Thought I would use Pete's reference to everything being 2.0 these days.
The most recent wake-up call for me was not in relation to my 5.45am alarm, but to a situation that I was in last week. A situation that involved two cultures: Maori and Pakeha.
Firstly I want to say that I (Pakeha) am all for Maori culture: I do not stereotype or put them in a societal box; it is more often the case that I defend them due to my annoyance of how some Pakeha's treat Maori.
All right so last Wednesday I had an awesome start to the day, everything was just honky dory: went for a walk along the beach then got ready to go to Hamilton. My friend came to pick me up. Where I live, my flatmate and I share a drive way with two other households. I knew that my friend would not be coming inside the house so told him to come down the driveway. As soon as this happened the front household decided to be obstructing and put his car in the driveway on purpuse. I did not realise that this was done on purpose, so I tottled over to their house and asked ever so nicely (even took my sunglasses off so he could see my eyes showcasing open, friendly body language), "Hi, can you please move your car". The old man (Maori) came to the door, angry and started having a go at me, saying that visitors park on the road (I was not aware of such a thing), I do not belong here, neither does my friend and that he can not come down the drive because he is tresspassing and so on.
Just a little bit more of a background. I have lived in my flat since April and have noticed that whenever Pakeha people come to visit and park down the drive (not obstructing anyone) the old man complains. Complains even to the point that when they do park on the road, not even near "their" grass frontage, he asks if (whoever has parked there) they are going to mow the grass. In actual fact it is council property.
This can only been seen as one thing: Racism!
I have never experienced racism; and have never had any animosity towards the neighbours.
It took our Landlord (who uses the same driveway and is Maori) to say that my friend and I are friends of his. Once this was said, everything seemed to be A-OK! But in actual fact it should not take someone to say this.
This instance had me shaking and made me realise, however on a larger scale, what Maori go through in terms of racism which can happen on a day to day basis. This is a generalisation, but racism is normally Pakeha towards Maori as they are perceived to be the minority.
Personally I think racism is wrong. Everyone should be seen as equals. What is it going to take for this to change?
3 comments:
Unfortunately no matter what race, gender, age etc some one is you are still going to get (excuse me) wankers like the old man determined to make things more difficult for those he feels the need to.
In your case, he's decided to take it out on his Pakeha neighbours.
I am absolutely all with you with being against racism.
It's one of my passionate hates. I think its disgusting and in my opinion - this may be a rash generalisation - but it tends to be the less educated and more ignorant people that display the most racism. Whether its against Maori, Pakeha, Asian etc..
What can we honestly do about it? The main thing I do is when my friends or family make even a slightly racial but derogotory comment of someone of another ethnicity I tell them to shutup. Even is if it something as basic as "oh must be an Asian driver" is not acceptable.
I beleive if we get rid of the small racial comments then we can avoid small prejudices turning into something more hateful.
Anyway I'll wrap up my blog-size comment :)
You know what gets me? We live in this multi-cultural country but as a whole kiwis are generally ignorant about other cultures, kinda sad..
Even I also had couple of experiences regarding racism. It was from Malaysia. Chinese,malay and Indian are the main races there and they are really concerend about it. I was studying Mass comm there and I was unfortunate enough to comment on races during class discussions and debates. one day the HOD came to me and tole "Hush on races pls...this not where do you think you are,.."...since then i zipped my mouth...:(
Hey, where are you? :)
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