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WHO LOOKS LIKE A ‘KIWI’?; WHO SOUNDS LIKE A ‘KIWI’?

Golriz Ghahraman

I BELIEVE IN NEW ZEALAND. I BELIEVE in the promise that here, far away from old-world myths about the hierarchy of human culture, race and religion, there is hope of equality and freedom. It was in this remote island nation that my family and I found freedom as refugees from Iran when I was nine years old. So, like the masses of other migrants and refugees who make Auckland one of the most diverse cities in the world, I both fight for this ideal and embody it from lived experience.

But the New Zealand dream of a melting-pot nation of equals is often measured against arbitrary comparisons to the state of race elsewhere. There is our colonial history as the very first example of British colonialists dealing with an Indigenous people, and our current lacklustre approach to the global refugee crisis compared to the brutality of Australia’s offshore detention centres. We often feel reassured that, even doing poorly, we are on the face of it better than the worst. Of course this reassurance breeds apathy. So we have no sense of urgency to dismantle the systems that reinforce rather than remedy the violence of our colonial past, no urgency to examine a status quo that systematically marginalises minority voices. It blinds us to the lived experiences of minorities and tangata whenua, to the truth about race and discrimination in Aotearoa today.

This ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach to race and privilege becomes most dangerous when the status quo is under threat, as it has been in recent years, by the rise of inequality, cuts in public spending, and a rampant housing crisis that has affected even middle-class families. All this happened while we were told the economy was healthy and returning regular budget surpluses, making the scapegoating of minority groups seem like a reasonable cultural response. Rather than demand effective responses to child poverty, we openly portrayed Māori and Pasifika New Zealanders as irresponsible bludgers of the system. Rather than demand controls on speculative home investments, rent control regulation, or a return to state housing, we looked for ‘Chinese-sounding names’ on house-sale registers. None of this speaks to a post-race, post-colonial society. None of it reflects a melting-pot immigrant nation. I believe our salvation lies in reclaiming the Kiwi dream of equality and egalitarianism, the first step being to accept it has thus far eluded us.

ASSESSING THE STATE OF RACE AND IMMIGRATION is something I come to from lived experience as a first-generation refugee, a migrant of colour, arriving here in 1990. Although anecdotal, this is a useful point of reference. My family and I were both within and without, simultaneously the subject of the migrant race experience and objective observers of the Māori/Pākehā dynamic that had formed the core of race relations here before we arrived. We experienced the shifting-sands way in which the nation’s colonial history is understood and reflected in wider culture. We felt the change as Māori were increasingly conceived as the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. When we arrived, Māori were presented to us as bearers of quaint stories (of Maui fishing up the North Island, for example), then slowly through the Treaty settlement process became more prominent, as they asserted their rights to lands and resources unjustly confiscated during the Land Wars and subsequent legislation that further marginalised them. We noticed a shift to impatience and intolerance, because this was history that eluded most Pākehā.

Aotearoa New Zealand as I encountered it through the 1990s was a starkly monocultural society. Pākehā culture and history dominated the national identity and was presented to us as newcomers as ‘Kiwi’. Kiwi food was pies and lamingtons, the language was English, Kiwis loved rugby in winter and cricket in summer, the books I read through my school years were by English or American authors with a bit of Katherine Mansfield or Janet Frame on the side (where was Patricia Grace?). There was no strong indication of the special cultural prominence or rights of Māori as our Indigenous people. In that context, we could be forgiven for seeing Māori as another ethnic minority, like the few New Zealanders of Indian or East Asian origin we encountered, and inseparable from the Pasifika community, with whose culture we were equally unfamiliar. Te reo was certainly not taught, at least not in any school I attended until Auckland Girls’ Grammar, where a Kahurangi class existed, where the entire curriculum was taught in te reo Māori, though it was very separate from the mainstream curriculum. Having spoken with members of other migrant communities about race, and specifically their understanding of te Tiriti more recently, I find that a marked lack of understanding is still prevalent. Alarmingly, many people report receiving information about Māori only from other migrants, largely by way of warnings about high Māori crime rates. Without any official effort to introduce migrants to Māori culture or history, and with an inexcusable lack of Māori representations in public life, migrants continue to have little appreciation for the place of Māori in New Zealand culture. This must in itself amount to a breach of te Tiriti obligation to protect Māori cultural taonga.

