Isn’t it time we labelled whatever racial prejudices or biases we have, no matter how innocent or ‘unconscious’ we think they are, and named them correctly as racist? writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell.
Last week I learned that the word ‘racist’ is considered unparliamentary language.
It’s on a list drawn from the indexes of New Zealand Parliament of banned ‘unbecoming’ language. In 1977, Speaker Doug Kidd clarified that ‘racist’ was declared an unparliamentary word because “an allegation that a member is racist clearly imputes what most members would regard as an improper motive and is out of order”.
Forty-four years later and MPs are still conducting something of a linguistic dance in the house when attempting to discuss whether something is racist. In response to National MP Nicola Willis’s comments last week about safety in the streets of Wellington and her allusion to the homeless as part of the problem, Greens co-leader Marama Davidson suggested “We need to be mindful of the racist and classist undertones that she is running her ‘safety’ narrative on”. She said this on Twitter.
When challenged on her comments in the House, Davidson was careful but effective in spelling out the connection. “I am accusing a member, a National member of this House, of attempting to stigmatise a group of people with little access to power and resourcing, of attempting to whip up stigmatising and dehumanising narratives around groups of people who need our support, around groups of people who need us to address the systemic causes of crime.”
Claiming something or someone is racist has become one of the very worst accusations you can make .. We will contort ourselves into all sorts of shapes and use all sorts of euphemistic, bureaucratic language to deny its existence within us or our institutions. It’s why we must suffer the ongoing use of the nonsensical phrase, ‘unconscious bias’.
In a throwback to 1977, National leader Judith Collins has demanded Davidson apologise for her comments. The weight in this argument seems to have been shifted towards the impropriety of calling something racist rather than addressing the issue at hand.
I’m not going to get drawn on what Willis’s motives were. I am sure some people will simply assert she was ‘calling a spade a spade’. What’s ironic is that the people who praise these kinds of comments, while virulently opposing Davidson’s, seem to always be willing to call a spade a spade, but considerably less interested in calling racism by its name.
Claiming something or someone is racist has become one of the very worst accusations you can make, in that it must be denied at all costs. We will contort ourselves into all sorts of shapes and use all sorts of euphemistic, bureaucratic language to deny its existence within us or our institutions. It’s why we must suffer the ongoing use of the nonsensical phrase, ‘unconscious bias’.
We do this at the expense of actually levelling with ourselves about what lies beneath.
I am, according to some Facebook commentators, ‘woke’. This isn’t a term I’d use to talk about myself but I would somewhat comfortably and a bit smugly describe myself as socially liberal or progressive.
I can see where the detractors might be coming from, because I’ve written before and will here write again about the very real ways in which I love and appreciate living in a multicultural Aotearoa.
They are also representative of the tropes or claims that ‘woke allies’ use to comfort themselves.
I have expressed genuine horror about racist crimes and racist institutions. I am married to a Māori man. I do work that supports the ‘kaupapa’. I can do my mihi and sing at least three waiata. I like Dominion Road and all the lovely noodles diversity it brings to my lovely diverse city. As a fan of live theatre, some of my favourite plays have been written by Pasifika playwrights. Watchmen was my favourite show last year and Parasite, one of my favourite movies. Some of my friends are Māori.
It’s not right, with the second anniversary of the Christchurch terror attack now behind us, to continue to bind our lawmakers – and by extension, all of us – in outdated propriety that allows to bury our head in the sand.
But I am also Pākehā. The identity soup I’ve been sitting in for 41 years is one largely influenced by Pākehā culture, media and representation. Within that it’s almost impossible to avoid exposure to stereotypes. Stereotypes are mental shortcuts and media shorthand. To admit that many of these have been or are racist, and that they’ve pervaded your own mind, even unconsciously or lazily, isn’t a radical thing to admit. It shouldn’t be a hard thing to admit and certainly shouldn’t grant you victim status. It’s also quite possible to counter and challenge them, just by using your own mind.
I have never, ever been a victim of racism in my life. The worst thing that could happen to me or any of us who don’t experience discrimination because of our ethnicity is that we could be accused of being racist. Isn’t it time we took that on the chin? Isn’t it time we labelled whatever racial prejudices or biases we have, no matter how innocent or ‘unconscious’ we think they are, and named them correctly? They are racist, in the simplest of terms, and we should be able to say that without drawing ourselves up in horror as if we’ve just been accused of burning crosses on someone’s front lawn.
We Pākehā might think we get to grade the resulting actions of racism on a scale from genocide to ‘my own ‘harmless’, lazy reactions in my head’ but unless we experience those actions, upstream or downstream, they’re not really ours to grade. An angry thought about ‘Asian’ drivers here, a weekly appointment with Police Ten 7 there; all of it is cumulatively contributing to someone else’s experience and most of the time, it’s not our own. What is ours is the decision not to rationalise it away but to own it. Privately, in our heads and homes. Publicly in places where you’ve previously let a joke or a rant about Eskimo lollies slide.
I once got my arse handed to me on a plate by Black women in the US when I decided they were being mean to a white Instagram chef I liked who’d been accused of making a racist comment. Even taking into account that we are at our most lizard-brained on Facebook where this debate was taking place, I was absolutely defending the chef because she looked like me. However, my brain ‘unconsciously’ chose to organise the hierarchy in my head, she ascended to the top and it was because she was white. I know this because I sat back, after getting righteously ripped to shreds, and thought about it. In short, I concluded that I was acting in a way that suggests I was being prejudicial based on race, ergo I was being racist. I’m no great saint or martyr for saying this, it’s not the greatest racial crime to be committed, nor am I seeking a prize for being the most self-aware person in the land. It’s just the discomfort it caused didn’t kill me. It wasn’t dangerous. I could still breathe. Easily.
In 2017, Dame Tariana Turia wrote an article in which she addressed the classification of the word racist as unparliamentary, stating: ‘It begs the question how prejudice is addressed if politicians are unable to name it.’
Our politicians work in the House of Representatives. Their rulebook needs to be rewritten so they can be the representatives they presumably signed up to be.
It’s not right, with the second anniversary of the Christchurch terror attack now behind us, to continue to bind our lawmakers – and by extension, all of us – in outdated propriety that allows to bury our head in the sand.
Grab that spade. There’s a lot of sod to turn.
