KEY POINTS:
An incident happened last week that made me feel ashamed of myself. Returning from an evening stroll at Pt Chevalier beach, I saw a man I did not know trying to get into my car.
When I noticed he looked Polynesian, my immediate reaction was to scream at him: "Car thief! If you people cannot live by the law, then go back to the Islands!"
He apologised profusely, saying it was a mistake, but I continued hurling expletives at him. When he retreated to a car three lots away, well, true to his words there was his blue Mitsubishi Chariot, which looked identical to mine.
I could have made the same mistake he did. As he drove away I just buried my face in my hands, appalled at my outburst and the words I had used.
But here's a background to the state I was in that day. Over the weekend, my other car was stolen from Symonds St in the city.
Police found it abandoned two days later in Otara, dented, smashed, tyres slashed and stripped of everything, including the stereo, speakers and my camera in the glove compartment.
Other things that did not have any monetary value, such as bundles of iBall - the newspaper I publish - were dumped in Mangere.
I had just taken over this vehicle and the insurance cover had been on my to-do list, so facing the hefty repair bill and the towage fee by the police didn't exactly put me in a good mood the day I was at the beach.
Although the thief has yet to be caught - and, as the police said, probably never will be because car thefts happen all the time - the fact that the car and parts were found in Otara and Mangere left me to conclude that the scumbag who stole it was either a Maori or Pacific person.
So, when I saw this man attempting to open my car door, the thoughts triggered in my mind were: Polynesian man equals car thief. I probably would have reacted very differently if the person were Asian or Pakeha. Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that stereotyping happens in every society, consciously or subconsciously.
We tend to generalise more about people in communities we do not have much interaction with. I do not know any Maori or Pacific person closely enough to call him or her a friend. So in this instance, I have allowed what I have read about them in the media to form my stereotype.
You will never find me generalising about Chinese, Koreans, Indians or even Europeans, because I have friends in those communities and am able to see each of them as individuals. But I have let generalisations fill in the blanks to how I saw this Polynesian man.
How easy it was to let one bad experience form a stereotype of how I saw the whole community.
Judging from the emails responding to my column last week, I see that I am not alone in this. It seems a normal thing, second nature even, for people to let a single experience influence how they see an entire community.
One former homestay provider wrote: "I have hosted one before and she being a girl, I had expected her to be able to make her own bed and keep her room tidy, but she leaves it looking like a war zone every day. I now say thanks but no thanks when asked to host students from Asia. Asian students are just spoilt brats."
Another email from a Chinese student said: "My Kiwi homestay only gave me sausages for dinner every day and no rice. Food is very important to Asians and I cannot understand why Kiwi families cannot give us rice, so of course we have bad memories of New Zealand."
This situation is of course not typical, as I know of many Kiwi families who have gone out of their way to accommodate the diets of the students they host. Having had dealings with quite a few international students and homestay providers, I can say how wrong these generalisations are.
On the occasion that I have been on the receiving end of negative stereotyping, I know how unpleasant it feels. But the incidents of the past week have made me realise how easy it is to make generalisations.
I guess we can lessen how we generalise and stereotype others by going out more and getting to know more about people from other races and communities. And if the Polynesian man with the blue Mitsubishi Chariot is reading this, I'd really like to say what I didn't get a chance to say last Tuesday. Sorry, mate.
* lincoln@iballmedia.co.nz