Apart from the general obligation to safeguard Māori culture and representation, there is a separate crucial need to acknowledge New Zealand’s colonial past. Despite its centrality to the very birth of our nation, the brutality of colonialism — including events like the New Zealand Land Wars — was not compulsory teaching when I was in school, and is no more etched on our nation’s consciousness today. This chapter of our history remains eclipsed by New Zealand’s involvement in European wars. While Anzac Day prioritises our Commonwealth connection, nothing reminds us of our own wars. To counter this, Green Party MP Marama Davidson recently moved to add a public holiday commemorating Parihaka. The western Taranaki settlement that stood as a symbol of peaceful resistance to Māori land confiscation was invaded by 1600 government troops in November 1881. The story of that resistance, and its leaders Te Whiti and Tohu, was the first execution of non-violent direct-action resistance. The supreme irony of New Zealand’s disconnect with its own history is that we continue to mark Guy Fawkes night, relating to an event affecting the British Parliament centuries ago, with fireworks on 5 November, the precise date of the Parihaka invasion and the arrest of Te Whiti.

This cultural commitment to Anglo heritage blinds us to the significance of Parihika in global history. In fact the direct-action non-violence engaged here was later adopted in civil rights struggles around the world. It links us to the anti-colonial struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, the American civil rights movement under Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and the South African anti-apartheid movement under Nelson Mandela. Understanding the place of Māori among those peoples who faced injustice and resisted is something to which migrants of colour can well relate, and brings truth to broader Māori–Pākehā relations.

In cultural terms, fairness in relations between all races here must begin by treating te Tiriti o Waitangi as a living constitutional document, forming the basis of modern policy across the board. It will never be enough to consult iwi on ‘Māori issues’, which tend to be limited to fishing rights and ad hoc environmental issues. In fact, issues like the design of our education, health or justice systems are central to upholding the rights of Māori, who are supported as our Indigenous people under international agreements like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The justice system is where I have seen at first hand the results we get when tikanga and kaupapa Māori are kept alive and incorporated in modern practice. Take the example of our marae-based Rangatahi Courts, where young people and their whānau report that the tikanga-based process engenders feelings of respect and legitimacy, in turn making discussions about accountability and compliance with orders easier. It seems to offer proof that better outcomes for Māori lie in discussing te Tiriti and incorporating its principles into modern policy. We must include kaupapa Māori in immigration and refugee policy, too. We must deliberately include Māori language and history in education, given that will shape our culture in every facet. In terms of future-proofing race relations, building Māori–migrant relations must become a deliberate and key focus. Migrants of colour will in particular find far more in common with Māori, both in history and our current experiences of exclusion and prejudice than that which divides us.

THE IDEALS OF EGALITARIANISM AND FREEDOM that mark our sense of nationhood are often married to the idea of New Zealand as a ‘migrant nation’ where everyone is either a new migrant or of ‘migrant stock’. Apart from the basic inaccuracy in identifying a colony as such, the ‘migrant experience’ must itself be disaggregated to allow for marked differences in experience between those of migrants of colour and those of Western, Pākehā migrants.

It is almost impossible to accurately express the lasting ache that comes with being physically excluded from the national identity.

Moving to a new country is always difficult, and migrants always lose their support networks, and need to make cultural adjustments. But migrants of colour are objectively more likely to be from vastly different cultural backgrounds, belong to different religions, and be less proficient in English than migrants from North America, Europe or South Africa (our biggest Pākehā migrant groups). What makes things infinitely difficult for migrants of colour is that we are seen as different by others, even generations on from the act of migration. That perception affects different groups differently. Pasifika communities might be assumed to be poor, under-educated or associated with gang culture. Indian New Zealanders must contend with offensive jokes about owning dairies even while they people our healthcare system with specialists at every level. Chinese New Zealanders, being the longest-standing non-Pākehā migrant group, are still — generations on — treated as being foreign and regularly blamed for issues like Auckland’s housing and transport crises.

