The Olympic Gold For Racial Tolerance

Why New Zealand is special, how we can be even better, and why The West is dead.

One of the most frustrating experiences you can have as a reader is engaging with an Op/Ed about race.

This is because most writers undertake the task because it is easy and you can seem insightful without knowing or saying anything at all.

It's the school speech about getting rid of uniforms - scores high points for pandering, but doesn't say anything new or insightful.

No one has been fired for decrying racism, it's a safe and uninspired bet for scared and out-of-their-depth writers.

This doesn't mean that racism isn't real, what is happening in England should be deeply worrying to them.

To them.

England is not New Zealand - it is not the Motherland of the vast majority of New Zealanders - and their many issues are their own.

When people try to make a foreign cultural issue like this into a local one, they are doing so as a sign of their own simplistic understanding of what culture is and how it develops.

It's the trap of seeing all English speaking countries as brain dead colonies - I would argue the opposite is true.

While England faced an election with a marked increase in anti-immigrant sentiment - one which ended with the Reform UK Party gaining over 14% of the popular vote, but only receiving five seats in Parliament, something which has resulted in frustration amongst its voters that, in traditional British hooligan fashion, spilled out into the streets and led to violence - our politics exist in an entirely different dimension.

Theirs is a Marvel-like alternate universe where there is some sort of cultural war between Western Civilisation and… everyone else.

In Anthropology this inability to differentiate between there and here is called Ethnocentrism.

That is a cultural or ethnic bias—whether conscious or unconscious—in which an individual views the world from the perspective of his or her own group.

By implying that racist street violence in the UK is destined to end up on our shores, one is also elevating the significance of what happens on UK streets above the actual cultural context we live in.

So what does panic on the streets of England mean for New Zealand? Not a damn thing.

The West is over, arguably it's been dead since the end of the Cold War.

While England has gone through a period of significant political instability and failed leaders over the past 20 years, locally we have reached high levels of stability and cultural harmony.

Yes, people protested our strict lock-down protocols, but they were a peaceful and ethnically diverse group who only ruined some grass and a slide.

We, Aotearoa New Zealand, are better than the UK.

We're better than The West, too.

We're better than any nation on earth when it comes to not being dragged into hatred and division.

In a joint effort, the U.S. News and World Report, the BAV Group, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed people across 36 countries about racial tolerance.

New Zealand ranked first, a position it holds in numerous other global studies of peace, societal stability, and freedom.

Like Michael Phelps during the peak of his powers, we're in a league of our own, chasing only history and perfection because no one comes close.

This is why we need to stop engaging in low effort discourses about race, they only hold us back from truly leading the world in cultural harmony - not just flipping flippantly between gloating about our status and fear mongering that our place is in peril.

Prior to, but especially during, the last election we saw a massive increase in the number of articles about rising racism towards female and non-pakeha political candidates.

During that same time, we found out much later, a number of female and non-pakeha political candidates were engaging in toxic or criminal behaviour.

While Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke was getting dream media coverage - glowing write-ups about a young wahine standing up to racist intimidation - at a highly convenient time, all around a story that has never been confirmed or explained, her party appears to have been engaging in what for legal reasons I'll call electoral 'shenanigans'.

Kiri Allan might be remembered now for her tremendous potential being dashed by one bad night, but before that night she had been credibly accused by both non-political and political Parliamentary staff of bullying. She had also crossed a line by criticising Radio NZ for not giving her then-partner a highly paid job.

In spite of being pakeha, Labour MP Ginny Andersen was eventually forced to apologise to an unpaid teenage campaign volunteer who accused her of bullying over a period of three years.

The story of Darleen Tana is well covered by now, and doesn't need repeating, but now Chloe Swarbrick is being accused, by former Green Party members, of a form of racism because she tried to instil a pretty basic level of standards within her caucus.

Likewise the Labour Party has been criticised for not better supporting departed MPs Kiri Allan and Meka Whaitiri, in spite of both having multiple serious accusations hanging over their conduct.

So is it racist to NOT support a bully, or toxic personality, or someone who is quite possibly lying about racist treatment they claim to have received?

None of this was ever about race - whether Darleen or Ginny or Kiri, these are people making well above the average wage and who employ multiple staff members.

These are people with power and influence who failed to treat the people around them with sufficient kindness. Theirs were failings of character, not signs of deep seated racism.

It is sad and deeply problematic that the only times we seem to engage on the important issue of racism it is a trojan horse for partisan hackery or other interests.

A Maori bully is still a bully, and some of the most racist people I've ever met are fellow Maori.

We need to check ourselves too sometimes.

I recently worked for an organisation that was founded a year before I was born. After a few weeks I was talking to the big boss about the history of the company and he informed me that I was the first Maori staff member they have ever had.

It felt weird. Not ‘bad’ entirely, and certainly not racist, just weird.

After some time weighing up whether this was a slight or just an earnest statement of a company coming of age, I realised that it was a well intentioned statement meant to highlight that Maori are taking on more prominent roles and breaking into industries that were once the sole domain of pakeha men who attended private schools.

Like a grisly wound, it can be hard to always see from the outside the healing going on underneath.

We are going through some growing pains, that's because we are still growing, but we're getting to a place as a society where someone can be judged solely for that actions.

That should be celebrated.

We should be proud to challenge all people's bad behaviour equally, we're judging people for their bad character and not the colour of their skin.

It's great we accept refugees and even better that one can go on to be an MP.

It's wrong when that person steals thousands of dollars of clothes from local businesses - clothes they could afford given their salary and earning potential as a lawyer - but it is great that a politician can't just use their influence or play the race card to avoid prosecution.

The media may not reflect this, but we're actually seeing more and more people playing the ball, not the man.

Racism is real, and should be stomped out anytime it appears, but the seriousness of racism also means it deserves better than being used as a lazy retort when your ‘fave’ gets called out or a half-arsed column idea.

There is no perfect model nation we can copy from, sadly we're closer to that status than anyone else.

Our most Trumpian politicians are indigenous - which is quite wild, America couldn't imagine such scenes - and our most vocal opponents of these politicians are also indigenous people.

We're different.

We're a bit special, but we shouldn't be satisfied just yet, and we certainly shouldn't be copying off or comparing ourselves to lesser nations such as those of the old Western Civilisation.

There are still those growing pains, but we've evolved beyond West vs East, and we'll continue to improve with sufficient effort and maturity.

I hope we see more of both.