Talking about the birth of jazz -- that musical form integrating blues and spirituals, hymns and moans, African rhythms and western harmonies and much, much more -- celebrated jazz guitarist Danny Barker talks about its birthplace, New Orleans, as somewhere in which people of all nationalities were living together side by side. "And," he laughs, "there was a whole lot of integratin' going on."
I thought of that when I saw Lindsay Mitchell post one of the many fascinating wee statistics that frequently appear at her blog, this one on how many who identify as Maori are not co-habiting with other Maori.
What the figures show are that more Maori men and women are married to or cohabiting with Europeans than with other Maori.
Now, I don't generally care for figures or data based on race. But as Lindsay points out, this natural human phenomenon is really a spanner in the works for all those folk presently promoting separatism ...
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