Would it hurt so much to try to understand a bit more?
It’s a line I’ve heard twice from a friend in the course of a couple of weeks. The talk was about his experience of racism, as a Ma¯ ori, the discussion an attempt to understand his perspective more deeply.
Right now that line is in my head a lot. It’s telling – ‘‘We’re in this skin 24/7 . . .’’
That’s what he said. I recall that both times I heard it, it was part of a longer sentence, but that was the part that stuck with me. Because it struck me that, as a white person, that is the part I really have to get.
When we react to Ma¯ ori complaints about unfair treatment on the basis of their race – or those of any other ethnicity for that matter – is it with the understanding that it’s their daily, unrelenting reality that is under discussion? They are Ma¯ ori, Pasifika, Indian, Chinese, African, Arab, etc all day, every day.
I don’t know that it is for me, not fully anyway. Despite the indulgent hogwash peddled by alt-righters about the white male being an endangered species, I have absolutely no experience of being in a skin that, at any moment, could bring down abuse on me. Abuse from someone who has no insight into my character or life experience.
It’s certainly possible to be sympathetic and compassionate towards people who are suffering as a result of discrimination and bigotry, but we have an out. When that encounter is over, it’s possible to retreat into the place of safety that our whiteness is in a society like this. Not that we should, but we can. White privilege.
I simply don’t know what it’s like to be afraid of what might happen to me on any given day as a result of a reaction, either random or deliberate, that someone might have to me because of the colour of my skin. Will someone say something inappropriate to someone else that I’ll overhear, and will I find myself smarting at the sheer injustice of it, but unable to do anything about it? Will I have to shrug off ignorant prejudice as best I can and press on with my day? Or will I encounter something more blatant? Will I fear for my safety, or that of my family?
It was abundantly clear in the aftermath of George Floyd’s senseless killing how many black people in the United States spend a lot of their lives afraid that at some point their race will unwittingly make them the subject of an irrationally violent reaction.
A dear friend here in New Zealand experienced blatant racism this week, the vileness of which took my breath away. I don’t understand what it must be like to attract abuse simply for one’s existence as a member of a racial minority.
That, of course, is the privilege that comes with being a white male in a Western society like New Zealand, not to mention in a city like Christchurch.
Of course, it’s not only race that this is relevant for. Gender and other factors come into it too. Wellington lawyer Steph Dyhrberg tweeted this week: ‘‘I had to explain the frequency of everyday harassment to a senior lawyer and a judge tonight. Most men’s experience of the world is so vastly different from most women’s.’’
I’m certainly not suggesting I have a ready answer to the problem of people being discriminated against for a range of factors beyond their control, but perhaps it would help if, when we hear about those real experiences, our first response was not one of defensiveness, of attempting to justify a position that means little to us either way, but hurts someone else.
Like the dodgy pronunciation of Ma¯ ori place names over the public address system at Christchurch’s central city bus interchange, which Environment Canterbury is trying to rectify. An editorial about that this week seems to have produced responses mainly justifying the status quo, questioning why putupon Pa¯ keha¯ should have to try to get this right.
What if we just dropped our guard for once, tried to understand why it’s important to someone who’s not us, tried to do it differently? How big a price would that really be to pay for improved understanding and relationships?