We will wait and watch as Dame Susan listens

“I am going to be listening. It would be disingenuous of me to do anything else so early in my role. My job will be a marathon not a sprint. Now is the time to listen, to engage in conversations with New Zealanders and to have regard for the special position I hold,” said newly appointed Race Relations Commissioner Susan Devoy at a recent conference hosted by Auckland Council’s Ethnic People’s Advisory Panel at AUT.

In her keynote speech, Devoy spent considerable time responding to the back-lash and controversy around her appointment. She acknowledged that she is a late starter in this role, likening it to white water rafting, but made it clear that she wants to be given a fair-go.
To the theme of the conference: Racism – Does it impact on Auckland as a diverse city – there was unanimous consensus.

“Is there racism in New Zealand or Auckland? Yes, there is,” acknowledged Mayor Len Brown. “New Zealanders had confronted racism from the get go. In multicultural Auckland, people needed to learn to “love each other.”

Each year, the Human Rights Commission receives about 6000 human rights enquiries or complaints a year. About a third of these are related to race.

Ann Pala of the Ethnic Peoples Advisory Panel said that this conference is about actioning solutions.

Institutional racism and gate-keepers

The audience members, a healthy mix of colours and races, shared their experiences of isolation, fear, stereotyping and institutional racism. Anecdotes like being racially profiled at airports, sitting beside whites on buses only to find them hastily vacating their seats or being pulled over by the police for no apparent reason, all touched a chord.

A key complaint from members of the audience was that New Zealand employers discriminated against people of colour when deciding who to give jobs to. This is of particular relevance to the Kiwi-Indian community which is poised to become one of the largest ethnic minority in New Zealand in the near future.

“I am new to NZ and I am well qualified. But, I am not able to find a suitable job and I can’t put a finger on why,” said a recent Indian migrant. The bar for immigration is set high and most migrants find that during their job-hunts that they have to down-grade their CVs for them to be shortlisted.


Panel chairperson and acting chair of the advisory board of the Pacific Media Centre Dr Camille Nakhid, pointed out that combating racism meant talking about white privilege and white supremacy. “While we are busy deciding whether or not racism exists, the further we are left behind and more disadvantaged we become, and those structures that maintain racism become more entrenched,” she said.


White supremacy

In the words of panel speaker Maryam Perreira: white power was not about neo-Nazis clubbing people at bus stops, but about the continual promotion of a Eurocentric view which insists that whites are normal and does not allow for any positive views of people of colour.

“Until biculturalism is taken seriously, multiculturalism will not flourish, and gatekeepers would continue to close the doors of opportunity to indigenous people and people of colour,” said Perreira.
While an engaging and well intentioned, the conference at best, seems like a step in the right direction for the moment.

The conference came just days after a poll that was run by The Vote on TV3 found that 76 percent of respondents believed that New Zealand was racist.