It is almost impossible to accurately express the lasting ache that comes with being physically excluded from the national identity. The idea that we are the land of the ‘fair go’ is wildly admirable and reflects the early experience of my family, but as migrants of colour it is only after that initial welcome, when we begin to expect substantive equality, that the glass ceiling sets in. We are excluded from representation at the very top, and from popular conceptions of beauty, rarely telling the nation’s stories even as writers of film or television, let alone reporting news or sitting on public boards. In fact, we know our job applications are likely to be set aside before interview at the sight of our unusual names.

I remember our early beautiful engagements with neighbours and my own encounters with schoolchildren at the tiny West Auckland primary school I attended. We were welcomed and given hand-me-downs (since it was very clear we really had arrived with nothing). The school was diverse in the sense that children there identified as Indian, Chinese, or Pasifika (I remember Tongan and Samoan specifically) New Zealanders. This made me feel somewhat normal. It wasn’t until we moved from diverse West Auckland that I experienced exclusion. My intermediate-school classmates in Mt Eden were almost exclusively Pākehā. Even though I don’t believe anyone was deliberately aiming to leave me out, being empirically different to anyone the other children ever interacted with, saw on television, or read stories about was difficult.

It is these latter voids in representation — from pop culture, public life and positions of power — that dehumanise people of colour. This is what allows the persistence of race-based jokes about our names and accents, our terrible driving, our smelly food. The brilliant 2017 campaign by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, Give Nothing to Racism, aimed to counter exactly those kinds of micro-aggressions, because we know dehumanisation in everyday culture is what paves the way for real aggression and persecution. Having committed half my career to studying and dissecting atrocity crimes from the clinical vantage point of UN trials, I know that atrocity crimes begin with the language of othering. It was through casual jokes about large noses and stinginess that the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people was made possible. The Rwandan genocide, the attacks against Muslims in the former Yugoslavia and now in Myanmar: all these relied on those in power and those in the media identifying groups as different and eventually blaming them for social ills.

In New Zealand the culture of exclusion is still driven by mainstream popular culture, through humiliating race-based jokes that the rest of society consumes as just a bit of fun. But it matters when a prominent television presenter makes fun of the name of a visiting senior Indian minister. It matters when the same presenter asks a former prime minister whether the next Governor-General is going to look or sound like a New Zealander, and that prime minister just laughs. The culprit, Paul Henry, long-time presenter of Television New Zealand’s Breakfast show, was always supposedly ‘saying what we are all thinking’. Like Donald Trump making fun of disabled persons or calling Mexican immigrants rapists, that was the defence, no matter the harm. The fact that Henry was backed by our national broadcaster and an exceptionally popular prime minister gave particular strength to the idea that these supposed thoughts are OK, that his conception of Kiwi-ness is valid. In fact, the Governor-General attacked by Henry, Sir Anand Satyanand, was born and raised in Auckland. He very much is a Kiwi, though apparently not Kiwi enough. So Henry’s joke revealed the glass ceiling while John Key happily laughed on.

As inequality grew in New Zealand over the past decade, that race-based demarcation of who is and isn’t ‘from here’ made our ethnic communities particularly vulnerable to abuse. As it has done in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the politics of division has distracted us from the real causes of our problems. Scarce housing, unbearable traffic jams, and an overburdened healthcare system have all been blamed on migrants, or ethnic New Zealanders perceived to be migrants based on their race or ‘ethnic-sounding’ names. The truth is that we opted for tax cuts rather than a well-funded health system, we opted for an annual budget surplus rather than spending on public transport or education. We sold off our state houses, causing mass homelessness in Auckland. We refused to regulate the rental market or tax property speculators, the majority of whom are in fact not foreign.

