NZCPR Newsletter: All Are Equal

Late last month the United States Supreme Court released a landmark judgement ruling that race cannot be used as a factor in considering college admissions.

If such a judgement applied to New Zealand, it would signal the end of the University sector’s targeted race-based admissions schemes. That would include Auckland University’s School of Medicine, which in 2023 reserved 103 places out of the total intake of 287 for Maori and Pacific Island students.

Professor Richard Epstein: Affirmative Action On Shaky Ground

This past week, the Supreme Court heard extensive argument on the deceptively simple question of whether race can be considered in admissions at institutions of higher education. The matter of great urgency in both cases before the court (Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina), is the extent to which minority students may receive a systematic boost in their applications on account of their race. Race could never be the only relevant element, for then all African-American applicants would get in before anyone else was considered. Instead, the key questions are how much of a “plus factor” is race and whether that boost for African-American students can be justified by some race-neutral criterion.

Mike Hosking: Race-based solutions asking for trouble

So these past couple of weeks we have seen the concerted effort to convince us that Whanau Ora is off track and being deliberately sabotaged by the government.

And we have seen and heard the claims and report that Oranga Tamariki is a phenomenal cock up, young mothers are being targeted by dawn raid type police squads, and having their kids taken off them for no good reason.

The question is, do you believe it? I don't.

Brian Giesbrecht: Is it Okay to Be White?

Last Hallowe’en night a costumed person was seen tacking up posters at the University of Manitoba. The posters said “It’s Okay To Be White”. This strange occurrence was uniformly denounced by the university administration and various student associations who claimed that it was the organized work of white supremacists. 

The administrators also claimed that these racists had deliberately targeted an Indigenous students’ organization by sending copies of the posters to their office. In fact, so seriously has the university administration taken this incident that they called in the police to conduct an investigation into a possible hate crime. If the administration’s claims are true, and this was the organized work of racists or white supremacists the administrators’ actions make sense.

Mike Butler: Half-truths and shallow thinking

The recently concocted New Zealand Maori Council water rights claim has turned up the heat on the Maori issues debate. Two comments lifted from the blogosphere show the half-truths and shallow thinking that has allowed the “free money for Maori” industry to grow into the monster that it is.

You don’t want Maori looking after their own affairs with money they have invested around the country, employing thousands of Kiwis? So if Maori aren’t allowed to look after their own, then who will? That then falls on the state. What do you fear from Maori or anyone having their own systems? Will they cause you to turn Maori, will they take your firstborn, will they stop you watching your favourite rugby team? No no they won’t so what the bloody hell do you have against people looking after their own affairs. And no that’s not called separatism, it’s called neo-liberalism or even libertarianism, something apparently praised by many on this site.

This commentator blurs the distinction between the rights and responsibilities that everyone has to spend, save, or invest, their own hard-earned money, with the rights and responsibilities of tribal trusts handling free money from the government that came via treaty settlements and the special, separate deals via race-based affirmative action, and devolved social services.