KEY POINTS:
The subject line of this particular reader response told me everything I needed to know. "Hello Jewess" it began. This was no contrary perspective. I knew immediately where this one was going.
The reader didn't care for my "ugly Jew proboscis" or my "filthy flea-ridden tribe" that is "the greatest misfortune to ever afflict the planet".
He finished gracefully with: "You and your bullsh*t Holohoax swindle will soon be exposed and when that happens where will you and your ugly spawn go?"
I write opinion for a living. Thick skin is part of the job description. This one was easy to ignore.
In the three years I have been in this country I have never experienced any anti-Semitism whatsoever. The Jewish population in New Zealand is so small, estimated roughly at 7000, that most Kiwis' experience of Jews and Jewish culture is limited, especially outside major cities. Railing against Jews here is like preaching against Icelanders. There is just not much experience to go by.
"Surely it came from overseas?" a Kiwi friend asked hopefully, knowing that I also publish abroad. This country has a reputation, duly earned, as an open-minded, socially liberal people. That is not us, was the assumption.
I never replied to the reader.
Two days later I was walking past the Auckland Public Library. Out of nowhere, as a man passed, he looked at me and yelled loudly enough for everyone within a one-block radius to hear: "This town has so many pussycat Asians, I can't even move on the sidewalk." His shouting was meant for the benefit of perhaps a dozen Asian students milling about, talking in front of the building.
As I continued walking past the man and the Asian students, it took me a good five seconds to break through the anonymity of being part of a crowd to realise I could actually reply. I turned around and yelled back at his retreating figure: "Hey mate - that is not on."
My lack of brilliant retort notwithstanding, the awkward reply carried into the street. It was just a small, socially skewed moment, a 15-second interaction quickly forgotten. He assumed I was just another Kiwi. The irony is that, from a bird's-eye perspective, a Pacific Islander was shouting out to a Jewish American about a group of Japanese.
Is this what it looks like when hate trickles down? Does it ricochet off the sub-sets of minorities until it hits whoever is at the bottom of the pile that week?
I rifled through some old notes of impressions of New Zealand when I first arrived and sure enough there was the incident of two teenagers aping a group of middle-aged Indian tourists on a luge ride in Queenstown - to their faces. My first year here someone had to explain to me what a "coconut" meant. Or years earlier, I recall a Ponsonby realtor leaning into the car window commenting to another, "I hope you didn't sell that property to a Chinese?" They laughed good-heartedly as he drove away.
What did I do on each of these occasions? I did what was easiest. I let it go. No one relishes an uncomfortable exchange, or enjoys gauging the socially appropriate time to be the stirrer. You measure whether you want to invest the time or effort in what might be just a passing interaction. We all have a dozen logical reasons why being some sort of racial Caped Crusader doesn't work at that moment.
But every reason would be wrong. I was wrong. Silence is assent.
In my birth country of America, racism can look like a cross burned into a front lawn or swastika-baring marchers parading through a Jewish suburb. Sometimes you can physically see it.
In New Zealand, racism is like its people; gentler, subtler and more tastefully presented than its American counterpart. It is one simple remark, or a comment made in passing from someone handing you back your change.
I chose not to reply to my emailer that day. But I am choosing to reply to him now through all the readers of this column, including him.
I do not know what created your hatred and I have less of a clue as to how to change it. I do know that I have only one obligation, one measure of respect to myself, to other Jews, and to the thousands in this country who carry any kind of different label beside their Kiwi nationality - do not be silent.
Look, it was just one email, ignore it. It was just a passing comment in the street, history after 60 seconds. It was just the seeds of racism quietly spreading through the cracks of our silence because you didn't say anything in the moment. Just let it go, and see what it costs us all.
Tracey.Barnett@xtra.co.nz
