Winston Reid Foundation

winston reads accademy and his respect to one of his cultures, why have i seen comments that this is racist and a bad idea.(not on our forum yet thankyou)

this is in praise of his efforts . it must be good to convince maori athletes to play footy even if for summer training. its no different to having ethnic clubs in nz. if you dont like it dont reply but dont be scared. look at the all whites

When you're used to being the dominant culture it's easy to see anything which tries to even out the statistics as racist, what people don't realise is that the entire system is built around their culture and ideals which is much more divisive and discriminatory than a few football scholarships.

Ironically, thanking that this discussion hasn't happened here, while starting the discussion :P

As I understand it the set up he has put in place is based on race.

i.e. if you are the wrong race, you aren't able to use it to help you succeed.

It's something I am ethically torn on, While the new definitions of racism apply only if you are certain races which I strongly disagree with.  i.e. discrimination based on race is only racism if you are certain races.

So if 2 kids who are in the same class bracket, i.e. are both poor as hell, and have the same schooling disadvantages and both love football and are promising young athletes, but both aren't going to have the opportunity to pursue it due to societies class issues.  If one is Maori and one is White, the Maori kid can apply for this, the white kid can't because of his race.  i.e he is being racially discriminated against.

The reason I am torn is because Reid is going to pump money and resources into NZ football.  Ultimately one way or another, that's good for our game.

Generally I see the white people that get pissed off about this are the lower class or middle class white people, that struggle week to week to survive so get pissed of when things are available to their class group but not them as they are the wrong race to be able to be helped, a la "Hey you need help, sure here's the mon... oh wait, sorry you are white, we don't help white people".  But that's annecdotal.

Society is more concerned with looking not racist than actually not being racist.

The thing is society is setup from the ground up to be racist, it's built on the ideals and culture of white rich men.

Nice and generalized, hard to respond to as you don't use specifics.

Society is built around keeping wealth where it is.  So rich white man A has lots of money.  It doesn't matter if there are 200 white people who are poor around him, all people see is rich white man A, and Rich white man A is used as proof that society is oppressing every other race.

But the moment people talk about socialist policies or redistribution of wealth, everyone, of all races and genders, get defensive and says we cant have that.  So wealth will stay where it is, the top 1% will keep getting further away from the rest of us, and that 1% of wealth for the most part will stay within their families, meaning it stays in their genetic profiles.

Wealth when being handed from one generation to the next mean that wealth will stay within their races.  But these days with quotas, jobs that will only go to someone who isn't a white man, scholarships that are in place to help anyone who isn't a white man, etc, is going to continue to divide society, and disenfranchise poor white people.

But on topic, people think racial discrimination is racism because its racial discrimination.  
Other people think it isn't because it only discriminates against white people, it is what it is really.

Yes, in a fair society it would be racial discrimination, but a few scholarships don't make up for a couple of centuries of oppression. Most scholarships are independent of race, and there are others that discriminate in other ways, I'm sure Maori specific scholarships are only a few percentage of all scholarships on offer.

Unfortunately we're still stuck with petty tribal/herding instincts. Even if not consciously racist, we subconsciously prefer to have people around us who are the same as us. 

You're quite right, our system is designed to benefit the top 1%, most wealth is inherited, and someone born to a wealthy family but makes all the wrong decisions in life is statistically more likely to come out ahead of people who are born poor and make all the right decisions.

The way I see it, there are two issues at play here:

The first is that our society is built on thousands of years of European and Christian culture, it's completely foreign and ignorant of what people of other cultures want and need, therefore other people are forced to give up who they are and make an effort to fit in with us if they want to succeed.

The second is that the 1% who are in power are usually white and male and either consciously or subconsciously prefer to give scholarships to, promote, or hire people of their own ethnicity and class. It's natural to want to spend time with people like you and racial discrimination doesn't have to mean actually being racist. This means that people from minority groups have to be much better than their white counterparts to get the same opportunities. 

Statistics clearly show that women or minorities with the same or better education, experience, skills, etc. get paid worse and are less likely to be promoted than their white male counterparts. There are always exceptions, but there are exceptions with every trend.

By giving opportunities based on race, gender, sexuality, etc. people are trying to get past those barriers which are intrinsic to our culture, in the future we're we've moved on from such nonsence and Maori don't make up the bulk of the prison population or poverty statistics and are statistically as likely to succeed as a white person, then we can drop these sorts of things.

The issue here is intersectionality:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

Discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, class etc occurs as a general trend across society, but it doesn't follow that any one member of a group which is discriminated against is worse off than someone who is not a member of that group, because the other person may be a discriminated against for membership of another group. Targeting remedies at members of specific groups (say, a gender) always creates the chance for members of other groups (say, a sexuality) to say but what about us? I'm not a member of X gender but I'm discriminated against because of Y sexuality.

That shouldn't be used as a reason to have no targeted remedies, but targeted remedies like scholarships can only ever be part of a solution for that reason.

Wrote a big spiel but its going miles off topic.

In regards to the OP there are a lot of people saying its racist, its because its racial prejudice.  You'd be gutted if your child didn't make it as a footballer while another child that may have been at the same skill level, got the opportunity to succeed because he was the right race to succeed.  So many consider racial prejudice a bad thing, which I don't totally disagree with.

There is one main point where getting some more promising maori/pacifica footballers to be in the top team gives young kids the motivation to stick to the sport.  Kids are kids, and when they are still too young to think the hole thing through, seeing rugby megastars who look like them gives them the dream to be like their heroes.

More football heroes like that may motivate kids to stick with football and shoot to be All Whites, which is a good thing.

But as white people become disenfranchised with the system as they see more blame being put on white people as a whole, and not specific white people who are gaming the system, they get defensive when themselves, or their kids are excluded from opportunities. Especially when its because of their genetics and not their failings as a person.

Same shark different day really.

WOW!! Any chance of moving on to football on this thread. 

If Winston Reid pours money into football, especially in Wgtn, develops youth football and a couple of them go on to become All Whites, then that's good. 

Couple of questions. He talks about a facility similar to the All Blacks in PN. So where is this to be based?. Who is going to run it? Will NZF get involved? How far away are we talking of this being set up?

I dont care if it is a Maori kid who scores the winner in a World Cup Playoff.

Yes  a Maori by the name of  Wynton Rufer scored the winner to put us into The World Cup Finals in 1982. Then on 14 November 2009 another Maori boy scored the goal that got us to South Africa.

I am  delighted that Winston is providing incentives for Maori and Polynesian youth to advance in "The Beautiful Game".  The more involved the better 

The thread was originally titled about racism not the academy, it was renamed.

Please Reid  Just to save looking it up. Easier access and Scholarships.  Not exclusive if I read correctly 

Yes. And another one scored a last minute equaliser against Slovakia to start our unbeaten run at the 2010 World Cup.

Had a closer re-read and only some of the resources are exclusive scholarships.

It's just genuinely cool that he's not in passing talking nicely about NZ, or just meeting the bare minimum, but putting his own hard earned cash on the line to help NZ football.  If NZF was less shark there could be even more money for upcoming footballers.