The truth about 'Māori privilege'
Vincent O'Malley on the persistent fantasy of Pākehā narratives that Māori were lucky to have been colonised
The influence of conspiracy theorists peddling misinformation and whipping up hatred against particular segments of the population has been brought into stark relief during the current pandemic. There is no phrase more ominous than "I’ve done my own research", and the extended lockdowns and dodgy social media algorithms sucked many people into a vortex of distortions and outright falsehoods when it came to Covid-19.
Conspiracy theories may be easier to spread in the age of the internet but they are hardly a new phenomenon. For much of the period up until the 1970s a dominant Pākehā narrative was that New Zealand had the greatest ‘race relations’ in the world. Māori were lucky – privileged even – to have been colonised by those settlers who chose to come to New Zealand. Things could have been so much worse for them. Just imagine the French.
Link to article: Book of the Week: The truth about 'Māori privilege' (msn.com)
