Bruce Bisset: Too many of us inherently racist

Bruce Bisset.

Racism is easy to dismiss if you never have to confront it. If you are not in a minority, and never have cause or desire to walk in their world, then you can go through life without ever understanding what racism feels like or how it affects those on the sharp end of its spear.

You can deny it exists, because you do not experience it.

You can believe that inequality is the product of some lapse or failure on the part of the minority - never on yours. You can expect every different shade or culture to step into your shoes, but would never dream of walking anywhere in theirs.

You can be, in other words, blissfully inherently racist. As far too many of us are.

Considering this nation was founded on a partnership agreement between two peoples - broadly, Maori and Pakeha - and that we have worked and fought and prayed and cheered together for some 176 years since, New Zealand is a frightening example of how insidious racism can be.

For despite how united we may seem when brought together by occasion, when the job or the war or the service or the game is finished, we go home to very different towns and very different circumstances; places and situations one side barely credits exist, and which they may never venture into.

Truth is, we are not the tolerant egalitarian society our mythos would claim us to be. Instead we are deeply divided and perhaps permanently scarred, and the proof is that one partner knows and suffers for it daily, while the other is shocked at the very idea and refuses to acknowledge it.

That division is racism in action. Being blind to it will not make it magically go away; it will only perpetuate it.

New Plymouth mayor Andrew Judd has sparked a nationwide debate by declaring he will not seek re-election because of the vitriol he has experienced for pushing the case for greater Maori representation at local body level.

Judd was, by his own admission, totally ignorant of the Maori world yet smugly condescending towards it. His experience as mayor turned this around; he is now, as he coins it, a "recovering racist" - but is paying a high price for that change.

However, it's the comments of Seven Sharp host Mike Hosking, after the news item on Judd's decision, that have drawn the ire of many: Hosking dismissed Judd's case by saying he was "totally out of touch with middle New Zealand".

Regardless that Hosking lives a millionaire playboy lifestyle and wouldn't know "middle New Zealand" if he fell over it, such a statement intrinsically denies there are professional Maori (and other races) making great contributions to society who would have to be included in any broad-brush definition of "middle NZ" - but, by the nature of the issue, clearly weren't.

That makes it racist. Ignorantly so.

Taranaki may not be the most racist province in the country, but given most of it was stolen from iwi at gun-point there's bound to be a lot of pent-up guilt amongst the old settler families - guilt that comes out as racism, as a defence mechanism.

Too many Pakeha in every region fall into the same traps, and never look within to discover the obvious: that their presumptions are racist, because they actually have no idea what it feels like to be Maori.

That his district loses a man of Judd's calibre is a great pity, but if his stance sparks a new conversation about race relations then perhaps we can all benefit.

And move to the recovery position.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.