Gary Judd KC: Maori seats foster self-ghettoisation

Dr Muriel Newman’s feature article for 24 February, The Future of the Maori Seats, summarises why they should have been abolished long ago. There is another reason which I don’t recall having seen: the Maori seats encourage self-ghettoisation.

I came across the terms “ghettoise” and “ghettoisation” a few days ago, in THE END OF WOKE: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution where Andrew Doyle writes:

Too often ‘multiculturalism’ is mistaken for ‘multiracialism’, when the two could not be more different. A multiracial society is one in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law. A multicultural society is one in which people are encouraged to ghettoise themselves according to national or cultural identity.

Ghetto is a word I associated with an area in a European city to which the Jews were restricted, or in an American context, a thickly populated slum area, inhabited by a minority group or groups. Harlem comes to mind as an example of the latter.

A bit or research showed that ghetto is also a verb meaning to isolate, separate, cut off, and ghettoise means to restrict to an isolated or segregated place, group, or situation. Doyle is referring to people who choose to isolate themselves, separate themselves, cut themselves off, according to national or cultural identity.

It has become starkly obvious that the Maori seats are being used by activists to do precisely that.

Ghettoisation is the action or process of placing a person or group in a ghetto, restricting them to a particular place, group, or situation. Ghettoisation can be done to a person or group, or people or groups can do it to themselves.

In The dangers of self-ghettoization, Israr Kasana, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the Canadian city of Calgary, explains why he and his family rejected the temptation to adopt the comfortable way of establishing themselves within a Pakistani community. He says “Ghettoization or marginalization of any kind is bad for society. It creates exclusion, imbalance, envy, anger, ignorance and, more importantly, distrust.”

Earlier he says:

Calgary has ghettos. 

Not the ones we think of from television — places of broken windows and broken dreams, where gangs rule and police fear to tread. 

No, we have different kinds of ghettos. Our city has had a long process of self-ghettoization, spatial marginality — ghettoization of mind. And it's happened among the immigrant communities and visible minorities.

And later:

John Stuart Mill defined democracy as "government by discussion." Ghettoization halts that process. If there is an "unknowingness" or distrust between communities, there can be no discussion. As a result, inequality grows.

Ghettoization of the mind fosters ideological isolation where members of the group don't have to debate rationally or even be exposed to ideas that contradict theirs. It also nurtures the existence of a parallel society which usually benefits the most powerful within that society.

Kasana and his family discussed where to live.

We had the conversation. Arguments were presented, pros and cons debated. But, after a lot of tense discussions, we decided not to move there. 

The major reason was strategic. 

We decided we need to be part of the mainstream if we wanted to reap the fruits of immigrating to a country like Canada. And we felt we could still follow our socio-cultural values while moving in the mainstream. So there was, for us, no big price tag involved in this decision.

The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves according to cultural identity whereas what we must surely want is a society in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law.

Muriel’s article contrasted the values of Hon Bill English in 2003 with today’s National Party. Surely it can’t be too painful for Christopher Luxon to acknowledge that peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law is desirable and that the existence of the Maori seats is inimical to that goal.

Gary Judd KC is a King's Counsel, former Chairman of ASB and Ports of Auckland and former member APEC Business Advisory Council.