RACE AND ETHNICITY

“But race is a convenient distraction. It’s easier not to care for those in prison, for the children of beneficiaries, for the poor, if they look different from us, if we can blame their failings on race or define them as ‘the underclass’...Tapu Misa ‘The Dangers of Our Indifference’ (nzherald, June 23, 2008)

Tapu Misa is a freelance writer who has a weekly (or may be monthly) column in the New Zealand Herald and the above quote is extracted from her opinion in the wake of a 3-crime-wave in a week committed in ‘South-Auckland’....and yes by “Polynesians”. You can read this on the ‘nzherald’ site (www.nzherald.co.nz just do a search on Tapu Misa) to know what she means by the above assertion as I won’t analyse any of it here. But what I’d like to add is the peculiar yet systematic utilisation of one’s racial and ethnic identity in his or her portrayal and the dissemination of that particular ‘goal-orientated’ image across the New Zealand media in general. One’s connection to such historical ethnic-racial image is dependent or conditioned by various factors—usually (at least as it seems to me) two primary yet fundamental factors: we can understand it in various terms but what is probably true about them across every interpretation is that they are two-opposing-binaries—either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘black’ or ‘white’ and so forth. But they can only be understood if we consider the vast plane upon which ‘our ’Polynesian’ and ‘Maori’ people have been reallocated incessantly in their stories of ‘individual-personal successes’ or ‘communal fallings’ like chess pawns.
The stories of ‘crime’ committed by people perceived to be ‘brown’, Polynesian, Maori, or even now stretching towards the recently established communities constituted by the problematic rubric ‘Asians’ is more than often depicted as an element of communal-responsibilities—that the communities (or racial-ethnic groups to which these ‘criminals’ belong) are answerable to these events. The ‘spaces’ constituted by these stories are confused not so much with the individuals responsible for these crimes but rather, interweaved by the overarching presence of the racial-ethnic communities they ‘belong’ to. No agency and no individual identities are given as the principal identity marker in such ways that the people of New Zealand can consider their guilt or innocence in connection to a given name. The entirety of ‘South-Auckland’ is to blame as a low-socio-economic-urban-pacific area conceived and thereafter internalised by its own youth as a place of violence, gangs, and etc. Not to mention its ‘ethnic-chaotic’ aftermath in which the ‘Asian’ communities voice their concerns by looking to form vigilante groups so as to counter these crimes against their kind as ‘good-honest-business-owners’ and hard-workers’—which does not give us much choice as to what the ‘other’ group are in opposition to the former image-making and self-representation—significantly aided along by the media. The discontent with the conducts of the ‘Police’ as anything but helpful in protecting these hard-working members of New Zealand society can only initiate assumptions proposing the uncontainable and unmanageable crimes of ‘South-Auckland’—one life, think twice, hold up what’s goin on, seems everything is going wrong, South A.K is like South L.A...? (Scribe—Think Twice_Aotearoa All-Stars)
It’s hard to think of such things as systematic if there are various mannerisms in which these ‘images’ can be understood—especially as not all generalised interpretations of ‘South-Auckland’ is negative if we regard the tourism aspect to Manukau’s identity as a ‘multi-cultural’ city infused and stimulated by ‘colourful’ and diversified cultures in harmony as a counter-balance to the above issues. We can argue that this is just another extension to the negative image of ourselves in connection to the low-socio-economic-urban environment we have made ‘South-Auckland’ what it is today—attributed much to our happy-go-lucky characteristics as a lazy people concerned more with stuffing ourselves with unhealthy food and island delicacies rather than working harder for better conditions, concerned more with dancing and ‘ancient’ ceremonies and preserving a past that is neither applicable to the modern-world and the nature of time and so on.

Yet, so many of ours have succeeded in sports and other departments important to the maintenance and development of the well-being of New Zealand society as a nation incessantly appealing for the acceptance and recognitions alongside higher and more economically-advanced countries in the outside world. Yet, when these individuals of ours succeed, more often than not, they are perceived as individuals belonging no longer to the slump from which they emerge but to the country as a whole—they are perceived as members and identified more often than not as ‘New Zealanders’ rather than South-Aucklanders or belonging to the Polynesian communities existing in this peculiar suburban-space the country seems to look upon it always with dismay. Their connections to these racial-ethnic communities are perceived to be an element of their past because they are now successful New Zealanders, successful boxer, professional rugby player and so on. These communities are no longer perceived as answerable to their road to success; rather, these very same communities are perceived as an element of their past identity—before David Tua was ‘David Tua the bronze medalist’, ‘David Tua the number 1 contender for the Heavyweight belt of the World’, he was just David Tua in Mangere South Auckland, before Jonah Lomu was ‘Jonah the youngest All Black ever’, ‘Jonah the guy responsible for making rugby into a world-sport’, he was just Jonah Lomu in Mangere South Auckland. Off course it has to be this way, yet how each of these two ‘New Zealanders’ stories are told further perpetuates the negativities we as citizens always rush to associate South-Auckland with upon the plane of re-presentation....