"Decide together to be Separate?"

"New Zealand is a hopelessly confused country where people ... use the same words to mean different things

"TV and social media imagery is overloaded with couples of mixed ethnicity. ... The bi-cultural images aren't a problem. They reflect statistics ie fact, that more Maori partner with non-Maori than with Maori. ... New Zealand is a country where the first settlers welcomed and joined together, literally, with the later settlers.

"But change screens and consider the next image:

"'Decide together, Thrive together.'

"'Decide together' to be Separate? It's like deciding together to a divorce.

"Separate rolls for Maori. Separate wards and separate electorates. By any stretch of the imagination, that is not togetherness. ...

"To thrive together requires individuals to put their humanity before their ethnicity."

~ Lindsay Mitchell from her post 'A Confused Country'

"... a whole lot of integrating going on"

Talking about the birth of jazz -- that musical form integrating blues and spirituals, hymns and moans, African rhythms and western harmonies and much, much more -- celebrated jazz guitarist Danny Barker talks about its birthplace, New Orleans, as somewhere in which people of all nationalities were living together side by side. "And," he laughs, "there was a whole lot of integratin' going on."

I thought of that when I saw Lindsay Mitchell post one of the many fascinating wee statistics that frequently appear at her blog, this one on how many who identify as Maori are not co-habiting with other Maori. 

What the figures show are that more Maori men and women are married to or cohabiting with Europeans than with other Maori. 

Now, I don't generally care for figures or data based on race. But as Lindsay points out, this natural human phenomenon is really a spanner in the works for all those folk presently promoting separatism ...