Considering Historical Justice
January 21, 2020
By NZB3
I’ve had a bit of push-back about sentiments expressed in the previous post, Social Justice.
My argument is that Justice is supposed to be dispensed according to the facts of the case not the facts of the race. It’s an Individualistic outlook. Our Western justice system is still running on the fumes of this outlook, set in motion hundreds of years ago. How else could it be?
“What’s wrong with wanting fewer Maori through the courts and in prison?”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit of a double standard considering historically justice in New Zealand really was dispensed according to race? Which has essentially lead to the current situation of having Maori over represented in a variety of statistics due to being subjected to a racist regime”- Facebook comments
A Court of Justice is supposed to decide someone’s guilt on the facts of the individual case. What did this person do? How? Why? To whom? When? Actual people were involved, actual individuals were hurt and are in pain. There’s a particular problem to be judicially solved.
A given instance of someone being charged is not supposed to be used to score political points. It’s not supposed to be a pawn in some large balancing act of Social Justice according to some kind of ideological scorecard. A man in the dock is supposed to face his accusers and face what he had done, nothing more than that. Whatever he has done or has not done should not be influenced by “historical justice.”
Should a white man get a harder sentence because “historical justice in New Zealand” has been statistically light on people with skin like that? Or a brown woman should get a lighter sentence, never mind what she did, just because we’re trying to hit a sentencing target to make historical averages look right? What genders or races are we trying to make look pretty on paper anyway? Are enough red-headed people in jail? Maybe we should lock some more left-handed Chinese from Otago up- not for what they’ve done but because they’re under-represented!
Maybe you don’t get back your change next time you buy something because someone with the same gender/race/disposition/car/shirt as you shop-lifted so we need to balance out that historical justice don’t we?
Maybe you should get fewer marks in your exam. Because you got some of the questions wrong? No! Because your [enter identity category here] is doing really well so some of your marks need to be distributed to a member of another category. Only then will the arbitrary catagories we’re trying to balance out look tidy on our graph!
Or we could stick to the law and judge everyone on their own individual merits. And give people the change they are owed. And the marks they earn. As if they were a person not a category.
“Why do you see this as privilege instead of a proactive move for tangata whenua to take responsibility for their own. After 250yrs of colonisation and assimilation the system has done more damage than good.”- Facebook comments
When we decide to take what you call proactive responsibility for our own it should be within the law. It becomes something else when Government office is used to pick out some people because they’re in your iwi or tribe and give them special legal help barred from another race.
Of course it’s privilege. We’re talking about if it’s right that some skins should get it and others not.
Let me ask you a question now. Why can’t Maori helpers take proactive responsibility for their own within society and within the law? Why can’t this be a private community act rather than a paid role requiring special powers? Are we that far gone?
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Note: This r-selected and Moral Cultures stuff is all academic until you read comments like the above. The tribal people really do think like this. One man’s apartheid is another man’s proactive move for tangata whenua to take responsibility for their own.
Image ref. Judges reduce jail time by up to two years for cultural factors; Stuff
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