But even as working Kiwis increasingly struggled to keep their heads above water and watched as those at the bottom fell into crisis condition, we were told repeatedly of a ‘rock star economy’. This disparity between the government’s economic projection and the real experiences on the ground made circumstances ripe for the scapegoating of migrants. The idea that we don’t have enough to take care of our own felt obvious. What was lost is that immigration is something New Zealand relies on to resolve many of the problems we were feeling. Rather than being overburdened by migrants, our healthcare system and construction industry are reliant on their skills. The truth is that our problems were caused and exacerbated by the lack of public spending, which created inequality.

The growth of a race-based demarcation of who deserves social resources feeds an unhealthy race-based culture of patriotism and overt attacks against migrants of colour. While we are relentlessly asked where we’re from, a hurtful but mostly well-meaning question, a connected but far more aggressive attack emerges in times of hardship across the social spectrum. Lately more of us are told, ‘Go home where you came from.’ A friend of mine recently recounted the traumatic experience of being yelled at to ‘go home’ for the entire duration of her bus ride in Auckland while no one intervened. She described feeling paralysed and frightened. Although of Chinese descent, she is a New Zealander ‘born and bred’, so this happened in her home. I want us to remember, too, that the hurt and confusion engendered in racism is doubly felt during our formative years. We know that children seek the approval of their peers almost as a survival instinct; they need to fit in. These are the years when eating disorders are prevalent, when depression and suicide become a real risk. Let’s remember that these problems are already at epidemic levels. Being excluded from popular beauty standards and from success narratives breeds lasting, internalised self-hate. So while young people of colour, especially first-generation migrants, feel excluded from the national identity, they face grave risks to their mental health. To embrace a diverse and inclusive ideal of what it is to be Kiwi is to allow young people of colour to rightly participate in the world around them without feeling ashamed or inferior.

For as long as the national identity excludes racial and cultural diversity, it also actively hinders successful integration by new and old migrant communities. Elsewhere in the world where race and nationhood have been strictly linked, migrant communities have become isolated, and imbued with a hardened resolve to preserve their original culture with no viable avenue of joining the mainstream society, even generations after migration. This is evidenced in the experience of long-standing Turkish communities in Germany, and North African communities in France. I’m always confused by the guarded race codes in Australian culture, which include a strict hierarchy of whiteness, treating even Italian- and Greek-origin Australians as eternal migrants, below Anglo-Australians. All these less-than-pure-Anglo-Saxon communities have retained a high level of strict adherence to the culture and religions of their former homeland, which must derive in great part from being deprived of the opportunity to join the mainstream. Of course, the only way to allow migrants to join the mainstream is to allow for diversity, allowing migrants to retain parts of their culture and religion — and indeed to add them to the national cultural mix. Otherwise integration is impossible for migrants of colour, since we can’t shed our skin. For religious minorities, assimilation presumably requires shedding their familial culture. I often wonder if the French would not be more successful in eradicating the hijab (leaving aside whether that is a worthwhile goal or offensively intolerant), if they opened their idea of Frenchness to include religious diversity, so that Muslim women could partake in the promised emancipation of that culture as equals and decide for themselves. Forcible emancipation is an oxymoron, humiliating the object of emancipation, breeding resentment and a hardened resolve to fight back.

For as long as the national identity excludes racial and cultural diversity, it also actively hinders successful integration by new and old migrant communities.

WAR, TERROR, AND THE SPREAD OF POPULISM elsewhere in the world have drastically marked the experience of Muslim migrants in New Zealand, many of whom have escaped these phenomena as refugees. Fear is natural in the face of tragic events like 9/11, especially when fuelled by the disparity in representation between Western and non-Western experiences. What is most alarming to me, however, is the exploitation of that fear by politicians on both sides of the political spectrum here. I was an intern at Amnesty International when our then-prime minister Helen Clark approved laws allowing refugee Ahmed Zaoui to be held in solitary confinement without charge or trial for two years. It turned out the only thing suspicious was his leadership of a legitimate Islamic political party in recent Algerian elections. But Labour got to look ‘tough’ on national security. In 2005, as American bombs flattened Iraq and Afghanistan, causing a humanitarian crisis, National leader Bill English promised to put a ‘red light’ at our borders and labelled refugees ‘the leftovers from Middle East terrorist regimes’. I spoke about that in my maiden speech to Parliament in 2017. I made reference to the Islamophobic threats I receive every day as a ‘refugee MP’, since it is widely assumed that I am Muslim. I wanted to make the point, on behalf of the voiceless thousands of Muslim New Zealanders, that every time those in positions of authority choose to feed prejudice for their political gain, we suffer the effects.

