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28 December 2008

MICHAEL LAWS
COLUMNIST

A weekly column published in the ‘Sunday Star-Times'

2008’s terrible theme: Child Abuse

And so this year ends, as it began. Another child from an underclass whanau/family dies at the hands of its nearest but not dearest.

The underclass killing its kids has been the terrible theme of 2008. The Kahui twins, Nia Glassie, Duwayne Pailegutu– these are just some the names that mark this year with shame.

Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro will wring her hands – and preach that “we” must stop harming “our” kids … but the truth remains. Being born to an underclass family, especially if you are Maori, increases the risk of child abuse and child murder by an exponential degree.

Again we will hear excuses and blame-shifting from the liberal apologists – the Kiros, Bradfords and Trotters – all of whom will deny that the problem is specifically amongst a group who are devolving themselves from the human race.

But the truth is that British evolutionary biologist Oliver Curry is right. Humankind is evolving along two distinct tracks and that genetic gap is growing with each child born.

Those of us who have lived half a century or more already accept this thesis. We do so subconsciously – because we know that New Zealand has changed its societal structure dramatically since we were at primary school.

In the 1950s and 1960s, our schools were mixed with all manner of socio-economic progeny. The sons and daughters of wharfies and freezing workers shared the same teacher as the sons and daughters of farmers or doctors. There were no unemployed – instead there were sheltered workshops like the Railways or the Post Office if no vocation was available.

Flash forward forty years, and this is a nation utterly defined by its schools, suburbs and salaries. We rank our schools, neighbourhoods and even hospitals by decile. The poor are schooled with the poor, the middle housed with the middle, and the wealthy can afford health insurance.
Private/independent schools accentuate the trend with the added twist of ethnic privilege.

There are no signs that this trend will do other than strengthen.

The children of welfare are now legion, and they are deliberately destined for the same lifestyle as their, usually, solo parent. They smoke, drink, drug, crime, victim, bash like no other group in the country. And then they breed some more.

Almost all interventions aimed at arresting this decline have failed. Most especially those emanating from Wellington-based politicians and policy-makers. Sure, there are individual and successful attempts to escape the vortex but they are just that – individual. The underclass continues to grow.

Occasionally it spews its bile and a common manifestation is child abuse. The 16 month Kerikeri boy that was bashed senseless this week did not emanate from a middle-class, white family. Over the next few days and weeks we will learn his name and we will grieve his death. But we would have been better to grieve his short life – most especially that his birth automatically placed him in harm’s way.

There will be the inevitable question of CYFS as if social workers are ever a solution. They can do little in the face of nihilism – and their aegis is motivated solely by complaint or notification. Ipso facto, they are always too late: the abuse has already occurred.

Which brings us back to Oliver Curry: the true prophet of 2008.

His studies are not the musings of Starship specialists and nor are they the anecdotal observations of columnists or commentators. They are the result of empirical and academic study and they communicate a truth that we all secretly know, yet fear to admit.

That humankind is indeed diverging and dividing. That it is evolving as quickly and dramatically as climate change. And that it is no longer compressed or conformed by any social order, be it derived from the law or religion.

We have witnessed the proof for ourselves this year. The Mongrel Mob killers of Jhia Te Tua went feral years ago. The Curtis brothers and Lisa Kuka are not of any civilized society. Chris Kahui and Macsyna King frequent no lifestyle of which we are vaguely familiar. Johnny Joachim eradicated empathy at an early age.

They are each products of the same underclass of which their children are now part. Banjo Kahui and William Curtis stand as living proof that trash begets trash.

And yet despite all these child tragedies of 2008 – the outrage and the angst – the anger and the outpourings … there are no public education campaigns aimed at outing abusers. There are no attempts to link benefits with defined responsibilities. There are no cash offers to the underclass to sterilise themselves, or compulsory parenting courses for pregnant teens and their partners.

We continue to disassociate event from consequence.

Which is why Cindy Kiro might be a lot more correct than she thinks. Kids are being culled because of us. Because we won’t make the tough decisions and because we prefer to turn a blind eye. But mostly because we refuse to concede that humans are coming both more and lesser. Neither leavened by the other, with each upon their own separate evolutionary path.

ENDS