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.
