The other country with a newly elected ethnic minority leader
Is New Zealand, where our Kiwi kin have elected John Key's National Party into power, and consigned the coiffure-challenged Helen Clark to the dustbin of history.
John Key is Jewish, if not enormously practicing (apparently), and with NZ's Jewish community amounting to about 5000 souls, he is rather more of a minority than a certain president elect elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Turns out this is not a first for our NZ friends, as they have had two Jewish Prime Ministers previously.
Incidentally, can anyone tell me when Jewish folk were airbrushed out of ethnic minority status in these parts? I have heard / read repeated references to the 15 ethnic minority Westminster MPs, a figure which clearly excludes Jewish parliamentarians.
John Key is Jewish, if not enormously practicing (apparently), and with NZ's Jewish community amounting to about 5000 souls, he is rather more of a minority than a certain president elect elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Turns out this is not a first for our NZ friends, as they have had two Jewish Prime Ministers previously.
Incidentally, can anyone tell me when Jewish folk were airbrushed out of ethnic minority status in these parts? I have heard / read repeated references to the 15 ethnic minority Westminster MPs, a figure which clearly excludes Jewish parliamentarians.
Labels: New Zealand, Parliament, racial minefields
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on Sunday, November 09, 2008 at 9:48 am.
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You are making the mistake of using the correct meaning of "ethnicity". In PCland it means skin colour not cultural heritage, therefore as Jews are mostly white-skinned they don't count.
As I am fond of saying, it isn't a question of some of my best friends being Jewish, most of them are (hello chaps and chapettes), and if racism is power plus prejudice (which I am not accepting as a definition), they are still at the sharp end.
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