Tuesday, April 12, 2011



The wailing of the privileged

Since the Labour party list was released on Sunday, its been attacked for being "dominated" by women and Maori, unionists and gays, while "underrepresenting" white men. But as Rob Salmond shows over on Pundit, the reality is rather different. The list looks like New Zealand, with the differences in representation generally being out by a few percent (which means 1 or 2 MPs). The only group to be systematically underepresented are women; the only groups to be systematically over-represented are Pacific Peoples (who arguably are strongly represented because of Labour's strong support in South Auckland), and straight white males.

In other words, what we have here is the usual story: straight white males like O'Conner, Trotter, and Gower seeing a list which treats people (relatively) equally, and howling. They're not massively over-represented, therefore they must be under-represented. But the stats don't lie; this is just the wailing of the privileged at being forced to accept that they're not so special after all.