They are us // This is not us

Karl gave us the heads-up. Karl Marx, that is. We'd wanted to take students off to a vigil for the victims of the Christchurch attack and one happened to be set to happen nearby in Aotea Square called "Jummah Remembrance: Vigil for lives taken in Christchurch" - sounded on the money. To get details we headed over to the Facebook event page but saw that one of the organising groups was Migrants Against Racism and Xenophobia. I had never heard of it before, but I shouldn't need to tell you what their acronym is to tell you it was a tip off that as noble as the event might have been envisioned, there might be something more than mourning on the agenda, even if a vigil for the victims was what it said on the box. My senior teacher and I exchanged glances and shared our concerns. Ultimately it didn't matter as they moved the event to the Domain which was logistically difficult for the school to arrange a large scale attendance so we kept it "in house" with a Wall of Wishes and a representative speech from me. Language schools have a mission to bring people together, which is relevant to countering the message of the gunman. We have muslim staff and students for whom we must show they have as much right to dignity, safety and respect as anyone else. One student cried after the speeches at the school.

Today I saw the news in the Herald about the vigil we missed. Karl was right. There was a bit more in the mix and apparently it might have caused some attendees to leave early. Some parts of the reporting:

Muslim and tāngata whenua speakers covered experiences of everyday racism and violence they face, and spoke to New Zealand's white settler history and colonial violence. Sharon Hawke, of Ngāti Whātua Orakei, said hatred existed in New Zealand: "White hatred is its foundation." She spoke of atrocities committed against Māori throughout New Zealand's history, including at Parihaka, and even Okahu Bay in Auckland in the 1950s, where the Auckland Council burned down her hapū's village.

Apparently one of the messages was that even though white New Zealand sincerely repeated Jacinda Ardern's words that "They are us" and that the actions and beliefs of the gunman "weren't us". The event, the reporter mused, may have become a bit more a political rally of sorts. And being someone who was not white in even egalitarian New Zealand did not enjoy the same feeling of safety, dignity and equality that those who seemed white did.

Putting aside the "false advertising" element of it, and also filing away the fact that in grief and anger, people often act with poor judgement, I can only say that such words don't help achieve any goal except for some catharsis and exultation among the speakers and their confederates. Racism is in New Zealand without a doubt but prejudice and hate doesn't die through pointed fingers. It weakens only with open hearts and minds. And it is pointed fingers that both of those things close. And it was ironic because it was with the preceding collective grief that people start to open up and embrace.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, who also spoke at the vigil, said rather than it being "too soon" it was actually "too late" to be having these conversations.

I would just say that it wasn't too early or late but simply the wrong place. There are places for these conversations to happen, and in fact they are happening. Reconciliation with NZ's past is always happening and continues to happen. As the old guard of national influencers change and pass, so does the standard belief. Race relations are changing. Racism is ebbing. Is it happening quickly? No, because there is no magic that brings a whole population's worldview around on pinhead. And the collective worldview is not a collective but a 4D continuum. Even views within migrant communities aren't uniform. After Jacinda's recent international prominence through her response to the attacks, some commenters mentioned their desire to leave the US for NZ; in response, some suggested that NZ wasn't a paradise and no better than the States. To those naysayers, I can only say that whether it would be recognition of original inhabitants, migrants or the acknowledgement of the significance of history on minorities, there is no comparison.

Yet there is still a long way to go, which is what they wanted to say at the vigil, when all the people wanted to do was grieve together.

One notable place conversations of racism are happening, in the right place, is in Australia where Project host, Waleed Aly, has spoken with eloquence and then combatatively to the core of the environment which engenders racial bigotry and violence there. I don't have a measure of Waleed - the comments reveal he's not liked by a rather large proportion of commenters, of which a noticeable portion use language that relates derogatively about his ethnicity rather than as a person. One interesting piece of sophism that was used against him was that he comments when there are people within Australian politics who espouse racist views or exploit racial differences for political gain yet he doesn't speak about muslims killing Christians in Africa. Why would he speak about religious attacks in Africa, when he's an Australian Muslim? And why shouldn't he confront Australians with language that cultivates the same thoughts that lead those to slaughter for religious ends?

He doesn't have to answer for African Muslims any more than those sympathetic caucasian attendees of the vigil need to answer for the overt and open racism, or even the motives or influences on the Christchurch shooter. Regardless of where religious or ethnic killing happens, the context and history are worth exploring. And even when it is apparently ethnic or racial, it is often something else that the killer(s) are calling their identity that race or ethnicity is just an incidental characteristic. For example, if one tribe which happens to be Christian avenges with blood a past grievance to their group by a non-Christian group, is it actually a religious crime?

Also with a historical context is the discussion about whether to change the name of the Canterbury Crusaders in sympathy for the victims of the Christchurch atrocity. Crusader and crusade, from that ignorantly blissful idyllic implicitly Christian New Zealand life I've lived, are benign, cute words: "the caped crusader" "she's going on a crusade!" Probably for a lot of pākeha and while British or Americans it's the same, even if they've had a little bit of history taught to them about the historical Crusades. Any reading of the histories make it quite clear that the Crusades, while having seized distant Jerusalem for a century or two, was not very holy in its execution. While the crux of the war campaign might have been geopolitical, it's name bears the cross. Europe had sent holy warriors to the Middle East and slaughtered the inhabitants of cities of all faiths. A crusader as a term would seem to be akin to a jihadi, an appellation that would have an unfriendly sound to many of an Anglo-Christian background. If Jakarta had a football team called the Jakarta Jihadis, would it bother non-Muslim residents and citizens. Would it if a jihadi had just killed some infidels the other day? It might be an overreaction to change the name of the Canterbury Crusaders, but it's an understandable one, probably one that fits into a Marxist up-turning of the world, though.

And that's where I'd like to come back full circle. When Jacinda Ardern says: "They are us" or anyone, in reference to the beliefs and actions of the killer: "This is not us" I understood it not as a description, certainly not a description of treatment of Māori through history, or the way my wife felt when confronted by a Polynesian in the CBD, nor how one of my mixed marriage teachers told a Jewish joke in the office; nor the times when my father mocked Indian customers who simply want to order some ice; nor my own discrimination when choosing which of the hundred CVs I need to look at in my busy day. I take it as an exclamation of conviction and a forceful declaration of an aspiration for us all. It is the desire for all people in New Zealand, white, brown and every shade in between, to embrace the other and refuse divisiveness. It is one of the strongest declarations I can recall for cultural unity I've heard in my lifetime. It made me want to be better in the face of this tragedy and thereafter.