The impact of racism
If we’re serious about dismantling systemic prejudice, we need to realise we can have a racist impact without intending harm, writes Mahdis Azarmandi.
The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States has sparked conversations about racism and police brutality around the world. Here, thousands marched in solidarity, and we now see a resurgence of debates and critiques over colonial monuments.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern assures us that ‘‘NZ is a place that stands against racism and discrimination’’, somehow erasing the violence of its colonial past. As a scholar of peace and conflict (with focus on racism), I follow these conversations closely.
When it comes to racism we still tend to disregard the huge body of evidence provided through testimony and academic research.
Disregarding a large body of scientific evidence, these deniers insist their opinion is enough to weigh
in on how best to protest, organise and work for change for people who have life-long experience of living under racial oppression, have decades of organising experience, or have spent years of their lives in the study and research of racial violence.
Racism is a global problem. It is easy to reduce racism to overt racial hatred and racial ideologies such as segregation, apartheid, Nazism or the White Australia policy (never New Zealand’s); however, racism is not simply a moral failure of hate-filled people.
To think that only someone who declares themselves a racist can be a ‘‘real’’ racist confuses intent and impact. We can have a racist impact without the intent for harm.
When it comes to climate change we do not assess only the last few months or year, but understand that we need to consider volumes of scientific evidence. Responses to the climate crisis highlight policy change and are not focused on people and places that they deliberately ‘‘want to pollute’’, but on the impact of our actions (past and present).
When it comes to racism, we somehow assume today’s ‘‘kindness’’ will miraculously cure present and historical harm. Then there are, of course, those who think neither racism nor climate change is real.
Imagine breaking a plate
You grab a plate and deliberately break it, or you accidentally drop it because you weren’t paying attention. The outcome is the same (bear with me on this awkward metaphor). Now imagine you put your dishes in a dishwasher and don’t realise it’s faulty. When the cycle finishes, you find a broken dish but assume it must have been cracked and don’t recognise the dishwasher is to blame.
But you continue to use the dishwasher and keep being surprised at how often you find broken dishes. You don’t realise you are playing a role in breaking these dishes by trusting the dishwasher is working properly, when what you need to do is repair or replace the dishwasher.
So, when Police Minister Stuart Nash says Aotearoa does not have institutional racism, he confuses intent and impact. Similarly, the prime minister mistakes ‘‘not wanting to’’ support racism with ‘‘not producing’’ racist outcomes.
These positions suggest that, unless an institution or country has an overt racial ideology, it does not systematically create certain impacts for certain communities. While apartheid, segregation or a whites-only policy are institutionally racist, so too are institutions in liberal democracies that produce systematic unequal outcomes for people according to their race.
It’s well documented that Ma¯ ori continue to experience different outcomes in criminal justice, health, housing and education. Last year the Health Quality & Safety Commission NZ called for the removal of ‘‘institutional racism’’ in the health and disability sector. This month, Ma¯ ori law professor Kylee Quince responded to Nash by contrasting his claims about the NZ police, by highlighting evidence and data on Ma¯ ori experience of the criminal justice system. These examples matter, because they illustrate a large disconnect from the scientific data.
Comparing ignorance about racism to climate change denial might seem facetious, but research and evidence about racism, racial violence and police brutality are plentiful.
In the US, black people and Native Americans are more than 2.5 times more likely to die at the hands of police than white people. Just as Ma¯ ori are more likely to be stopped by police and to receive harsher sentencing, compared to Pa¯ keha¯ .
If institutions consistently fail to guarantee an equal outcome for indigenous populations and communities of colour they, by definition, produce institutional racism. To talk about unconscious bias rather than institutional failure is to gloss over the systemic nature of the problem and reduce it to individual moral or accidental failure. In this system, black lives are treated as if they don’t matter, which is why saying ‘‘all lives matter’’ misses the point.
If we all own faulty dishwashers and systematically and collectively continue to break dishes and refuse to repair or replace the broken dishwasher, then we are directly responsible for the destructive consequences. Our collective reluctance to believe the evidence on racism cultivates collective neglect, resulting in mass complicity.
So the prime minister and police minister also miss the point of assessing impact. This difference between intent and impact is fundamental if we’re serious about understanding and dismantling systemic racism.
At best, #alllivesmatter is accidental neglect. At worst, it is deliberate denial of racism
We say ‘‘black lives matter’’ not because we put black lives above others, but because the system we live in produces disproportionate violence for black communities. We should understand that #blacklives matter is about exposing differential outcomes; in this case, that innocent black people are far more likely to die in a police encounter than whites.
Anti-racist protests are then also a reminder that we cannot normalise state violence, in the US or here. The success in removing armed police is a reminder against normalisation; after all, we seem quick to forget the 2007 Te Urewera police raids and the violence and trauma they inflicted on Ma¯ ori in that community. Likewise, the dawn raids when Pacific Islanders were ‘‘raided in their beds’’ by police.
Protest in support of black lives and against racism are aiming to expose a justice system that denies justice to some and grants it to others. And ultimately the violence of denying and disregarding differential impact. Finally, my awkward metaphor fails to acknowledge the harm to real people.
We march so that we can expose the historical and current nature of racial violence.
Solidarity and connection between black, Ma¯ ori and Pasifika struggles are not new; from the anti-apartheid movement to the Black Panthers to #blacklivesmatter. People march not only in solidarity but to expose the racism here, even if it doesn’t look identical to the US.
So, when racism rears its ugly head, in the shape of white supremacist shootings of innocent Muslims praying, white police officers killing innocent people, or young Ma¯ ori being sentenced to prison for drug possession while a white teenager walks free after stabbing someone, the least we can do is pause, listen, reflect, and assess our own involvement in the acceptance and normalisation of racism – so we too can figure out how best to challenge systems of injustice.
If, in times of pandemic and climate crisis, we have come to realise the importance of data and evidence, let us not reduce racism to a matter of opinion or kindness.