Let’s not whistle at our racist history
Schoolchildren should know the whole truth about our history, good and bad.
GOSH, the R word has been in the news a lot lately.
And to think that at one time people here would question whether there was racism in New Zealand.
Turns out that not only is the answer yes, but that one of the country’s venerated former leaders, William Ferguson Massey, was a white supremacist.
This week a lecturer at Massey called for discussion about whether the university’s name should be reconsidered after the discovery of racist public statements by William Ferguson Massey, who led New Zealand from 1910 to 1925. Massey’s comments included: ‘‘New Zealanders are the purest AngloSaxon race in the British Empire’’ and ‘‘nature intended New Zealand to be a white man’s country and it must be kept as such’’.
White supremacist groups around the country must now be preparing giant portraits of Massey that are bound to go straight to the rumpus room.
Massey arrived from Ireland in 1870 on a boat called The City of Auckland and worked as a farmhand before eventually getting his own farm in Mangere, making him perhaps the country’s first prime minister from South Auckland.
Nicknamed ‘‘Farmer Bill’’, he was clearly loved during his time in charge.
Maybe not so much by miners and waterfront workers, whose 1912 and 1913 strikes were suppressed by force. Or the conscientious objectors jailed for refusing to be conscripted in the Great War.
But when he died of cancer while in office, his funeral shut down Wellington in shock and sorrow. Schools and businesses closed for a national day of mourning on May 14 and some government departments shut down all week.
The next day, schoolchildren nationwide spent assemblies learning lessons of Massey’s life and career. The Wellington School Committee Association told the Evening Post: ‘‘His upright and manly example will be a beacon light for rising generations’’.
So clearly his views weren’t necessarily seen as shocking here.
The comments unearthed by Massey University academic Steve Elers during his research weren’t found buried in some hidden diary, and nor were they off-the-cuff remarks; they were said to media and in Parliament.
Indeed, Massey was probably not the only politician who said things like that.
Elers’ call has indeed sparked debate among students and staff at Massey.
Some argue for a renaming while others point out that Massey did some good things too and that we shouldn’t judge history through a 2016 lens.
Which perhaps is true. How can you hold one person to account for their racism back in the day when it seemed that the whole world was racist?
After all, Massey died barely 50 years after America’s Civil War to end slavery. And we all know how race relations in that country remain fraught.
But Americans are better than us at acknowledging their history and the ugly things that went on in their past.
What this controversy proves is that it’s time in New Zealand we did the same.
That we shouldn’t just whistle merrily along thinking that our country is a shining beacon of diversity in the world.
Perhaps it still could be. But instead of just teaching our children about the ugly things that happened everywhere else, let’s teach our own ugly stories from the past.
It doesn’t mean we have to change our present but it can inform it a lot more and give everyone a more rounded picture of how we got to where we are today.