Son of the Ethnicity Question

Census night was last night, and there’s been lots of interesting comment on that last post, so I figured it was worth returning to this topic. Here, then, is another bunch of thoughts and things. Some of it I’ve though through, some of it I haven’t. Go wild.
Pakeha
So it turns out that on the Maori version of the census form, ‘NZ European’ is translated as ‘Pakeha’. Interesting.
Some people have said that Pakeha ‘grates’. I can accept that. I think it’s largely because the word only turns up in divisive contexts, so its associations will be with confrontational discourse and challenges to identity. Layer on the cultural mythology that it’s an insulting term, and you have a situation where the label does, as a simple point of fact, grate. That doesn’t mean it’s not a useful category label or an appropriate category label. It does mean it’s not an acceptable category label, at least in terms of the census, because you want to use category labels that are as neutral as possible in order to get the most accurate data you can. The term can certainly be rehabilitated so it doesn’t ‘grate’; the question is whether or not Kiwi culture will adopt this task on or not.
Maire said that Pakeha is in current use to denote the broader meaning of ‘non-Maori’ rather than the specific ‘white New Zealander’. This is news to me, and I’d be interested to see an example. I do think common usage of the word is very definitely a specific ‘white New Zealander’ meaning. Cal has mentioned to me at least one instance where a service provider draws a distinction between Pakeha (in the common meaning I understand it) and Tauiwi (which has the broad meaning of ‘not Maori).
My copy of Harry Orsman’s wonderful OXford Dictionary of New Zealand English gives as its primary definition:

A pale-skinned non-Polynesian immigrant or foreigner as distinct from a Maori; thence, a non-Polynesian New Zealand-born New Zealander esp. if pale-skinned. In pl. Europeans as an ethnic category.

Which really doesn’t get us anywhere new, except to note that Tauiwi doesn’t appear at all. Of course, language can move fast, and the dictionary is almost a decade old; I think it’s likely we’re both right, in that the common usage is as I understand it (white NZer) but other, broader meanings are still occasionally used.
I think, while I’m on the subject, that Pakeha is an incredibly useful term, specifically as a designate of the other half of the Treaty of Waitangi’s partnership. I’ll go further, in fact: I believe that if there’s going to be an inclusive New Zealand nationalism that deals with its cultural divisions, then its going to require a Pakeha identity, using that word.
Digging Deeper
A lot of the rhetoric around the ‘write in New Zealander’ campaign has centred around opposition to the simple fact of categorisation and what it means.
From the original email:

…we are proud of who we are and… we want to be recognised as such, not divided into sub-categories and treated as foreigners in our own country

From columnist Frank Haden, the reliable voice of reactionary New Zealand:

We are directed to separate ourselves into mutually exclusive ethnic groups, strengthening divisions that in the national interest should be ignored… There is “New Zealand European”, a brand that does not describe me. It does not describe the others like me who take offence at being so arbitrarily herded into an ideological pen… [Other ethnic categories] are all New Zealanders, but they are asked to identify themselves as aliens, victims of the government’s politically correct obsession with keeping ethnic groups identifiable as mutual strangers.