When I made my decision to run as a parliamentary candidate in 2016, I thought for a long time about representation — how I personally relate to my Middle Eastern roots and background as a refugee, whether I would represent those groups, and how that might be problematic. I was weary that as women from the ‘Muslim World’, our identity as victims, and as reborn symbols of Western triumph (if we make it out), is repeatedly pitched as the antidote to the eternally archaic and frightening abyss of our culture. I knew that I must take on the responsibility of fighting for the rights of Muslim New Zealanders to practise their religion peacefully, even as my own family had suffered persecution by an Islamic regime. I remembered that when Barack Obama was accused of being secretly Muslim, his opponent John McCain repeatedly responded by refuting the allegation, noting that the Obamas attended church. The appropriate refutation would have been that being Muslim is not in and of itself an acceptable criticism of a political candidate, any more than being a church-going Christian might be. So I guard against any representation of my refugee story as proof that Middle Eastern culture must be shed for liberation to happen, because of course the so-called Muslim world does have diversity within it, including secularism and fierce democracy movements.

Running for office as a refugee or Middle Eastern New Zealander was never the plan for me, but at that moment in global history, January 2017, my candidacy placed me as a counterpoint to the rise of populism elsewhere in the world. Within the previous 12 months, a viciously anti-immigrant campaign had marked Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, and Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. I quickly realised that my face and story meant many things to many people. I received an outpouring of support from around the world. But the backlash was quick to come. It turned out that a large number of New Zealanders didn’t believe ‘immigrants’ could become members of Parliament; this was essentially a call for second-class citizenship. Given the large number of British, American and Australian-born migrants formerly or currently sitting in New Zealand’s Parliament without public outcry, this outrage was likely more about the fear of the ‘refugee hordes’, and of Islam. I was repeatedly called a Muslim terrorist, and received threats against my life, threats of sexual violence; one person made a public call for shotguns to be loaded. This panic revealed the true degree of novelty in someone like me running for office. My friend and fellow first-time MP Angie Warren Clarke recently reminded an audience at an International Women’s Day event that the abuse I got online never happened to her. She reminded me not to frame it as misogyny and not to see it as par for the course in political life, because, as a successful Pākehā first-time candidate, she hadn’t experienced personal abuse online.

These attacks are far from the experience of my family in the 1990s. We were never practising Muslims, but clearly that doesn’t matter today. The Middle East is more a construct in a Clash of Civilizations narrative. There is no room in Western popular consciousness for diversity within the Middle East. What makes it worse for practising Muslims is the hardened presumption that Islam is innately violent and misogynistic. Recently when male Iranian visitors at Parliament would not shake hands with female MPs, it was automatically assumed this was out of a lack of respect for women. In fact in Islam neither men nor women will touch anyone of the opposite sex who isn’t immediate family. This is out of respect for one’s own and the other’s bodily integrity. The immediate outrage betrayed a level of prejudice, born of ignorance, that undermines legitimate criticism of misogyny in Islam.

Since I became a politician, well-meaning strangers repeatedly ask how I think we can ensure that other migrants assimilate to Kiwi culture, citing my commitment to human rights, feminism and independence as Western attributes. I normally responded by saying that I learned about human rights, and particularly feminism, from men and women who fought for their rights at gunpoint. My parents put their bodies on the line for democracy and ultimately lost everything. I recall that more recently when the Iranian regime forced a male activist to wear women’s dress on television to humiliate him, Iranian men around the country posted photos of themselves wearing women’s dress to show they did not see it as a humiliation. They did that at the risk of torture. I also recall that when I appeared on a magazine cover with other Green candidates wearing a sparkly dress, Kiwi feminists criticised us for being anti-feminist. And I explained that where I’m from the patriarchy tells me to be colourless, shapeless and desexualised. So, for Iranian feminists, make-up and form-fitting garments are the armour of resistance. Making space for intersectional feminism means letting go of the prevalent idea that there is some linear hierarchy of human progress, with Western culture at its pinnacle when it comes to human rights or equality movements.

