possible baby names

Girls
cody
georgia
elisabeth

Boys
matthew
liam
dylan

vote now for your choice!

At work we're compiling a database of our members, and I spent a lot of today inputting into the database.  The reason for doing it is so we know how many members we have and we can contact them directly. Also we will give them an individual member card.

It's a pretty standard database: name, address, date of birth, association they belong to. But I also put in some boxes for ethnicity. The categories are

New Zealand European
New Zealand Maori
Pacific Island
Asian
Chinese
Other

It's made very clear that any data on ethnicity will be aggregated, that it will not be used to identify any individual, and that it will be used for statistical purposes. I think it's important that as an organisation trying to provide services to people, we have an idea of just who our members are. We need to know, for example, that with a growing Asian immigration to New Zealand if this means a growing number of Asians playing our sport. Because their needs might be different than other groups. Anyway, fairly standard sort of marketing information I would have thought.

And most people seem to agree. At least they tick the appropriate box. But there is a number who don't. Who cross everything out and scrawl "discrimination", or "object"; or who put in big letters "New Zealander" in the "Others" space.

And I wonder why. I wonder what exactly threatens them so much.

Let me rephrase that. What I figure threatens them is the thought that New Zealand isn't a nice homogenous (white) society. That people might identify themselves in more precise ways than as New Zealander. And that we, as an organisation, or as a country, might need to respond to these trends in new ways.

I like the idea of New Zealand becoming a more diverse society. I like the idea of people identifying themselves in new ways, in ways that are meaningful to them.

Though I wonder just where I might fit in, or how I should identify. Having the term European, as in New Zealand European, is somewhat meaningless to me. Yes, at some stage ancestors of mine came to New Zealand from England, and Ireland and Scotland. But all my grandparents were born in New Zealand, as were some of my great-grandparents. I can appreciate the cultural aspects of a European heritage, but, living on a island in the South Pacific, identifying myself with that doesn't make sense.

Maybe New Zealand Paheka is best. "Pakeha" being a Maori term for white newcomers to Aotearoa/New Zealand.

And in case ya wondering why we didn't use New Zealand Pakeha in the database, I wasn't quite strong enough. It would have created too many objections.

Ahhhh, but one day I'll surprise people with the true extent of my radicalness!