There’s a lot of meaning that we can unpack out of this. Indulge me…
Firstly, if there are divisions in society, they emerge or are maintained artificially – they are imposed from above, particularly by government.
Secondly, it is moral to remove such divisions in society. Patterned differences are either themselves immoral, or they promote/support/require immoral activity. (‘Moral’ in the large-scale sense of ‘what is right for society’.)
Thirdly, the proper conception of society is a level playing field. To put it a different way, the argument implicitly supports the notion that society should be blind to categories in order to provide the same opportunities to all.
(This is of course a source of deep, passionate political division. The phrase ‘special treatment for Maori’ is a flag for this issue in New Zealand’s political discourse, and it is a well-known political grenade in the U.S. under the moniker ‘affirmative action’.)
Ethnicity as Strategic Identity
I ran into my old Anth prof in Fidels’ yesterday and we chatted over a latte. Not about any of this, but it reminded me of a bunch of stuff from Anth that I take as read now, even though it was quite revelatory to me at the time.
Among these things: the fact that ethnic identity is a strategic concern. We deploy it in different ways in different contexts.
Ethnicity is more or less crucial to us depending on our circumstances, our power, and the way our society conceives of identities to which we could claim membership. It is, to say the least, a problematic concept. I would argue that the ‘write in New Zealander’ thing is in fact a denial of ethnicity – a claim, essentially, that ‘I am not ethnic’. This goes back to the power relations discussed in the previous post.
In my head at least, this swings back around to homeperm’s comment about my misconception of the biological angle – I’m surprised to discover how underplayed it is in public health, considering the increases in genetic science and related improvements in understanding hereditary vulnerability to certain health problems. But I defer to her superior knowledge. 🙂
In any case, she concludes that ethnicity-as-social-construct is of primary use even in something as biologically-oriented as public health. Fair enough. Somehow, I don’t think a broad and diverse ‘New Zealander’ category is going to be very useful though. There’s probably a conclusion or inference to be drawn from this but I can’t see it. Possibly something about the very word ‘ethnicity’ and its fuzzy meaning and, perhaps, its inappropriateness as a category on the census. Hmm.
Sundry Other Bits And Pieces
Jack suggests perceiving ‘New Zealand European’ in the same way as ‘African American’. It’s a smart comment, but I think the word order is crucial here. ‘European New Zealander’ is closer to the mark, and might be a more accepted (hence useful for census) category than ‘New Zealand European’. Worth thinking about anyway.
Kiwi in Zurich points out another suggestion I’ve seen in one or two places – dividing the question up between ‘ancestry’ and ‘identity’. I think that’d be quite effective, actually, and would get better information than one question. However, since ethnic identity by definition relates to ancestry, it’s kinda silly to ask the same question twice, but as Kiwi in Zurich says, “you know how people are when it comes to labels…”
Chuck challenges my comment about the utility of the census being compromised by the ‘New Zealander’ thing. I stand by it. Writing in ‘New Zealander’ dodges the obvious purpose of the question. (It isn’t just white NZers who will have written in ‘New Zealander’, either.)
There’s a bunch of other interesting and salient points by the people I’ve mentioned and by others to which I have nothing to say. I’ll only note that Joey Narcotic is a dangerous man. He has been exploding frogs again, and must be hunted down and mummified immediately in order to preserve the safety of our children. Be warned.

26 thoughts on “Son of the Ethnicity Question”

  1. Yes, but the entry for pakeha goes on further than the one bit you quote, and does cover non-Maori in general as well as people of European origin.
    However, if Orsman doesn’t mention tauiwi, that doesn’t have to mean something. The Orsman edition of the Oxford NZ dictionary is a little bit unreliable: my favourite example is the entry for bogan: “an uncouth or stupidly conventional person, a ‘nerd’.” No citation given by him appears to justify this.

  2. The limitations of Orsman notwithstanding, I was quoting only the first definition because even there it explicitly includes in its definition Pakeha as any non-Maori.
    Anyway, is much of a muchness. I just liked the excuse to drag it out. Lovely book 🙂

  3. just so you know, we maori get to fill in both an ethnicity and an ancestry question. lucky ahe? also genetics is key on an individual level – eg does type 1 diabetes run in my family? etc… but on a population level it gets hazy. and for maori it is often at this population level that genetics is used to justify inequitable outcomes. and other groups besides. eg the thrifty gene stuff to explain obesity among polynesians. i was taught that in anthropology. honestly. that was like less than ten years ago. the theory being that polynesians had to travel the oceans to find land and had to be at sea for so long – starving – that a genetic mutation occured: the thrifty gene, which stored sugars and fats etc… for when they were really needed. but as we know it takes a couple of weeks to sail between the islands. and more than a couple of weeks for a genetic mutation to occur in a population. well, it’s just implausible. but whose purposes does it serve? why it serves a system that creates an obeseogenic environment for one thing. i’m too into this. i should stop.

