save us, bizarro!

Isn't it awful how, until tonight, none of this seemed real? Something to laugh off, make memes of, to exclaim "It'll never happen, don't worry" about. The Bizzarro World nature of a Trump presidency was so unconvincing that nobody ever expected it. Tonight, the free world has become truly bizarre—surreal even.

It's tempting to look inward and make this about ourselves, to think "This is awful, I can't believe this has happened". Being halfway across the world makes it easy to process this new reality, where there's no urgency to its consequences, nothing immediately effecting us. Compare our luxury to the thought of living in America right now. Moreso, the thought of living in America as an immigrant (be it first, second, third, fourth generation), as a member of the LGBT+ community, as a woman, as a person of colour. Britain's divisive Brexit referendum brought out the worst in its yea-sayers, where abuse was dealt throughout Britain in a mind-boggling number of forms... verbal, physical, emotional, even laminated cards shoved in letterboxes reading "No more Polish vermin". Project and scale up this kind of reaction onto a country stricken by uncertainty, by fear. Truly, the marginalized will be tested to the edge of their limits in the wake of this decision. Four long years stretch in front of the whole world, and who can say what will happen to any of us during them? Despair, disbelief, and anger should be the emotions that you cycle through tonight, not for yourself, but for the people outlined above. Pray for those whose rights have been taken from them tonight. Get angry. Get political.

This should be the lesson that is learned tonight. America's election this year should be testament enough of the importance of taking action. Fight for change if you are unhappy with your current situation. Make your decisions with purpose. Passivity is the enemy of change—less than 60% of the country's eligible voters participated in this election and those people voted because they wanted something to change, whatever that thing may have been. They succeeded. Ultimately, change is coming to the United States. It is our prerogative to remember why this has happened, and to learn from it.

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this old (chinese) chestnut

I am sick to death of the demonization of Chinese migrants in New Zealand. This latest opinion piece from The New Zealand Herald is nothing less than propaganda playing into a lot of middle class fears about the Auckland housing market and kiwis' need for someone to blame. Not only this, but it throws out sweeping generalizations as to the class of Chinese immigrants—"...we have been absorbing lower quality immigrants.."—and creates an 'us versus them' dichotomy that smacks of New Zealand's prejudice towards Chinese immigrants of the 1800-1900s. Maybe bringing back 1881's poll tax and restricted entry requirements, 1907's English reading tests, and 1908's severely limited entry permits would help as well? We can strike the government's 2002 apology for its suffering caused to Chinese immigrants off the record, if so.

Moreover, "Instead of seeing a balanced ethnic mix, Auckland started to acquire an unwholesomely Chinese flavour" is a stand out quote from this train wreck of an email—apparently from a Chinese migrant real estate agent called 'Adam", which is just so convenient for Winston Peters and his stance on Auckland's housing market. This use of the word unwholesome cuts me to my core. My flavour is unwholesome, because there's too many people like me in New Zealand and it's threatening the well-being of the country. At least half of this piece is dedicated not to the tailspinning Auckland housing market, but instead deriding Chinese immigrants as a collective. A collective who seek to only bring to the country "dodgy places" with "poorly designed, cheap signs", and uncork a bottle of champagne when a young-and-in-love (100% kiwi) couple's potential first home is stolen away from them "...by someone screaming in [M]andarin." This block quote says it all:
"It is about how do you want your Auckland and your New Zealand to be? Do we want trained, skilled professionals to bring our economy to the next level or all we want to see is another Chinese restaurant around the corner, or foreign visitors mistaking Auckland for China?".
Implicit within this is again a dichotomy between kiwis and 'the Chinese', where you're either in favour of trained, skilled professionals who are working to Make New Zealand Great Again, or you're in favour of that dodgy looking 'Golden Dragon' on the corner of K Road. 

In the end, the article doesn't offer any solutions, to either the Chinese problem or the housing one. It drops a 608 word bomb of insidious rhetoric about how Chinese immigrants threaten the wholesome nature of our country, and leaves you with an ominous ultimatum: "It is time for us New Zealanders to rethink." I agree. It's time for us to rethink the quality of our finger-pointing politicians, the quality of our national news outlets, and most importantly, how terrible the Yum Cha will be when we eventually get rid of those dodgy, unskilled, low quality Chinese.

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