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MANGAWHAI'S NO.1 NEWSPAPER
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Ed Said - Who do you think you areRecently in casual conversation the sub-ject was broached on ‘foreigners’ and ‘for-eign ownership’ relating to things we con-sider ‘Kiwi’. In certain company this can be the source of good, logical debate. In other company though either or both can gener-ate fire and brimstone of pre-Adamic pro-portions.
Most of us consider ourselves Kiwi or New Zealanders, a unique species though with our family trees grafted from the root-stock of the Mother Country, England. In the past we tended to disregard largely our bloodlines outside of that perameter so that people of European descent, eg Dutch, nota-ble by their accent, were known as foreign-ers. Acceptance of these peoples had dif-fering effects however. I had an aunt who, around 1940, married a Kiwi-born man but with German parents. From the outset of WW2 she was fairly much ostracised by the family. The reasons may seem obvious to some of the older readers but fortunately at-titudes have changed even though human nature has not. Furthermore when the Volkswagen Bee-tle showed up in the early post-war years, many a man would not be seen driving one. This attitude also held fast with regard to Toyota, manufactured by the Japanese. Though she married an Englishman, my paternal grandmother was of full Jewish de-scent. My father often reminded me of this but pointed out that while in some parts of the world this fact might save my life, in other parts it may well get me shot. No doubt other seniors could relate similarly. While bloodlines are not necessarily evi-dent, skin colour certainly is and this has stigmatised many a well-meaning, hard-working migrant simply seeking a better lifestyle for his family. Then, somehow, foreign becomes racial. While, like many, I believe political correctness has gone over-board in recent times we are at least now more aware of, and receptive towards, the feelings of others whose origins and be-liefs differ from our own and this, I believe, makes for a better community. After all, consider this: We drive a German car, the brand of which is owned by an Indian company yet it is assembled in Asia. We are happy to drink Russian vodka or Dutch beer (Heineken) which is now ironi-cally brewed in south Auckland. Our pizza is Italian, our sushi is Japanese, our coffee is Cuban or Brazillian while our tea is pos-sibly either Tamil or Chinese. Much of our clothing is of Indian extraction but probably manufactured in China as are our electron-ics. Our numbers are Arabic, our letters are Latin and our democracy (such as it is) is Greek. We have an aversion to selling large ar-eas of farmland to Chinese interests but, even though the majority of such land is owned by mega-rich Americans, nobody seems to mind yet few countries can boast the interracial mixture of America. Are we still a little wary if our new neigh-bours are immigrants or foreigners, or does that only become a problem if your daugh-ter wants to marry the boy next door? As said by one J Wood in 1939, ‘There is nowt so funny as folk’. Just my humble opinion. Cheers Rob |
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