Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters during his speech at Rātana Pā.
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters during his speech at Rātana Pā.
Opinion by Anaru Eketone
Anaru Eketone is an Associate Professor in Social Work at Otago and a columnist for the Otago Daily Times.
“Thought terminating cliches” like “woke” and “fascist” dismiss arguments without engaging with them.
Winston Peters' bill targets affirmative action, using terms like DEI to critique diversity efforts.
Affirmative action aims to prevent discrimination proactively, but debates persist on its necessity and definition of merit.
What do being called “woke”, “fascist”, “racist”, “transphobic”, or “Marxist” have in common?
They are all “thought terminating cliches” – a term framed by an American psychiatrist, Jay Lift, in his book on brainwashing in 1960s China.
It is when someone, rather than engaging with the validity of an argument,dismisses the other person by saying, “oh you are just racist”, or “okay boomer” or “you’re so woke”.
It is almost Orwellian in nature, where if you don’t have the vocabulary (or the patience) to describe what you disagree with, you can use a word like “woke” as a slur and the argument is over.
It is automatic, even if the action is underpinned by values you agree with such as justice, fairness, compassion and empathy, it can be just brushed off without having to even think about it.
If you asked most people what “woke” means they would struggle to explain it coherently, but it embraces an emotional response from those who feel troubled by the rapid pace of change in society and are worried that others are taking undeserved advantage of that change.
Declaring yourself as anti-woke is interesting, especially if you understand the meaning and origin of the word woke.
The NAACP have been fighting against wokeness for decades.
The American Civil Rights Group, the NAACP Legal Defence Fund, claims that African Americans have been using the term “woke” for around 100 years.
It was developed in response to African Americans telling their people to “wake up”. To wake up to discrimination, to wake up to injustice, to wake up to racist systems that were oppressing them. They woke up.
“Woke” moved into the mainstream in 2008 with the Erykah Badu song Master Teacher that says “I want to stay awake” and “stay woke”.
Therefore to be anti-woke means to be against justice and equality.
Peters is not against justice, equality and empathy, his real target is the concept of affirmative action where qualities outside of the immediate ability to do a particular job are taken into account when hiring.
Psychologists Crosby, Iyer and Sincharoen describe affirmative action as when an organisation devotes resources to make sure people are not discriminated against because of their ethnicity, gender or ability.
They note that affirmative action has the same goals as the concept of equal opportunity except that affirmative action is proactive.
The poster, intended to highlight bus safety and celebrate diversity, was briefly paused following a complaint by the Israel Institute of New Zealand. Photo / Ben Tomsett
Equal opportunity challenges discrimination only once it is detected, which sometimes requires a high bar to prove and can be very slow to make change. They say that affirmative action is a way of both subverting and averting discrimination.
Peters seems to be following the American playbook, where political mileage has been achieved by attacking affirmative action and he has even taken on the American terminology of DEI, (diversity, equality and inclusion).
DEI is the American descriptor of targeting groups under-represented because of discrimination.
Opening roles to people who were often excluded from opportunity is controversial.
Someone is always going to miss out and parts of the dominant group have a vested interest in making sure that is not the dominant group that misses out.
Their argument is that employment should be based on merit, to do otherwise would imply that the work by its very nature, would be inferior.
However, merit is not often defined by people who question affirmative action. What is often omitted in these discussions is the extra skills, knowledge, networks and life experience these people often bring into their roles and the improved outcomes and productivity they can bring because of their access.
The new logo of the University of Otago - Okākou Whakaihu Waka.
Twenty-five years ago I went to a meeting at the Otago medical school where there was a concern expressed that entry into the medical school based solely on grades wasn’t delivering the outcomes they were hoping for.
The comment I heard at the time was “just because you get good marks doesn’t mean you will be a good doctor”.
What the university did was change the criteria, by including the Australian initiated UMAT exam that over the years has tested logical reasoning, problem solving, non-verbal reasoning and their ability to understand people.
They changed the criteria for what “merit” meant showing that it can mean many things to different people, but who decides?
As for the National Party, they are testing the political winds to see how much they will back New Zealand First’s legislation with Chris Bishop saying that he saw the value in merit-based employment, but that National also wanted a “public service that is reflective of modern New Zealand”.
There are genuine tensions here.
The concerning factors to me is not just the continual attack on Māori, but that before the debate about wokeness comes into play, we should first have a discussion about how we will know when affirmative action is no longer needed.
Affirmative action, particularly in regards to women and Māori is not something that was meant to be permanent.
It was always meant to be temporary until we had a more equal society.
Society will never be perfect, but there is little discussion on how close to equality and equity is close enough.
I look back and see the impressive progress we have made as a nation in tackling the difficult issues of discrimination, representation and equality over my 63 years.
Anaru Eketone. Photo / Supplied
Today is better than 2005, which was much better than 1985 which was much better than 1965. But are we there yet?
To my children’s generation, wokeness is not a slur, being “woke” incorporates values of justice, empathy, equality and to have compassion for others. Whether we like the term or not, the underlying values are common to us all.
