A shocking series of racist emails attacking job applicant Julie Eru, living on the Auckland North Shore, which have been traced back to a Chinese-run company called Brightstar, has been exposed on 3 News.
   It was generally agreed by Brightstar that their computers had been hacked and a police report has been filed.
   The boss of Brightstar has limited English so we can easily rule him out as being the writer of these messages, which point to a native English speaker.
   The question was raised in the report, ‘But why would a hacker attack a small business in East Tamaki?’
   I would have thought the answer very easy. The hacker is a racist.
   I said not long ago on the blogosphere that those who make accusations of racism so readily, as the writer of these offensive emails does, are usually racists themselves. It’s an easy explanation, because someone who is not a racist would naturally think of other explanations or, in the case of a hacker, other insults, first.
   In fact, my own mind wouldn’t have turned to this explanation either, if it had not been for the “inspiration” the writer of the emails had given me.
   Their motivation is to make an immigrant, in this case, Chinese, company look bad, and to create a rift between Chinese and Māori.
   It was a failed attempt, trying to revive the sort of irrelevant muck that yesterday’s politician, Winston Peters, specialized in.
   It’s less disgusting than the attempts by racist groups some years ago of simultaneously desecrating Jewish gravestones and sending pork to Muslim families, but the ideas are similar.
   That time, we could rule out the perpetrators being Jewish or Islamic; this time, we can rule out the hacker being either Chinese or Māori.
   The net effect of the racists’ actions last time was making our country look bad, so we can call them unpatriotic, too.
   That time, too, it brought Jews and Muslims closer together in New Zealand; this time, I can only hope that both Chinese and Māori, who have both experienced racism, either as immigrants or in our own homeland, can come closer together, too.
   It’s not as though our peoples have any tension between us: our cultures have similar roots, so whomever decided to use the racist tack isn’t terribly smart, either.
   We can surmise that the hacker is prejudiced and thick, which is a laughable combination of talents. Posted by Jack Yan, 10:55  permalink

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