Friday, May 16, 2008

Post-Colonialism and Racism

I've been involved in a couple of discussions lately, particularly one that touched on how to compensate for historical wrongs due to colonialism, and one about racism and how to deal with it. My thoughts aren't organised enough to write a thought provoking post right now, but I want to put this stub here for anyone who wanders past and would like to comment.

Briefly, within New Zealand I have been most impressed with policies which treat the lingering effects of colonialism without referring directly to race. For instance, Maori are disproportionately represented in low socio-economic groupings; rather than providing specific remedies for Maori the government has implemented social programmes to allow access to higher education for the poor.

On the other hand, I am not impressed with a (small) number of places which are reserved for Maori in the highly competitive medical school intake (I know the problem is more nuanced than this, but it will serve for a general indication of my beliefs).

But this is just for starters, and off the top of my head. Please feel free to post anything even tangentially related below.

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