August 9th, 2014 at 10:09 am
David Round
Why is it, I cannot but wonder, that gangs and Maoris just seem to go together? I cannot believe that it is all injustice and oppression, I’m sorry. Plenty of other people are also poor and oppressed. Maori are not the only victims. I am forced to conclude that it is some aspect of the Maori cultural inheritance, some lingering atavistic tribal residue, which makes the criminal or marginal gang such a natural fit for so many Maori. You may reply that the arrangement is not much different from, say, that of the house-carles who followed their Anglo-Saxon lord, ate their bread at his table and supported him with their spears in his feuds; but our civilisation has developed since those magnificent but savage days. Maori culture, it seems, has not. It is still ~ as we are regularly officially reminded ~ a ‘warrior culture’. A warrior ~ as opposed to a soldier ~ is of his nature a gang-member.And a culture is not a civilisation.
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