RACE AND DEMOCRACY ARE INSEPARABLE FOR ME, for those of us who bear the brunt of a populist politics that prioritises Pākehā interests and experience. In every facet of our lives here in New Zealand, we interact as migrants, as people of colour, as tangata whenua, as outsiders. Our cultural identity and lived experiences have not yet properly penetrated the national consciousness. So achieving the New Zealand dream of an egalitarian paradise built on immigration will require a change in the very conception of who is a Kiwi. We cannot ignore the damage done by the long-standing denial of race inequality, even of our colonial history, here. The truth is that New Zealand cultural institutions and power structures have long prioritised Pākehā culture, while denying the existence of the inexcusable system of prejudice and privilege this perpetuates. It cuts off entire communities, generationally, from opportunities and representation at every level.

The change must begin by prioritising Māori culture, and acknowledging the violence with which it was first suppressed, as a central part of our collective memory. Honouring te Tiriti o Waitangi requires the ongoing representation of Māori perspectives in public life and institutional structures, actively keeping alive and growing tikanga and te reo Māori. Until then harmonious race relations between Māori and Pākehā, as well as Māori and migrant New Zealanders, will continue to be undermined by resentment and fear.

Our denial of race as a socio-political issue runs so deep that we deny even its centrality in discussions about immigration. The vast sea of discomfort and outright hate that bubbled over when I stood as a candidate for Parliament, openly identifying as a Middle Eastern refugee, didn’t shock me. As the venom I received made news in and of itself, I never heard a word of shock from any person of colour in my midst. It did perhaps make it clear to others, for the very first time, that we do undeniably have a status quo controlling the shape and colour of mainstream society here in New Zealand, that it is race-based, and that the barrier to inclusion is not easily surmounted by minorities on their own.

In fact the remedy must be actively pursued by the mainstream as our allies. It is they who must decide to ‘give nothing to racism’. That means no more casual tolerance of what demeans and humiliates members of another race, religion or ethnicity — othering us as less than Kiwi. That isn’t a call for political correctness, but for the safety for our young people and communities. It is also those who benefit from the systemic exclusion of Māori and migrants of colour who must make space. To ensure a healthy, integrated and equal society, Pākehā must consciously deliver inclusion — in our media representations, in the workforce, and through leadership in public life.

We stand right now at a moment in global history when the politics of hate and division threaten Western democracies once more. In the wake of the global financial crisis, which triggered devastating inequality in the West, scapegoating migrants is easy political capital. The austerity measures that underpinned that economic devastation elsewhere were mirrored in massive public spending cuts here over the past decade. So, as New Zealand faced record homelessness and a rapid widening of the gap between rich and poor, ethnic communities and Māori are blamed simultaneously for stealing work opportunities and not working at all, for legally buying once-stolen land. I have realised the only antidote is building minority representation at the decision-making table. We who represent ethnic minorities must become protagonists in our own stories, tell those stories as journalists, stand as politicians, become members of corporate boards. Otherwise the very system that gave us the vote will swallow us whole in a majority-rules version of democracy. Actual representation may be the only means of truly safeguarding the rights of vulnerable peoples. It isn’t enough to be consulted on race, or immigration, or ‘Māori issues’ (how would a Pākehā man decide what policy areas affect a migrant woman of colour?). In fact, that ghettoises our input. It also does little to ensure that our perspectives or interests, even in minority issues, are actually prioritised.

It is also only through representation that we are seen as individuals embodying the challenge to stereotypes. So that diversity within our groups is expressed, so that feminism is seen as a Middle Eastern attribute as much as religious fundamentalism, so that Pasifika and Māori are seen as thinkers and innovators rather than mere statistics. We must become more than faceless masses, take part in public life; otherwise the misnomers persist. That is how we might amplify the voices in every culture who speak to equality above those who would silence them.