Monday, January 07, 2008

Separatism has no future



Why do some people persist with separatism as a principle for policy formation?

Why do we have a party based on race?

Isn't the above the best news about race relations in New Zealand?

2 comments:

Richard said...

Lindsay, what sense are we supposed to make of the above graph in light of the currently approved definition of ethnicity? - according to which, "Ethnicity is the ethnic group or groups that people identify with or feel they belong to. Ethnicity is a measure of cultural affiliation, as opposed to race, ancestry, nationality or citizenship. Ethnicity is self perceived and people can belong to more than one ethnic group."

I guess what I'm claiming (and hoping) is that the above graph depicts distribution of live births by race, not by ethnicity.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

By ethnicity, as specified by whoever completes the birth registration form. I don't know what the ethnicity question asks specifically. I am assuming people record the ethnicity of their child as provided by parents/grandparents/other ancestry (that they know of). I am prepared to take the data at face value. Before 1995 Maori or PI children were classed solely as such if they had half or more degree of Maori or PI blood (as the case may be). Their other ethnicity was lost in terms of birth registration data. Now we make allowances for it.