hand up

So, I’ve been incredibly busy between RL stuff and other writing projects lately and this blog has suffered as a result. I’m not apologising for that, as political blogging is a very asocial activity and not exactly the sort of thing I need to be sinking time in- just explaining for anyone who’s curious where I’ve been.

I wanted to address a point that I’ve been discussing recently and have finally come up with what I think is an adequate analogy- and that point is offering a hand up to counter systemic racial disadvantage. If you’ve never looked after kids or been a parent, imagine for me that you have responsibility for two children and have determined that you’re not going to play favorites. One of these kids is really bright, and learns pretty naturally and has needed very little help. The other has great difficulty with academics and needs motivation and assistance to do well. Do you spend more time helping the kid with difficulties, and spend money/time/etc… on tutoring them when your other kid doesn’t need it?

I think the difference in our view on race-based politics that aim to improve the lot of Maori or Pasifika or other racial communities who have been left behind by a previously dominantly settler-based economy is based on the dilemma posed in my analogy. Many on the right of the economic political divide feel that any different treatment for any ethnic group is wrong. Many on the left of the economic divide feel that by putting scholarships and special programs in place to address the gap in educational achievement for some ethnic groups is merely giving help to those people who need it, and that, metaphorically speaking, the Pakeha community (or the Caucasian/NZ European one, if you prefer) does not have need of a tutor.

I say that noticeable disadvantage trumps the appearance of favoritism. There is a clear statistical difference which indicates underlying social failures that give us a real mandate for interference1 to create more opportunity for New Zealanders who might otherwise get left behind. You wouldn’t fail to tutor your kid if they were having difficulties learning, because that would be neglectful. You might not be treating your kids on exactly the same basis anymore, but that’s okay. There’s still an underlying principle of equality behind them: namely, that you help people according to their needs, and don’t neglect people just because they’ve had a problem or two getting started. While that sounds a bit like discrimination if you’ve never been in a place to experience falling behind before, you’d find it was very fair if, for instance, you needed a hand up from the government to retrain in the current recession, to get back into education after giving up on it, or something similar.

In short, the concept of looking after welfare- to support people to learn and to do work that they’re passionate about and find valuable- is a good one that should be applied to government, and not, as claimed by some on the right, some form of discrimination.

1 In the sense of “making things better”. Interfering isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even if you’re tired of “nanny state”. John Key’s interfered plenty, too.

Why Labour are also fuck-ups





Reaction: What isn’t wrong with hate crimes legislation

I picked up on an article in the online edition of the Times by John Cloud this morning on the extension of hate crimes legislation in the USA.

Firstly, let me agree with John Cloud on the critical point here: We can neither police what is in someone’s head, nor can we limit their ability to peacefully express their thoughts. This is what freedom of speech as a legislative principle is about. But hate crimes are not free speech, because they’re not speech. Punishing a hate crime more than an ordinary killing, assault, or harassment doesn’t risk punishing people for being wrong- rather, the angle of attack it’s most vulnerable to (and I don’t agree with this, I’m just being straightforward) is that it’s disproportionate punishment.

John claims that this additional strictness in sentencing is to punish someone for thinking bad things. I completely disagree: the extra punishment is because there are two crimes involved, not just one. The obvious crime is the physical or mental harm inflicted by the damage of the crime directly, and John correctly acknowledges that.

However, the less obvious crime is not that minority groups are outraged or encouraged to riot- no, those are reactions, not causes. The less obvious crime is that hate crimes are an act of domination. They tell people of other races, sexualities, or gender identities to shut up, take what they’re given, and to be very afraid that if they don’t comply with what a few violent and hateful individuals think, they will be harassed, hurt, or killed.

While these visions of kyriarchy might be protected inside someone’s head, or as words on paper, or even in a public speech, expressing them as violent crime aimed to intimidate and dominate the wider culture is indeed going further than a regular violent offense, and the harm that these acts of terrorism- and make no mistake, this is how hate crimes are intended to work, to terrify portions of the populace- need to be deterred with whatever extra muscle we can throw at them.

