12-03-2025, 04:43 AM
Equal? First though we need to raise up those who are patently suffering from inequality though, don't you think?
Funny thing, I was never really aware of my own white privilege until I had a mixed race child, and saw how our community treated her, because of her ethnicity. Through her life experience I became 'woke', I woke up to the institutionalised racism she encountered every day in some form or another from the casual to the overt.
On top of that awakening, her recognition and adoption of her Maori heritage also taught me a great deal, leading to my own exploration of the history of this nation, a history very different to the one I had been taught in some very excellent schools, schools I was privileged to gain entry to...
Many of my generation, the boomers, still have to process the effects of the privileges we never realised we enjoyed. If we did not have the benefits of those real life lessons I had through raising a mixed race child they continue to live in blissful ignorance, talking about equality of treatment, equality of opportunity, one nation, one people and all that lovely stuff that fails to recognise the huge disparities that exist between peoples, between histories - both personal and community. And ignores - often deliberately - the continuing imposition of systemic barriers to achieving that equality, the continued impoverishment, the social neglect, the ghettoing, the educational starvation, and the employment siloing that keeps certain sections of our community firmly in their place.
And why? Why do nice well meaning privileged people do this? Because it benefits them. And for that reason, it is a social battle that will continue to be fought, with all the same gains and losses that make battles such enormous wastes of time, effort, resources, and human lives.
Funny thing, I was never really aware of my own white privilege until I had a mixed race child, and saw how our community treated her, because of her ethnicity. Through her life experience I became 'woke', I woke up to the institutionalised racism she encountered every day in some form or another from the casual to the overt.
On top of that awakening, her recognition and adoption of her Maori heritage also taught me a great deal, leading to my own exploration of the history of this nation, a history very different to the one I had been taught in some very excellent schools, schools I was privileged to gain entry to...
Many of my generation, the boomers, still have to process the effects of the privileges we never realised we enjoyed. If we did not have the benefits of those real life lessons I had through raising a mixed race child they continue to live in blissful ignorance, talking about equality of treatment, equality of opportunity, one nation, one people and all that lovely stuff that fails to recognise the huge disparities that exist between peoples, between histories - both personal and community. And ignores - often deliberately - the continuing imposition of systemic barriers to achieving that equality, the continued impoverishment, the social neglect, the ghettoing, the educational starvation, and the employment siloing that keeps certain sections of our community firmly in their place.
And why? Why do nice well meaning privileged people do this? Because it benefits them. And for that reason, it is a social battle that will continue to be fought, with all the same gains and losses that make battles such enormous wastes of time, effort, resources, and human lives.