Could Waitangi 2010 Mark A New Mood in NZ Race Relations?

By Vienna Richards

With John Key due to give a keynote speech on race relations on the Treaty Grounds of Waitangi on our national day today, it begs a few questions. So the Prime Minister is serious about improving race relations improving in New Zealand? I sincerely hope so. We need that kind of leadership from the top.

First, so far so good in Waitangi, as far as fisty cuffs go. No one has yet struck at, or bared their buttock, at a visiting dignitary on Waitangi, unless you count the bare-bottomed Maori warrior yesterday. His only piece of clothing was material covering his loins. The rest was a free show. But today is the Big Day, Waitangi itself,  and if anything is going to happen, it will happen on this day.

In the past, few Prime Ministers, and Prime Ministers-in-waiting, have been spared the wrath of racial injustice that such a day evokes. At this stage, it looks like the Prime Minister will leave Waitangi without the diplomatic protection squad needed to jump in front of him.

Now, back to one begging question. (That’s all I’ve got time for). I have just watched the Great Waitangi Debate on Marae, TV One this morning. Well, bits of it. It didn’t hold my interest long enough with a teenager ready to go to his American Football game. But as I listened to the debate, one question rose out of the blue:

Would the Prime Minister John Key accept his son or daughter dating a brown man or woman in New Zealand, particularly a young Maori or Pacific Island? Yes or No.

If he can answer yes to that, then I’ll know that I can take his race relations speech seriously. Otherwise, it’s just another puff piece from a slick speechwriter. One that is more about looking good, rather than a genuine wish list of race relations in New Zealand.

Why THAT Question?

An email via the website from one reader, who identified as a Kiwi living in Oz, prompted me to respond further on this topic. She isn’t impressed with my question aimed at John Key.  With all respect, she missed my point  It was not about who would be the most suitable partners. It was: would you let them if they wanted to…? Based on her reaction,  my hunch is  she does not belong to a racial minority.  Nor does she identify as Maori or Pacific.  So I don’t expect that she would get the historical background to my question.  I suspect she has never had to navigate, and live and work between two or three worlds in Aotearoa New Zealand.

To those who have never experienced racism on a personal level, it will be easy to belittle my assertion. How so? If racism has never touched your life in the home, in the workplace or at school,  then in my experience, you’ll miss the “knowing” that is spoken only within the safety and comfort of our kitchen tables.

In the early 90s, as apartheid South Africa was beginning to dismantle its racially segregated systems, President F.W De Klerk was the public face of a racially tolerant South Africa. For the benefit of readers who were too young to care or follow its history, apartheid South Africa was a country that previously legally sanctioned racism at every level of life from the bedroom to school to eating places to Parliament. For example, interracial marriage was prohibited in apartheid South Africa. It was a criminal offence to have sexual relations with a person of a different race.

De Klerk was the moderate voice for white Afrikaners. One ready to share political power with those  they had previously subjugated for generations.

Come 1990, De Klerk delivered his famous and controversial speech on the 2nd February 1990 which announced the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years as a political prisoner.

As a 20-something, I saw De Klerk, the public politician, as progressive and color-blind. I accepted his public speech as part and parcel of his psyche as a man and a father. He defied angry threats and calls from many white Afrikaners who refused to let apartheid go. He stood up against generations of national and institutionalised racism in a country that didn’t know any different.

On Sunday 11 February 1990,  De Klerk publicly released Nelson Mandela from prison. His release was broadcast live around the world. I was one of millions  who stayed up all night to wait for the live satellite broadcast from Johannesburg. It marked a new dawn for apartheid South Africa.

That same day, I ended my boycott of South African products in support of government and grassroots efforts around the world to pressure South Africa to end apartheid.

A long story short, De Klerk went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize. He was feted by the world as a leader who made a difference in race relations. He ended the banning of anti-apartheid groups. He pleaded for all South Africans to work towards a new nonracial democratic constitution.

Yet in his personal life, while he dismantled apartheid laws publicly, De Klerk struggled to dismantle the same attitudes within his own home when his son Willem began dating a “mixed race” woman. Their relationship, which lead to an engagement, did not last under reported pressures from the De Klerk household.

Despite all his rhetoric, De Klerk could not put into practice his own speech about a “new South Africa” in his own home. That’s a global example, of course, from a big gone era. But news coverage of a few years ago showed those attitudes still prevalent in the country. And yes, New Zealand is worlds away from South Africa’s former apartheid system, thank goodness.

But here’s the big reveal: in the privacy of one-on-one conversations with people in Aotearoa, I am, now and then, taken aback when one says bluntly, they would not let their child date a Maori or Pacific person.  It’s not a common experience  here, to be fair. But then again, I largely ignore signs of racism, even when “beware” hazard lights are flashing in neon. I just plough right ahead and disregard the  warning signs because they don’t matter to me. Truly. Because I know who I am. I know who I belong to and who created me. So I don’t define myself on the views of racists of any colour, including my own.

Colour and cultural definitions of self?  In daily life, colour-blind is my preferred vision. Though others may try, I  refuse to define myself purely in cultural or colour terms. There’s more to this brown skin than colour. And it isn’t always white-on-brown-or-black racism that I’ve seen. Sometimes it’s brown against brown.  (I’m using colour definition purely for the sake of brevity). I hear pockets of  ambiguous views about our melting pot, from the voices of otherwise tolerant and accepting New Zealanders ,who support racial equality as long as their child doesn’t date  someone of a different colour or race.  Those are not isolated views and they’re not confined to so-called rednecks, by the way.

So these days, because of what I’ve seen and heard in my lifetime in New Zealand, I’m not interested in clever speeches about race relations from a leader of any country, political party or organisation.  Dare I say it, I am far from alone on that. Live that speech  inside your home first before you sell it to the masses.  Show me that it’s more than political rhetoric aimed at winning the next place in history. Then, believe me, if that be so with the PM, THEN I’ll take Key’s ‘nationhood’ speech seriously.

No disrespect intended. But I do rest my case.

Insight on Racism, NZ radio documentary by Radio New Zealand’s Pacific Correspondent Richard Pamatatau.

John Key’s Waitangi Speech.