Insights from a crappy Tuesday Part 2/2

As for my awesome pettiness...
When did caring about racism become petty? What about equal rights for all people regardless of their colour, creed, sexuality, beliefs or appearance?
Petty?
PETTY?
Are you KIDDING ME?
Ok that was not functional, or appropriate.
Sorry.

Again, petty is an opinion based judgement.
My Grandmother happily assumes that anyone Pacific island or Maori in the Hawkes Bay must be unemployed, and wouldn’t question that statement on national television.
My parents aren’t too concerned when people make comments about Asian drivers.
Both of these make me cringe and yet I have my own inappropriate judgements – I assume that if a white man has an Afrikaans accent he will be both sexist and racist.
This is both incorrect and totally inappropriate for us to talk about these views in a professional or large public forum.
Is it petty for someone to criticise us if we do?

Once you have these ingrained beliefs, with no factual basis what you do with them is important.
Would it cause me to discriminate?
Would I hire a South African?
Marry one?
Vote one into a parliamentary position?
Pay one less than I would a New Zealander?
Assume a judgement of guilty if I was on a jury?
Would I use my beliefs as an excuse to hurt, or harm someone emotionally or physically?

The importance of what our prominent figures are saying comes in here.
Because people are abusing and marginalising every day, and if someone is being devalued due to their sex, race, income, sexuality or appearance I do not want that behaviour being backed up by the mainstream media.

I am getting involved in this because it DOES involve me. I take great pride in living in a country with free speech, equal rights, and the first place in the western world to give women the vote.
These are things that we have earned due to people speaking up when it was hard to. Going against the grain and believing in a better reality.
Expecting more than what we already have is the path to better things.

Think about why you have or haven’t bothered to take a stand on something recently and think again about the accusations I’ve had levelled at me the last few days.
“Too PC”, “soft”, am “being petty”, getting involved in something that doesn’t affect me, letting “negativity win by getting involved in the arguments, and have got too much time on my hands.

These are the same accusations that were put to those people who got involved in the Civil rights movement in the USA.

And that was a cause worth fighting for.

Hijack!

I had a few scary insights yesterday.
For ease of reading they will be split into different posts.

Number one was when I rocked up to the “Fire Paul Henry” demonstration outside TVNZ yesterday.
I was confronted with a medium sized (there were more people reporting, than in the protest) group of men frothing at the mouth, and occasionally into their beards yelling aggressive slogans into loud-speakers.
Most of them were carrying placards; few of them were related to the actual cause.
They were socialist union protesters and the boards varied from focused comments on the topic “Fire Paul Henry Now!”
To bizarre mixes of other campaigns. “Unions unite NZ; Ban racism.”
The slogans being yelled were loud, enraged, and frankly a bit scary.
There was plenty of spit flying through the air as aggression rang strong.
I leaned against a lamp post beside the media and eavesdropped.

“Good god, it’s the same banners and nutters from the protest last month, they just stuck 'fire Paul Henry' at the bottom”.
“Where are the normal people?”
“Clearly its only people who do this shit for fun that are enjoying getting up in arms about it”.

I watched and counted for around 30 minutes.
Over THIRTY FIVE people arrived in the area, stood on the outskirts, looked sad and left.
Most of them were wearing NZ t Shirts (as I was) and I suspect had planned to join the protest.
That would have not only doubled the numbers but also given it some credibility with Jo Public.

I suspect, like me, that they had no intention of standing by and allowing PH get away with marginalising yet another group of people and were making the most of the sway of public opinion to make their point.

To arrive and find that what you had thought was a human rights protest had three people from a human rights organisation (thanks to Global Peace and Justice Auckland) and a loud majority of angry, red faced, purple nosed, politically motivated men.

I don’t mean to undermine what they were doing. Every protest needs someone with a loud voice and a solid chant, but it was just too much to cope with, and it came across as them getting their rocks off being angry about something (could have been anything?) and undermined the fact that the issue is one affecting a wide range of Kiwis, not just the usual campaigners.

I was too scared to go and stand in the group.
One- I’m not a biggy for blatant aggression and you could smell the testosterone coming off the man nearest to me.
Two – I had no intention of being photographed or filmed by the media under a “socialist NZ” banner. I don’t like to parade my politics, and certainly don’t want to parade someone else’s!!

So after thirty minutes I admitted I was a coward, and fled.
Dinner did not taste good and I suspect the bitter regret flavour in my mouth was impacting on the butter chicken.

In case you were wondering, the insight was...
Im a coward.