  4. OK Morgue, wrt the utility, I’m happy with you standing by the fact that you think it is a dodge, but if it is a dodge, then the census designers have allowed it and therefore MUST be willing to deal with the results it creates. I’ve still not read or heard any argument as to why a bunch of european decent new zealanders will bugger up the results by claiming to be NZer.
    And I’d argue that it is because the census analysts will know that the VAST majority of people that wrote NZer in the other box will be a) white b) of European descent, and therefore allow the statisticians to reasonably accurately lump these results with the NZ Euro pile.
    Besides which, the NZ euro/pakeha/NZer statistic is NOT the important statistic as this can be defined by exclusion from all the other labels. Therefore it is far more important that those of Maori/Pacific Is.(etc) decent accurately identify with who they are as accurately as possible. It is far easier for errors and changes in smaller populations to have a large effect on that population than errors and changes within a large population.
    Yes I’m arguing that writing NZer achieves nothing significant statistically, but it does allow those amongst us who do not consider themselves to be NZ Euro to step away from that label on an individual level. And there is nothing dodgy about that!

  5. Chuck, it will bugger up the results because it requires an assumption that the people who put ‘New Zealander’ are of European descent. I know of a number of migrants to NZ from middle eastern countries who would love to put ‘New Zealander’ as a sign of belonging to their new country. How many people of non-Eurpoean descent will think it’s a good idea to write New Zealander? We don’t know. And why should people of Eurpoean descent be assumed to be the ones who consider themelves as ‘New Zealanders’ but not people from other ethnicities? Aren’t Maori New Zealanders? In fact I think it’s down right offensive that a bunch of whities want everyone to make the assumption that “New Zealander’ is the label that belongs to them, to the exclusion of people from other ethnicities.
    And I don’t know that I like my ethnicity being defined by exclusion. Which is why I chose to tick other and write ‘pakeha’. That may also bugger up the census results but it is more accepted that ‘pakeha’ means of eurpoean descent than ‘New Zealander’ does.

  6. cal reminds me that my initial reason for hating that tick other: new zealander email was that had something like: being a NZ european is like being made to feel like a foreigner in our own country. when HELLO! maybe maori may feel that way too if NZer is an option. maybe??? i’m over this. no more from me:) maybe.

  7. Here’s a question:
    Why are so many people of European descent so quick to deny their heritage?
    What are they ashamed of?

  8. Pearce,
    it is not about denying European heritage, it is about not identifying as European. I live here, smack bang in the heart of Europe, and I am simply not European in any way that it matters beyond appearance. Beyond that which I have adopted, I share little of the culture or language that makes up this place, and that includes the UK which I suppose in Europe is about as close to ‘average’ NZ as you get. More than that, for me to describe myself as a European to a European would probably be greeted with incredulity at best.
    What frustrates me (from a distance) about this whole census debate is that National(?) turned it into an argument about identity when the real questions here are ‘what statistical information is trying to be collected’ and ‘is collection of that information a valid pursuit’. I think Morgue identified it correctly in his first post saying that it is about identifying ‘white’ New Zealanders. And I guess there is a statistical interest in that, but what actual use that actually is, I’m not sure. If there is a genetic and therefore health and therefore govt resource basis for focussing on different genetic mixes, then fine. I don’t know enough to know whether this is true, and besides I suspect you would find something like household income would be equally useful in terms of resource allocation.
    If there is a valid reason to collect ethnic identity information, then why don’t they take out New Zealander altogether? If you are focussing on ethnic background saying you are a New Zealander is not much more helpful than describing a rose as a flower. I return to my previous post: wouldn’t ancestry be both less offensive and more accurate (if you need to collect the information at all)?…unless of course Luke Skywalker was your parent…

  9. ok, i’m back in this. household income is useful. but we know that even the richest maori die younger than the poorest non-maori non-pacific in new zealand (although this poorness indicator is at meshblock rather than individual household level). so i would argue. and do argue. that there is more than valid reason for understanding ethnicity and its impacts.

  10. homeperm – I need an explanation of what you just wrote; can you link to some statistics or verify your statement in some way?

  13. homeperm – yes, i can take you word for it, but as a statement it seems outrageous that I should. I’m off to read the articles in the hope of commenting intelligently soon!

  14. “it is not about denying European heritage, it is about not identifying as European”
    What on Earth does what you “identify as” have to do with your ethnic background?
    I can claim to identify more closely with Inuit than with any other ethnicity all I want to, and it won’t change the fact that I will never, ever, ever be an ethnic Eskimo.
    Likewise, a white person can feel as alienated as you like in Europe and it won’t change the fact that most white people’s ethnic background is European.
    I agree that we should take out the “New Zealand” — “New Zealand European” is not an ethnicity.
    “Ancestry” dodges the question. Ethnicity is the point, and as far as I’m concerned anyoen complaining about the term has sharpened their head to a point.