It’s also disingenuous to say that the only thing someone will care about with regard to hate crimes is the actual crime: I care about the motivation because that motivation spreads, and makes it more dangerous for me to be open about who I am, or for transgender people to transition, or for women to be out at night, or any number of other worries that come along with being who you are and doing what you want to. Hate crimes legislation is a strike back, it gives a little more courage, and tells everyone that the government is on your side a little.

John argues hate crimes legislation doesn’t need to extend to private land1 because hate crimes are already falling. I’m going to have to disagree with him that this is a good reason to abandon protective legislation: This law isn’t what’s going to end hate crimes altogether. The biggest reduction to hate crimes will come when everyone can actually understand and empathise with people of different sexualities, races, and gender identities, and I agree that hate crimes legislation, no matter how comprehensive and punitive, will make little difference. The point of hate crimes legislation is to act as a line in the sand, it starts as a symbol and hopefully gets people to think twice about making that leap from merely being wrong, which ought to never be a crime, to doing wrong- which often is. It gives courage to those of us worried about being a victim, and lets us act a little more closely to how free the average rich white guy can. 😉

1I’ll do him the favour of assuming his opposition to the bill proposed is not on the basis of it extending hate crimes protections to include acts of violence based on gender identity or sexual orientation, because I find the idea of someone opposing that appalling. Who knows if that’s optimistic or not?

Another experiment gone by

Well, I’m pre-emptively calling off big gay january, as it appears that thematic concerns, while great for making me do even longer pieces requiring lots of research, have also left me with a raft of half- or quarter-completed posts. It doesn’t help that this idea doesn’t really fit my off-the-cuff analytical writing preference. In that spirit, let’s talk a bit about race instead.

Anyone with at least half a television set has probably heard several times by now about the story of the Israeli woman who was barred from a Turkish restaurant in Invercargill. There have been several forays ’round the bloglines into pro-israeli and pro-palestinian positions, and even some on the incident down south.

Firstly, I’m glad to see so many people realise that throwing someone out of your shop just because they might be associated with a cause you fundamentally oppose is ritualistically insane. The woman involved was not a supporter of the war, she was not saying or doing anything to imply that she was, so this is one man’s (two men’s now, I suppose) attempt at blanket punishment. It’s stupid, it’s petty, and it violates the idea that he has opened a public restaurant. If I lived my life along similar principles there would be few people left who I could actually get along with. This is not the kind of thing that adults do.

I hesitate, however, to call it racism1. Not because there was no element of pre-judging someone by race- clearly there was. But because this was not some systemic attempt by arabs to dominate and oppress Jews. This wasn’t about systemic oppression. This was about an active and violent conflict that people on both sides oppose. And we’d do well to remember that in our condemnation of the incident over here: that this person is someone who took their reaction to what’s happening in their homeland a little far.

On the wider conflict: I disagree with David Farrar on the warcrimes bit, but while respecting his view that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself. Israel has clearly issued a disproportionate response without clear justification, their allegations that Hamas is coaching little kids en masse to lie to Western media is impractical at best, and there is already an internal investigation underway into whether phosphor bombs were used on civilians. (These bombs should only ever be used as smokescreens away from combatants, as they literally melt the skin and lead to an excruciating death that makes the end seem merciful.)

My general take on the wider conflict is that Israel is ignorant and stupid. They are fighting terrorists, not a war. When you fight terrorists you’re essentially fighting a political battle to deplete their funds, shut down their businesses, and tank their popularity. Why? Because there is no viable military solution to the type of terrorism that goes on in the middle east, where suicide-bombing is common, and where Hamas declares victory after Gaza gets the shit blown out of it. That is what makes their response so mind-numbingly unnecessary: not only was it wrong even if it had defended themselves, but in the medium-term it has made the situation worse. These orphaned children will now be prime recruits for the military wing of Hamas. Already weapons and fuel are being smuggled through tunnels, both old ones re-dug and new ones. The only way to end this is to go beyond ceasefire into meaningful and co-operative peace, with two tightly co-operative nations forming in the area that was once the British Mandate of Palestine.

