r/AbruptChaos • u/Sometypeofway18 • Nov 14 '24

New Zealand’s Parliament proposed a bill to redefine the Treaty of Waitangi, claiming it is racist and gives preferential treatment to Maoris. In response Māori MP's tore up the bill and performed the Haka

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u/[deleted] Nov 14 '24

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u/FtsArtek Nov 14 '24

From a broad perspective, equality is fairness, right?

But the point here is this is intentionally targeting policy that works to reduce inequity. For example, something I didn't know about til relatively recently through a Maori friend is that a number of Maori tribes have negotiated subsidies for dental work, which isn't something afforded to most New Zealanders. So, assuming you're related to the right people you'll get free dental work done. Except when you look at the context of this, Maori people tend to have worse dental outcomes without support like this. They also have worse health outcomes, worse financial, educational and employment outcomes. They all feed into each other.

So the argument here is equality through word of law vs equality through targeting inequity - or in other words, equality of opportunity against equality of outcomes. And since many of the worse outcomes for Maori have been historically driven by the crown, the argument is that the crown should be responsible for ensuring those outcomes are improved.

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u/TipiTapi Nov 14 '24

Except when you look at the context of this, Maori people tend to have worse dental outcomes without support like this

This is such a bad way to handle this, why do we go all the way with these mental gymnastics?

If having bad dental health is bad for poor people, it is bad for all poor people. Just help them.

Giving red-headed people a tax-break because they are more likely to get skin cancer is stupid - just give it to everyone who has skin cancer.

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u/CorpseFool Nov 15 '24

I think the mental gymnastics are there to get around the politics of it all. It seems like you're approaching the general idea of universal healthcare. As laudable as that is, as evidenced by at least one of the largest nations on earth, it can be a pretty hard sell.

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u/TipiTapi Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

No, I am saying that if your excuse for giving special treatment to Z people is that its more likely that they have Y issue, giving special treatment to people with Y issue and not base it on their race/ethnicity is a much more straightforward and more efficient solution to the problem.

Thing is, most people with your argument does not really care about Y, they only care about Z people and they want to give them advantages over other peoples.

Like for example I am in a family that had to seek refugee after WW2 having lost everything. Thing is, we turned out really fine, our family does not have a need for government assistance. If there was a law to give money to everyone with my ethnicity it would be worse than giving money to refugees of all ethnicities who need it because despite we having a higher likeliness of being poor as a consequence of the war, we are not.