  15. My high school Maori teacher once told me that Pakeha translates to mean something like foreigner, therefore it could even be used to describe a Maori who was from a different iwi.
    And on the whole ‘New Zealander’ census argument, what do you think would be assumed if you ticked other: Aotearoan?

  16. Identity has both everything and nothing to do with ethnicity. The point I was making is that the people who are kicking up a fuss here are making the point that they don’t identify as European *even if they are European by ethnicity*. My further point, and where I agree with you, is that if there is a valid use for the information then those people who are complaining about it just need to get over themselves.
    Homeperm/Cal, I hear you about the income differential, but I wonder if we were to look at it from a resource allocation perspective whether the few rich non-white New Zealanders would make a statistical difference to resource allocation. Without doing any statistical analysis, I suspect that there is more need for greater focussing of health care in Pomare than there is in Woburn.

  17. Pearce, the ‘identify as’ is key to the whole issue going on here. The census question is self referential, most people (including me) have a very confused idea of what ethnicity and nationality actually is so it is best approached by asking the question: “which of these groups do you identify as belonging to?” For instance, you yourself must take this very approach. As a white Maori you must have also have a significant proportion of european blood in you, yet you are allowed the discretion of being able to answer the ‘identify as’ question by saying that culturally and ethnically you are Maori despite looking as though you are european. So good for you, tick that box.
    But what you are asking white NZers to do is say culturally and ethnically we are all European. And what does that describe in terms of culture and ethnicity? Nothing. It describes race and ancestry. It simply says that at some point in history this person came from Europe.
    I’m all for NZer as an option. The New Zealand I know is a distinct cultural and ethnic phenomenon, you only need to look at the NZ lifestyle, work ethic, sporting and outdoor attitude and of course drinking culture to know that the “what I am” and “where I come from” is VASTLY different from the lives of not only the English I live in and around here in London but all the other distinct european and non-european cultures and ethnic groups I interact daily with (Polish, Turkish, Caribbean, French, Danish the list goes on and on…).
    NZ European is the current kludge term used to describe the majority of NZ. Pakeha would probably work just as well and be more acceptable were it not for the negative connotations (justified or not) that are presently associated with it. So NZer is ‘my’ best approach to answering the question accurately and meaningfully. I’m not campaigning for others to do it. I just want to be able to do it myself.

  18. “Identity has both everything and nothing to do with ethnicity.”
    Thanks. That’s REAL helpful. 😉
    I’ve always taken ethnicity to mean “race” — plain and simple. My ethnic mix is roughly equal amounts of Celtic, Maori and Mediterranean. My looks are almost a fluke.
    As far as I’m concerned looking at it as “race” is the only way it’s useful, ’cause then we can examine things like health across different races. Telling the census department what culture you identify with isn’t going to be useful at all.
    I mean Chuck, what you’re suggesting is an option that tells the Statistic department “I am culturally similar to most people in this country” — what good does that do anyone?

  19. I agree that the statistics could be based on it being a ‘race’ question, and it might be further improved if instead of asking us what race we thought we were if they got us to give a drop of blood. That way an independent measure could be applied to the whole population and stop us ranting about how we perceive each other!
    But that is only half the issue, because we are also products of the way we live; the ethnic or cultural ways of living will have an effect on our lives and the statistics people will analyse the census for. So asking the question as an ‘ethnic identity’ does give useful information, provided that the groupings give a clear account of what each group is and where they come from. And in that case I believe there is a need for an accurate tag for white honkeys like me from NZ. My NZness in conjunction with the genes that I’ve inherited from Europe aeon’s ago are going to shape what happens to me throughout my life. And I don’t believe that is accurately described by European (he types going off to the local greasy spoon to have bangers and mash for breakfast 😉

  23. In fact, how could you possibly mistake us? After all, Pearce is CLEARLY a MAORI, while I am a dancing moose!
    😉

  25. Kia ora Chuck, no doubt your dwindling IQ is now inversely proportional to your fish supper quotient. Just let us know if you need one of those care packages of NZ Marmite and postcards of Lower Hutt. Or when your asked next which part of Australia you’re from, just nod and grin. Ka kite bro.

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