Pick the odd one out:

• A: The German Nazi regime, founded on a belief in the supremacy of the Aryan ‘race’ and ruled as a dictatorship by a single party and leader, which launched a war of aggression in Europe, embarked on a systematic campaign of extermination of Jews, and murdered political opponents, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and disabled people.
• B: The apartheid regime of South Africa, founded on a belief in the supremacy of the white ‘race’, which stole the land and resources of black Africans, exploited black labour, denied non-white people the vote and other political rights, and jailed, tortured and assassinated its political opponents.
• C: The American South during the Jim Crow era, when laws based on a belief in the supremacy of the white ‘race’ denied African Americans voting and other political rights, African Americans were confined to substandard schools and housing and to the most menial and low-paid work, and the Ku Klux Klan and other armed groups regularly terrorised African American communities with lynchings and mob violence.
• D: Political policies in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand which aim (after decades of political processes which marginalised Māori) to give Māori a formal role in decision-making, to ensure that their interests and cultural perspectives are represented; or which facilitate the establishment by Māori of their own services, organisations and spaces where they can (if they choose) be themselves, govern themselves and help themselves in an environment underpinned by Māori cultural values and practices.

If you chose ‘D’ – congratulations! You have a better sense of perspective than some of the most senior figures in the current New Zealand Government, and can tell the difference between an oppressive system of racial domination and one that creates space for indigenous people to represent their own interests and pursue their own collective aspirations. The attempts by certain politicians to draw parallels between policies such as co-governance with Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa or the Jim Crow South, are both offensive and historically illiterate.

But what about historical parallels closer to home? On Thursday, ACT party Tertiary Education and Skills spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar announced that she was writing to every tertiary education institute in the country to ask about their policies on spaces set aside for particular sections of the student community. This follows confected outrage from the usual suspects about a sign at Auckland University for a designated study area for Māori and Pasifika students. In making this announcement, Dr Parmar said that ‘The signage reminds us of darker days when different races were segregated at swimming baths and barber shops.’

Although it wasn’t clear from her media release, an article by Dr Parmar published today confirms that she was referring to past discriminatory practices in New Zealand: ‘Māori were once segregated at cinemas and swimming baths. Indians like me were excluded from some barber shops until the 1950s.’

This is a welcome acknowledgement by Dr Parmar of past discrimination experienced particularly by Māori, but also by Indian, Chinese and Pacific peoples in Aotearoa. Most notoriously, the town of Pukekohe in South Auckland had a de facto ‘colour bar’ for many years. For a number of decades from the 1920s, Māori in Pukekohe were segregated in the local cinema, most barbers refused to cut their hair, and most bars would not serve them alcohol. For a time, the local school had segregated bathrooms and sessions at the swimming pool for Māori. (For more on this, see stories here, here and here.) While segregation seems to have been particularly strong in Pukekohe, Māori also experienced it elsewhere in the country. Segregation in Pukekohe also extended to the local Indian community, and there is a significant history of discrimination against Indian New Zealanders, too.

As with the comparisons to discriminatory regimes overseas, comparing dedicated study areas for Māori and Pacific students with past segregation in places like Pukekohe is specious. This is a history blog, so I won’t get into the merits of separate study spaces in contemporary universities here. But there is all the difference in the world between, on the one hand, laws or practices that ban marginalised groups from freely accessing goods and services; and, on the other hand, providing spaces for members of such groups to associate together, if they choose to do so.

Instead of adding to the stresses of university staff with inane information requests (surely a waste of the taxpayer funds that ACT claims to be focused on spending wisely), Dr Parmar could more usefully help to educate New Zealanders about the little-known history of discrimination in this country, and to draw connections between the experiences of Māori and Indian communities. And if some politicians can’t see the difference between past oppressive practices and present-day programmes that are designed, at least in part, to overcome the legacies of those past practices, they might need to go back to school for some remedial study themselves.