David Trubridge sheds light on the depths of colonialism in Aotearoa, while Daniel O’Leary says that he has never heard a single instance of praise for British colonialism in Ireland
Nesrine Malik takes on empire (Badenoch’s empire comments speak to the enduring mentality of colonialism, 27 September), but doesn’t really get to grips with the insidious depths of colonialism. I was born in Great (as it was then) Britain in the early 1950s and was soon packed off for privilege-conditioning at private boarding schools. In the 1980s I fled Thatcherism and nuclear threats, finally ending up in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
It has taken the 35 years since then of listening to Māori to begin to understand the extent of colonial conditioning. It is a deeply embedded mindset that feels like the only norm to the perpetrators. But it is a corrosive belittling of all “the other” as being lesser. Implicit in colonialism are racism, patriarchy and excess individualism or egotism.
