Another twitch in our race relations fidget

Pacific Current

BY KARLO MILA

When it comes to race relations we seem to oscillate between patting ourselves on our backs and pulling out the defensive weapons.

I  mean, seriously, does anyone ever  know what to do with their hands?

Our race relations saga is one pendulum-swinging, hand-wringing, constant awkward fidget.

One minute, good old Richie McCaw is leading the haka with confidence and all is well in the world (the rugby field at least).

The next minute, the H-bomb has landed in Whanganui and its democratically elected mayor is talking "resist and prevail" tactics against the natives and beating down letter-writing schoolchildren.

New Zealand: where even consonants can become a "race" issue of national significance.

A friend of mine described the Harawira email fallout as evidence that New Zealand is not mature enough to have a conversation about race, only a screaming match.

Mind you, we are not alone in this. The no- shows at the 2009 United Nations World Conference Against Racism would suggest that, on a global level, any mature conversation about race is still a work in progress.

Hone Harawira's hot-headed, exasperated, expletive-filled email slagging off white people is the latest frenzy in our race relations fidget.

It has stimulated more complaints to the Human Rights Commission than any other race relations issue, ever. Note to self: the highest volume of complaints involved a racial slur against white people.

Possibly this is not commensurate with the level of disadvantage and discrimination.

Actually, Statistics New Zealand tells us that Maori and Asian people are two to three times more likely to report discrimination than Europeans.

Let's keep it grassroots, regional New Zealand real, folks.

Commissioned by a coalition of organisations (Nelson City Council, Tasman District Council, New Zealand Police and others), a research project recently investigated racism in Nelson.

Including participants from 48 different ethnic backgrounds, the findings showed that four out of five participants had personally experienced racism.

Only 20 per cent had reported it because most thought that there was "no point" and it was "just part of life".

Hmm. And while nearly 40 per cent reported feeling unsafe and/or in danger in the Nelson region because of that racist experience, many were just "used to it".

It's almost quintessentially Kiwi really, isn't it?

Just to get on with it. Notably, every single Maori and Pacific student surveyed reported experiencing a bad response when trying to report racism.

I am not sure how the 721 people (as of last Friday) who called, emailed or complained to the Human Rights Commission about "that" email are going to feel after reporting their experience of racism, nor whether they will get the pound of flesh they were after.

As one blogger wrote, he doesn't give a toss about Hone, but watching the lynch mob is interesting.

We've certainly seen a lot of noise about what ought to be acceptable in "our society".

As John Key pointed out, extreme views in politics are nothing new and we can't exclude people from Parliament just because they say things we don't like.

That's a pretty slippery road towards a completely empty house of representatives.

Voices such as Mr Harawira's are either articulated honestly within a democratic system and participating in "our" conversations about "who we are" and "where we're going", or they are silenced, shut down and left to simmer outside it.

It is in my living memory (as a teenager) of being told by an insider of plans to blow up the Beehive.

Right now, every day (unless he's in Paris) Mr Harawira puts on a shirt and turns up to his office at Parliament. When you think about where his political energy was directed 20 years ago, that's no small thing.

And it's also no small thing that "our" parliamentary landscape has shifted to include Maori who are less Apirana Ngata and more Hone Heke.

Given how many people who Mr Harawira represents are voiceless, on the fringes, and not participating, it strikes me that "we" might need him in "our" conversations more than "we" realise.

In fact, it strikes me that middle New Zealand has got Mr Harawira right where it wants him: working within the system, in an unlikely partnership with a centre-Right government, and whether he likes it or not, publicly accountable for both his speech and actions.