But let me give you no illusions that I support the Palestinians, either. They’re in many ways worse than the Israelis in this conflict. Hamas’ military wing is a terrorist organisation that already has too much international support. Even the socio-political wing of Hamas has this obscene suicide-pact view of victory where they can sacrifice their citizens for a claim on more land that currently is under Israeli control when they sit down to negotiate for real. (Because none of them are under the illusion that they will win by force of arms. They clearly cannot, and terrorism isn’t stopping Israel either.) There is too much concern with “reclaiming what is theirs” and not enough concern with the welfare of their people, even if they have in many ways done a better job than Fatah.
Continue reading

Why are steps forward always accompanied by a step back?

Firstly: For those hiding under a rock, Barack Obama is now president-elect of the United States of America. I have heard so many amazing stories about this that have brought tears to my eyes, let me issue a completely goofy chuckle at the amazing feeling that having someone like you being your leader for the first time must elicit, (I get a small glimpse of it every time I get to talk with our incredibly successful youth candidates and/or GLBT1 candidates in New Zealand) and generally just lift up my faith in democracy ever so much higher. That’s even discounting the incredible, joyous relief I feel at the idea that the world’s most influential democracy has finally decided that smart candidates who can compromise, open government, and equality of opportunity over a folksy right-wing warhappy radical eco-skeptical neoliberal extremist who struggles with complex sentences and can’t behave himself appropriately on the international stage, but who might be kinda cool to share a drink with and could possibly fit in with you in church.

In short, America has reminded us that we can- and should- choose reform in government, equality, and democratic values. Even if the person bringing them isn’t our ideal candidate.

But it’s also been a bittersweet victory for many Democrats in the United States, and has warned us of wedge issues and the influence of social conservatism on the gay rights agenda. Many states just voted through propositions that revoked or banned gay and lesbian marriage, (usually in the form of a “protection of traditional marriage” proposal) including the incredibly liberal state of California2. In Arkansas even got through one that also bans adoptions by gay or lesbian couples. I’ve also read that much of the US$70 million that anti-equality campaigners spent on getting Proposition 8 passed in california was fund-raised out of state. The idea of more conservative or liberal areas flooding money into ad campaigns for their neighbors in order to enforce their moral agenda there seems somewhat chilling to me.

Had these been issues in the candidate elections, a lot of states could have lost some support among traditionally Democratic demographics3– for instance, 60% of black voters in California favoured Proposition 8. Convincing people that this isn’t about attacking “traditional marriage”, but actually upholding equality and the democratic principle of equal citizenship for all doesn’t just benefit GLBTQI New Zealanders- it can actually potentially change how some New Zealanders vote.

I’m seriously hoping that the results of our own election this Saturday won’t leave me with similar worries
Continue reading

Why rules are awesome and exceptions suck

Deborah over at The Hand Mirror has an excellent post from a while back on how a tiny exception in Act’s proposed tax cuts devalues women’s labour, by hitting part-timers (who are disproportionately female) with extra tax. This hits on a vein that’s essential to my feelings about not only feminist thought, but also queer rights, race relations, disability issues, and even economic productivity/fairness, so I’d like to expand on Deborah’s objection to an exception that hurts women more than men.

This is a great example of why in all types of complex systems- from Human Rights laws to the tax code to social progression- ideas that can be elegantly expressed as rules that have no exceptions make the best guidelines to live by. (I should point out that adding just a few “inclusions” to a restrictive rule is effectively the same thing as making a more inclusive rule with lots of exceptions, it just cuts down on admin costs a little more.1) Continue reading

We’re all in this together








Motherhood issues



And the backlash begins…

You’ll excuse me for taking a couple of days off on the weekend- that’s going to be a regular thing, and frankly, five updates a week is more than enough, even though you’ll probably get more 😉 Let’s play some catch-up!

The “Kingmaker” debate on TV7, ignoring its moronic title ringing of sexism and lack of clarity on MMP politics, raises a very interesting issue- the issue of racial backlash, where privileged groups, like Pakeha in New Zealand, feel undervalued because of positive discrimination that is used to urgently relieve the symptoms of racial discrimination. This has deep implications for feminism and politics that advances women’s causes in general- especially as backlash against feminism has already started in New Zealand. Continue reading