[worik]

I live in a country that has had a very successful programme of affirmative action, following roughly three generations of open, systemic racism (Maori school students where kept out of university and the professions as a matter of public policy)

Now we are starting to get Maori doctors and lawyers that is transforming our society - for the better IMO

That was because the law and medical schools went out of their way to recruit Maori students. To start with they were hard to find as nobody in their families (being Maori, and forbidden) had been to university

If you do not do anything about where people start then saying "aim for equal chance" can become a tool of oppression and keeping the opportunities for those who already have them.

Nuance is useful. I have heard many bizarre stories out of the USA about people blindly applying DEI with not much thought or planning. But there are many many places where carefully applied policies have made everybody's life better

[hcurtiss]

This is always the Motte & Bailey of the left. "Equity" doesn't mean you recruit better. It means when your recruitment efforts fail to produce the outcomes you want, you lower the barriers on the basis of skin color. That's the racism that America is presently rejecting, and very forcefully.

[milesrout]

NZ does not have a "successful programme of affirmative action".

Discrimination in favour of Maori students largely has benefited the children of Maori professionals and white people with a tiny percentage of Maori ancestry who take advantage of this discriminatory policy.

The Maori doctors and lawyers coming through these discriminatory programmes are not the people they were intended to target. Meanwhile, poor white children are essentially abandoned by the school system.

Maori were never actually excluded from university study, by the way. Maori were predominantly rural and secondary education was poor in rural areas but it has nothing to do with their ethnicity. They were never "forbidden". There have been Maori lawyers and doctors for as long as NZ has had universities.

For example, take Sir Apirana Ngata. He studied at a university in NZ in the 1890s, around the same time women got the vote. He was far from the first.

What you have alleged is a common narrative so I don't blame you for believing it but it is a lie.

[worik]

> Maori were never actually excluded from university study, by the way

Māori schools (which the vast majority of Māori attended) were forbidden by the education department from teaching the subjects that lead to matriculation. So yes, they were forbidden from going to university.

> Sir Apirana Ngata. He studied at a university in NZ in the 1890s,

That was before the rules were changed. It was because of people like Ngata and Buck that the system was changed. The racists that ran the government were horrified that the natives were doing better than the colonialists. They "fixed" it.

> Discrimination in favour of Maori students largely has benefited the children of Maori professionals

It has helped establish traditions of tertiary study in Māori families, starting in the 1970s

There are plenty of working class Māori (I know a few) that used the system to get access. (The quota for Māori students in the University of Auckland's law school was not filled in the 1990s. Many more applied for it, but if their marks were sufficient to get in without using the quota they were not counted. If it were not for the quota many would not have even applied)

Talking of lies: "white people with a tiny percentage of Maori ancestry who take advantage of this" that is a lie.

The quotas are not based on ethnicity solely. To qualify you had to whakapapa (whāngi children probably qualified even if they did not whakapapa, I do not know), but you also had to be culturally Māori.

Lies and bigotry are not extinct in Aotearoa, but they are in retreat. The baby boomers are very disorientated, but the millennials are loving it.

Better for everybody