
Originally Posted by
Banditbandit
let me expand on that one a little bit.
We are not looking at equality, but at Equity - a slightly different thing.
If we look at the life chances of children, sure, children in rich families have more and better life chances than children in poor families. Children with poor life chances tend to end up in jail, as addicts, poor educational outcomes, low-paid jobs, unemployment, etc etc ..
Now, Māori children generally have fewer and poorer life chances than Pākehā children. Many of them end up exactly as I described above - in jail, unemployed etc etc ...
We are saying that because our resources were forcably taken and we were not able to join the modern world as equals
This seems to be suggesting that somehow a lack of family wealth has unfairly deprived Maori.
But this is how I see it. My family, as far back as anyone has looked have been working class. My Dad was a fire man, my Mom a nurse. My Grandparents were factory workers. My Grandparents never had the resources to financially assist my parents nor did they leave anything by way of an inheritance. My parents bought their own home and I went to a state school (I'm not tertiary educated). I've never received any financial assistance from them, in fact these days I'm subsidizing my Mom's standard of living. I expect to inherit nothing from my Mon and very little from my Dad.
My point is that each successive generation has become wealthier without any financial assistance from the "whanau"(sp) and the only advantage that I can perceive that I've had is that my family, culture if you will, had expectations of me and encouraged me to achieve.
Is this not a fair observation? To my mind the only thing that prevents any healthy member of an "underclass" from improving their lot is the lack of will, encouragement or expectations. These chains are cultural.
"There must be a one-to-one correspondence between left and right parentheses, with each left parenthesis to the left of its corresponding right parenthesis."
Bookmarks