MAORI AND NEGRO

Evening Star, Issue 25948, 13 November 1946, Page 7

MAORI AND NEGRO

CONTRAST IN TREATMENT YOUNG AMERICAN MARINE’S OBSERVATIONS NEW YORK, November 12. In a sensitively written and deeply understanding story of his association with the North island Maoris during his term of duty in the South Pacific, a young United States Marine, Captain John Lee Zimmerman, contrasts the manner in which the Maoris/ and pakehas live together with the racial distinctions of the southern part of the United States. Captain- Zimmerman, whose book, ‘ Where the People Sing—Green Land of the Maoris,’ has just been published by Alfred A. Knopf,. became a close friend and admirer of the Maoris while training to serve on Guadalcanal. He also spent a long time in New Zealand after being invalided from Guadalcanal with malaria. Discussing the relations between the whites and the Maoris, Captain Zimmerman says: “It is inevitable, I think, that the spectacle of such matter-of-fact, unostentatious interracial good feeling should have caused me to think of the contrasting state of affairs in my own country. The first and obvious conclusion to which I came, was that if such a satisfactory condition existed in one country, there was no'good reason why a comparable condition should, not exist in another. FAULT WITH WHITE AMERICANS. “There were in New Zealand a dark race and a white race. The latter outnumbered the former and controlled the country, and yet the two races lived in entire harmony! . .. If such a'thing existed in New Zealand it pould,exist in my own land. Since it has not existed there, some fault must lie in the white race in my own land—some deeply-buried lack of proper understanding of the minority negro group." After referring to the fact that he found many American Southerners fraternising with the Maoris with every sign of enthusiastic enjoyment,' Captain Zimmerman says: “The Maori is never separated entirely from'his past, for the very land on which he lives is identified intimately with his history. and that of his family. Neighhours are his fellow-tribesmen, and more often than not his blood relatives. If by chance his neighbour is from another tribe, the chances are that, far back in the history of generations, he and that neighbour also may find a common ancestor. MAORIS IDENTIFIED WITH PAST. “ Of one piece with that realisation of his past,” Captain Zimmerman continues, “is _ his dependence upon it and his curious sense of identification with it. His most rigid rules of personal conduct are dictated by his respect for the reputation enjoyed by his ancestors—a reputation for personal honour, bravery in battle, and wisdom. “ There, I think, lies the reason for the great! difference between Maori and ipakella. relations in New Zealand and the white and negro relations in the United _ States. Where the modern Maori lives on good terms with his past, and looks on it with quiet pride, the negro looks back only on a vague, distant history of origin in a land as alien to him as to his white fellow-country-men. The negro also suffers under the tremendous psychological handicap of having been a slave.”