Posts by Craig Ranapia
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It’s really about how you react when you’re asked to read books by women. It’s a very small thing. Try reading only female authors for a month, just a month.
You can easily fill a month with titles from Persephone Books, which not only has a damn impressive list but is one of the most successful small indie publishers in recent memory.
Persephone Books began in a room above a pub in the spring of 1998. Founder Nicola Beauman’s original concept was to publish a handful of ‘lost’ or out-of-print books every year, most of them interwar novels by women. The name Persephone was chosen as a symbol of female creativity, as well as of new beginnings (the daughter of Zeus is associated with spring).
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Russell Brown,
What did people like former Helen Clark advisor Keith Ng and economist Shamubeel Eaqub say when Maori rights were breached during the Tuhoe raids by the police in 2007 or when Labour rolled out their shameful foreshore and seabed act in 2004? Nothing.
Short answer, Willie: A metric fuckton of people here abouts. (Including Keith who, IIRC, didn’t think Dr. Brash’s numbers stacked up either.) But never mind, stick to slut-shaming rape victims and don’t let reality get in the way of being everyone’s favourite brown-neck.
Speaking for myself, I’d like to decline human shield duty for naked racism. Maori have more than enough problems without becoming pawns in that game. Again.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to TracyMac,
Breaking news: Chinese agent says clients local
Mairangi Bay? We live nearby, will (if everything goes to plan) will be sold up and moved back to Wellington(-ish) by Christmas and nobody will be getting their papers checked at the open home.
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I know it's very bad form to talk about someone who's just been told to leave the room, but all this talk about "people who work in everyday statistics" just throws into relief a lot of what I find really troubling about this.
A lot of people are talking about "data" and "ethnic groups", and forgetting that this is coming out of a political intervention on a matter of public policy that actually affects human beings not some abstract collective noun.
Morgan Godfrey did a guest post on The Ruminator today When are numbers racist? that everyone should read and think hard about, if they haven't already.
The point is that data analysis isn’t neutral, the narratives we craft from it even less so.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Steve Curtis,
Even Keith Ng, who seems to be an amatuer statistician and even a volunteer with St John Ambulance is pushing beyond his particular speciality- an angry journalist.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Fact: the public voted and said no.
Sure, Katherine. So, you don't win the argument first time so you stop making it? If that was always the case New Zealand would be a very different place. For starters, you wouldn't be able to vote for anyone because the franchise would still be restricted to male property-owners.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Russell Brown,
If they plan to keep living in Auckland they don't have much choice but to take the market price for the house they're selling. I don't think "greedy white homeowners" is a very useful approach.
Thank you, Russell - it really isn't. My partner is retiring at the end of the month, and if all goes to plan we're selling up and moving back to Wellington by the end of the year. Of course, we're going to get the very best price we can (and without running background checks at the open homes) because this is our only major asset.
If anyone wants to frame that as "greedy white homeowners", I guess I can't stop you. But it's infuriating.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Rob Salmond,
liberal outrage machine
To paraphrase Helen Clark: Rob, when you’re in a hole, stop digging like you’re auditioning for Fox News or the Daily Mail.
Seriously.
Just stop.
Please.
You know what you call "the liberal outrage machine"? I call them citizens and electors who are allowed to get as uppity as they damn well please. If they're not able or willing to treat all this as some rhetorical game or stats-wanking thought experiment? Deal with it.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to llew40,
OTOH, Labour has achieved its goal of getting the issue talked about. Its just had to take quite a few punches to the face in doing so.
As Keith and Tse-Ming and others keep pointing out it’s who ends up being used as human shields and written off as collateral damage over and over and over again. I really don’t know whether Labour’s leadership really get that – or even much care.
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but the problem is that ethnic Chinese New Zealanders heard something very different to what you say you were saying..
A lot of other people did too. Rob throwing around his own brand of “cartoonish hyperbole” to caricature dissent isn’t adding anything much to the “sensible discussion” he keeps saying he wants.
And this particularly got up my nose:
Many were quick to accuse Labour of overt racism, despite Labour’s proud record on race relations in New Zealand.
Recently, a lot of people were marking the 29th anniversary of the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act. Labour is, and should be, very proud of it’s part in that. But does that mean LGBT and allies are never allowed to be critical of Labour ever again? Nope, Rob, that’s not how a parliamentary democracy works.
