Chester Borrows: Don't worry - there is always an old white guy to blame

STEREOTYPED: Is this what the average board of directors looks like?

Every now and then there is a word or turn of phrase which trips off the tongue of almost everyone. It becomes colloquial and it might as well be wallpaper or white noise.

Every millennial seems to put the word "like" 15 times into every sentence ... and it drives me nuts.

We now learn "learnings" instead of "lessons" at the end of an experience; we hear "dirty dairying" instead of "dairy farming". And we no longer have blokes in their 50s and 60s — they are all "stale, pale males".

That's the way stereotypes are formed. They get repeated so frequently that people only look for traits which reinforce their skewed view.

This becomes a real problem for the stereotypical stale, pale male such as me who is trying desperately to kick the ends out of the pigeonhole I am jammed into by the social commentators.

The commentators believe that being white, middle-class and middle-aged — and, in my case, a former National Party MP — makes me, by definition, rich with a whole crew of fat-cat mates and we were obviously born with a silver spoon in our mouths.

I am clearly a capitalist and only got to my privileged position by standing on the necks of those I exploited to achieve these dizzy heights.

Not only that, but me and my type are to blame for everything. We colonised and conquered, we built and polluted, we subjugated and suppressed and imposed and imposted on all who came across our path, using and abusing every opportunity.

I have no possible right to take umbrage at this all being exposed because I and my type have had it so good for so long.

In the last week, we have seen our Minister of Women's Affairs — Julie Anne Genter of the Green Party — telling us to get off and make way for everyone else who isn't in our demographic.

The irony was not lost on many of us that a minister from the political party fighting for the poor and oppressed was happy to use ageism, sexism and racism when it suited her. They are just tools in the toolbox for somebody making a point.

None of us are exempt from believing the stereotypes although we try incredibly hard not to buy into them and to take everyone on their own personal value. We try to treat people as they treat us – to use a biblical adage – but on a case-by-case basis. Nobody likes being treated like a commodity.

So I feel there is a lot underlying our middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income taking offence that doesn't so much look like guilt as it does a realisation that we have got the wrong end of the stick so often over the years.

There is a nagging sensation that now it is being done to us, we realise we have done it to others for a fair amount of our half-over lifetimes (definition of middle-aged).

When a woman raised her voice to make a point we said she was shrieking and probably put it down to her place on the menstrual cycle, unless she was over 50.

We said that Maori protesters should "get a job", assuming that they didn't have one, and the same for poorer people who we said should have worked harder at school.

In the 1990s, we labelled pensioners "greedies" who had experienced the best of times forgetting the depression and the war years. We said the young were selfish with no experience; unionists were lazy and only ever wanted more for doing less.

I guess what my "learnings" are from Ms Genter's comments are that people hate being treated like they are nothing unique with have nothing to offer outside the stereotype.

All people do not think alike. Some of us experience new things and learn lessons from our failures and mistakes. Everyone can bring something to the table regardless of — but also because of — their age, gender, ethnicity, income, network of friends and associates and the life they have lived so far.

I won't be rolling off any boards I may find myself on in order to make way for somebody else of a different colour, sex or age-group. And by the time that happens, us stale pale males will be so under-represented we will then be the new sought-after demographic.

We'll all be like orange — "the new black".

*Chester Borrows served as Whanganui MP for 12 years and as a minister in the National Government.