The mother of all insults, yes. But race hate? No

SPEAKING AS a white motherf----- myself, I can't say I took much offence at Hone Harawira's flaming email to Buddy Mikaere a week ago.

The lesson, I thought, was one many of us have learned to our lasting regret: don't click "send" in anger, especially after 10 o'clock at night. The fact this intemperate exchange became public in the first place – Harawira's invitation to Mikaere to release it notwithstanding – suggested petty personal animosity more than genuine political outrage.

As ever in this country, however, when it comes to race relations, the petty and the profound soon blur. More people have apparently taken offence officially over Harawira's remarks than over Paul Holmes's fatuous "cheeky darkie" malarkey in 2003. Holmes was dignified with a painting, albeit ridiculing him, by Ralph Hotere. I wonder if a Dick Frizzell or Bill Hammond might reciprocate on behalf of upset Pakeha, just in the interests of fairness?

Fairness, after all, lies at the heart of all this. Was it fair that Harawira be held to account for goofing off on a taxpayer-funded trip? Was it fair that he invoke the injustices of the colonial past as partial justification for not playing along with the "puritanical bullshit" of the "white man"? Ultimately, is it fair that a Maori get away with inflammatory comments that from the mouth of a "white motherf-----" would almost undoubtedly see them condemned as an out-and-out racist?

There will be those, inevitably, who believe in direct equivalence – if it's not OK for Pakeha to talk about brown motherf-----s, then the reverse isn't OK either.

As Winston Peters told Grey Power, "When an MP can vilify other New Zealanders on an overtly racial basis and not be instantly dismissed from his party we are in deeply dangerous territory."

If genuine racial insult were intended it would be hard to argue against this. But before we start framing the debate in such unequivocal terms, perhaps we need to decide whether what Harawira said was really all that terrible.

Unless you're so literal-minded or naive that you think he was implying white people are overly close to their mothers – in which case he could only have been referring to half the European population – it's difficult to detect an authentic slur in the remarks. Simply juxtaposing skin colour with an expletive does not automatically infer racial prejudice. Vulgar, unbecoming, counter-productive – maybe. But not necessarily tantamount to race hate.

But let's also be honest about the context in which we perceive such language. There is a certain double standard in operation when it comes to colloquial discussion of race – one that exists with the tacit consent of a large section of sane society. Professional offence-takers and other hypersensitive ninnies aside, we are quite capable of determining, case by case, what is truly offensive and hurtful and what is nuanced with mitigating historical or traditional context.

So it's acceptable (or at least understandable) when a black comedian such as Chris Rock makes jokes about his fellow black men, but when a white person tells the same joke the skies fall in, as two students discovered when they tried it at a Conservative Party meeting at Oxford University earlier this year. (The joke is about finding your TV moving in the dark because black people are stealing it – it's funnier when Rock tells it.)

To some this is nothing but outright inverse racism. Why can only black comedians say "nigga" or make fun of the black underclass? Why could Billy T James parody Maori but not the Auckland University engineering students? Why should a Maori politician be any less culpable than his Pakeha counterpart if they're rude about the other's race?

The answer, I think, is that the dominant majority is big enough and ugly enough to take it, and most people instinctively get this. Whereas marginalised minorities simply don't enjoy the sense of cultural security and safety to be able to laugh it off quite so easily.

If that's political correctness, so be it, but it's the kind that makes the world a slightly better place – in the words of AA Gill, "a small correction in order to smooth out a few of the little unfairnesses of living in a huge, unequal and complicated society".

Paradoxically, the day a Hone Harawira is drummed out of parliament or his party for saying something a white motherf----- couldn't, will be the day many of his battles are won. It will be the day we're all free to give and take offence equally.

finlay.macdonald@star-times.co.nz