Race and ethnicity in public policy: does it work?

• Author: Durie, Mason

Abstract

Race-based policies have a lengthy history in New Zealand. Nineteenth century statutes relating to land, governance, public health and justice, for example, were essentially premised on the values and philosophies of the European races. In contrast, policies specific to Maori were usually introduced to encourage conformity to Western preferences. By the 20th century, although the rationale was inconsistent and frequently unclear, minority ethnicity reporting had become an accepted marker of social wellbeing. Sometimes it was used for political purposes and often as a proxy measure for socio-economic disadvantage. In that regard policies of equality between individuals and needs-based policies have tended to assume that ethnicity and race are significant only in as much as they can be subsumed under universal indicators such as social class, life expectancy and educational achievement. Twenty-first century research, however, has demonstrated that not only is socio-economic status distinguishable from ethnicity, but that universal indicators are insufficient measures of need and outcome for members of different ethnicities. Because race and ethnicity are closely aligned to world views, culture and lifestyle it is inconsistent with the evidence to exclude them from social and economic policies. Increasingly, race and ethnicity are visible characteristics of New Zealand society, and unless policies reflect that reality, diversity will be masked, best outcomes will be compromised, and assimilation will be fostered--as it was in the 19th century.

INTRODUCTION

In keeping with the theme of the 2004 Social Policy, Research and Evaluation Conference, "What works?", this paper asks a single question: Do policies based on race or ethnicity work? It is unlikely to produce a straightforward or unequivocal answer, not because there is a dearth of research about the impacts of policies on race and ethnicity, or any lack of experience with race-based policies in New Zealand, but because the answer to "What works?" depends as much on who asks the question as who answers it. How should a good result be measured? Does it "work" if it meets the objectives of the policy? Or should it be assessed according to a set of higher-order principles capable of transcending political ideologies and good intention? Or is it best to decide what works by focusing on results, using a set of outcome indicators that may be quite remote from the policy's immediate influence?

Although "race" and "ethnicity" are used in similar contexts in this paper they are not identical in meaning. Whereas race has connotations of biological variation and genetic determinism, ethnicity emphasises social and cultural distinctiveness and places greater importance on world views, lifestyles and societal interaction. In addition, a particular type of both race and ethnicity is indigeneity. There are some 5,000 indigenous groups around the world with a total population of about 200 million, or around 4% of the global population. A long-standing bond with the land and the natural environment is the fundamental feature of indigeneity, and arising from that relationship it is possible to identify five secondary characteristics of indigeneity: time, culture, an indigenous system of knowledge, environmental sustainability, and a native language.

Before attempting to answer the question about the effectiveness of race-based policies, I will discuss briefly the history of race-based policies in New Zealand.

THE ENGLISH ACTS ACT 1854

It is worth recalling that 2004 is a significant year for New Zealand. It marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of Parliament. After the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, when Britain assumed sovereignty and tribes ceded the right to govern to the Crown, New Zealand initially became a Dependency of New South Wales. But the following year the constitutional position of the country changed from a Dependency to a Crown Colony, governed now by the British parliament. Further constitutional change was heralded in a British statute, the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852, which provided for New Zealand to establish its own legislature and act as a self-governing colony. Two years later, in 1854, Parliament opened in Auckland and in 1865 it was relocated to Wellington.

One of the first pieces of legislation passed by the new settler parliament was the English Acts Act, sometimes know as the Imperial Statutes Act. In a single statute the Act made all English laws applicable to New Zealand. It was an economic use of parliamentary time that spared the colonial politicians the task of developing a whole raft of laws specific to the new colony. Instead, it was taken for granted that if the laws worked in England, they should work in New Zealand. Part of the Crown's rationale for assuming sovereignty over New Zealand had been expressly to institute British law so that Maori tribes would be protected from unruly settlers and settlers would be forced to live up to their obligations as law abiding British subjects. As it transpired, British law was less protective than well-intentioned humanitarian officials in the Colonial Office had contemplated; if anything, the law was to be used as a mechanism to advance settler interests regardless of impacts on Maori.

But when Parliament opened in 1854, the prospect that Maori understandings of justice and fairness would be different in any way from those held by the English did not enter parliamentary conscience. The English Acts Act represented a peculiar mixture of patronage and arrogance. On the one hand it implemented a goal identified in the preamble to the Treaty of Waitangi to:

establish a settled form of Civil Government with a view to avert the evil consequences which must result from the absence of the necessary Laws and Institutions, alike to the native population and to Her...