Cultural cringe

OPINION: Celebrating ethnic diversity was always going to be a stretch for many South Africans, no matter on what side of the racial divide they happened to fall.

That the Presidents' Council should get their wires crossed so badly that they considered the New Zealand Maori rugby team racist, and therefore unwelcome in their country, only shows the extent of the on-going confusion. No other nation in the world is as mixed-up when it comes to cultural matters.

South Africa's threat to ban the Maori from visiting later this year because of the team's race-based selection policy is the sort of muddled-thinking that we should probably expect, given the mind-warp that's been the republic's history over the past century. After the upheavals of apartheid and the nausea of white superiority, differentiating between acts of racism and acts of cultural celebration was always going to be a challenge.

But at least the South Africans have a decent excuse. New Zealanders, on the other hand, have no cause to feel similarly compromised; the Maori team has always been promoted as a celebration of our culture rather than a symbol of racial discrimination or social engineering. For all that, judging by the feedback from last week's column on the haka, there's an increasing amount of confusion over the difference between the two.

Add a TV One Close Up poll on Thursday evening, when 71 percent of respondents answered in the negative the question: "Should we still have a New Zealand Maori team?", not to mention a stream of bewildering talkback radio comments, and it was hard not to feel a bit nervous about the country's sense of togetherness. The battle against our base instincts continues on a daily basis. I guess that at least explains the election.

Ironies? There are always ironies. This time it had to be the fact it took John Minto, the man who gifted this country a sporting conscience during the Springbok tour protests, to point out that the South Africans were again applying a confused set of principles.

"For Maori, this [team selection] is an affirmative, positive action," he told TV3. "Whereas in a South African context, race-based selection is a way of putting people down."

The shame is that so many Kiwis seem incapable of understanding Minto's point; that there's nothing negative about the celebration of an indigenous culture, particularly within the wider picture of a colonised nation. That there's no similarity between the right to ethnic identity and the concept of discriminating on the basis of skin colour. That the former is something we should embrace; the latter, something we should abhor. You would think that would be straightforward enough.

But no, apparently. No, it's not. "Imagine the fuss if we picked a Pakeha team", one reader grumbled this week. "An all-Maori team is a sign of apartheid," opined another. And this was just the printable stuff.

It was bad enough that so many folk continued to confuse ethnicity with skin colour, but there was also a bigger question lurking in the depths: Why are so many of us intimidated by our first people? How can a Maori rugby team hurt the rest of us?

Truth is, opponents of the Maori side have no good answer, apart from a concession that they neither understand nor respect New Zealand's founding document, much less the subtle nuances of racism. As long as Maori want to play as a team, their detractors' resistance has no merit, nor any worthy motive. It's just a feeble disguise for a fear of all things indigenous. A crude backlash, concealed in a clear plastic wrapper.

It makes you wonder what these people would make of the United States' Jewish rugby team that's set to play in this year's Maccabiah Games, an Olympic-type event designed for Jewish sportspeople around the world. Or the annual naming of All-American Jewish College teams in sports such as basketball, football and baseball. Would the anti-Maori team lobby have a problem with that concept as well? And if they did, do they realise what they'd be called?

Just one further thought: how can these champions of logic reconcile their stance on Maori with Irish, Welsh and Scottish efforts to preserve their own ethnic heritage within the United Kingdom's dominant Anglo-Saxon culture? Or do they think it would be better if they all just gave up and assimilated as one state, with no celebration of the ethnic diversity within? If so I'd love to be a fly on the wall when it was time to tell the Celts to live more like the English.

Rugby in this country has long been used as a vehicle to celebrate identity, whether it's been the women's teams, the university teams or the Marist combinations. As race relations commissioner Joris de Bres said last week, there's nothing wrong with a New Zealand Maori, European or Chinese footy team, as long as our national, regional and local representative sides remain open to all ethnicities. That, he stressed, was known as ethnic diversity, not racial discrimination.

No one should be surprised South Africans might struggle to get their heads around that concept, even if they are merrily expanding their positive discrimination policy in all walks of life, not least in sport and rugby itself.

The staggering part, however, is that so many New Zealanders could fall into the same trap and choose to side with such a stunted point of view.

An explanation? Only that the arguments are neither genuine nor sincere, but rather a front for a far less palatable reality. And I'm pretty sure there's a word for it.

- © Fairfax NZ News