Hone in more context

Audrey Young has an article, where the full transcript of what Hone said is included. I still think he has a very sad outlook on such things, but the full transcript does give a bit more context to his motivation which helps make more sense of it:

Derek says: In the lead up to this, Hone said he did not have many Pakeha friends and talked about giving out energy, and how when he gave out energy to Maori communities, it was all positive, but when it was for non-Maori, “a lot of it is completely barren”.

DC: What if one of your kids came home with a Pakeha, how would you feel about that?

HH: I wouldn’t feel comfortable.

DC: Why not?

HH: I just wouldn’t feel comfortable. That person will come into my house and not have a Maori expectation of how we operate. Do you know what I mean?

DC: Couldn’t you teach them that?

HH: Christ, like I have time for that. I don’t have time to be teaching people about that sort of stuff. We had this old Pakeha chap who died in our local community, and we brought him to our marae, and his mother came. She was really really old. And she stands up in the marae and she says,’this is wonderful. It’s the first marae I’ve ever been to’. She must have been 80-something. I think to myself,’for God’s sake’. You know what I mean?

I really don’t have time to be trying to teach people, aye. I’ve got [barely] enough time to teach my own, to teach myself. There’re some people who enjoy and are good at teaching non-Maori about Maori things. I’m not, so I don’t try. And I don’t try to bullshit anybody that I am, either.

This fuller version of what he said, does change things a bit. I still think anyone who generalises about an entire population based on their ethnicity is somewhat sad though.