Sunday, March 24, 2013

Davoyding the issue? Never fear, ordinary Kiwis to the rescue!

Yesterday, over a hundred anti-racism advocates turned out in Christchurch to march against Kyle Chapman and his small, but pert band of white-whine enthusiasts. 

Now, the question I'm asking myself is ... what's the new Race Relations Commissioner got to say about this. 

I mean ... a group of white supremacists stages a public demonstration ... there's a rather larger counter-demonstration from persons concerned about the impact this might have on race relations in NZ ... and it's all within a few days of us having appointed a Race Relations Commissioner.

You'd think it would be an ideal sort of an occasion for an incoming RRC to make her mark with - really establish some "credentials".

I thus tried to search up what Devoy had to say about the demonstration.

Now, I can tell you right now what Joris de Bres said about the same event in the same city last year (it's the first hit on google for various combinations of "race relations commissioner", "kyle chapman" and just about anything else you can think of), but unfortunately I can't tell you what our incumbent Race Relations Commissioner thinks about white supremacists demonstrating on the streets of Christchurch.

I'd like to hazard an informed guess as to what the Race Relations Commissioner might have to say/think about Kyle Chapman attempting to pull off a 5-man chorus of "DO YOU HEAR THE (WHITE) PEOPLE SING" in the streets round St Albans ... but given what she apparently thinks about Waitangi Day, I'm really not sure I'd be anywhere close to the mark.

I'm not saying that Savoy's appointment appears to be an attempt by the government to evince the irrelevancy of the position of Race Relations Commissioner ... but I am saying that I'm bloody glad, given the present incumbent, that there's a two to one ratio of anti-racist activists to white-supremacists down in Christchurch for situations like these.

Because apparently, in the absence of a functioning Race Relations Commissioner, relying upon the principles and good conscience of your fellow Kiwi is pretty much all we've got to get by on.

Suddenly, it doesn't seem so bad.