Total Integration Unlikely

Te Ao Hou, December 1963, Page 17

Total Integration Unlikely If you are an optimist you will look forward to a time when New Zealand is a fully integrated society. I, on the one hand, think total integration highly unlikely; nor do I think it so terribly desirable. The key to an interesting life is surely variety, and cultural variety is the stimulus for much that helps to make life more interesting. However there is another barrier to integration and this is the history and traditions of the white society. This society is sick in its feelings toward other peoples and has even succeeded in communicating this sickness to them; remember the Maori children who are prejudiced against Negroes and examine your own attitudes. If we wanted other proof then we need only say two words, Warsaw and Hiroshima. The ghetto and the fire bomb are not the products of healthy societies, yet their philosophy still continues. The most that can be hoped for is that there will be fewer sick people, or that a social climate can be created in which it is unprofitable to work this sickness out in prejudice and discrimination. Children in schools at the moment are not, for the reasons I have outlined, receiving the stimulus to think out the problems of the relations of Maori and white, and this is a subject to which you might give thought.