Could I be a racist?

The big question

I was in a taxi (in Christchurch) and the driver, who was white and looked friendly and initially sounded reasonable; started talking about “our friends who love spicy foods” and how they work together in groups in that particular taxi company and I found myself agreeing because I know a number of Indian drivers who work together with friends or family; who get customers and pass them on to each other, so, they have their own little umbrella group within the company.

He got that far, the thing about “our friends who like spicy foods” and then how they work together in groups and I heard myself answer, “Yeah, I know what you mean”. And all of sudden I felt tricked by those two pseudo-facts from my own experience and I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve agreed to a racist argument!”.

The driver went on to say how his (he didn’t need to say white here, because it was implied), customers are asking, “ Where are all the Kiwi drivers?”. And then like a fish, caught by my own mouth, reeled in, dumped on the floor of the dinghy, I flapped desperately around with things coming out of my mouth. Things about racism and anti-racism. And he nodded his head and agreed completely which actually made it worse because there was no one to explain to/ correct, but myself.

“I’m very against racism”, I said to myself. “I don’t like these racist conversations about Indian taxi drivers”, I said to myself again, because I was the only one talking. The taxi driver, was nodding over and over like a nodding-head-dog-on-the-dashboard, “Yes yes yes” as if he was saying the same things I was saying.

When I got home, the thought came into my head: Maybe I’m a racist because it was so easy for that to happen - for me to agree like that.

A few days later, I was walking in the dark on my crutches. I was walking along the river, past a carpark in the CBD with a white guy with long hair who was talking about how it was scary being a young guy in the 90s in Christchurch; a small guy who big guys wanted to beat up. It was scary on the streets and even at parties being a young, small, white guy who was afraid of being beaten up because there was a vibe in Christchurch. Yes, there was a definite vibe.

And as we were talking, we walked into the dark-dark and I could see 20 metres in front of us a group of young brown guys standing outside a car. And I thought: Oh, brown guys. Probably Pasifika. Probably Samoans. And I told myself, they could even be my nephews, even though I knew they weren’t.

And then one of the young men walked towards me and I said in my head to him: See me, I could be your aunty. He walked closer towards us and asked if I was OK, and then he asked again and then he asked again and then again. Then he changed direction and walked alongside us talking and repeating, “You OK?”, and I felt a flutter in my chest and in my throat, which is fear, and I thought: I’m afraid of him, this boy who could be my nephew.

I recognised that I was afraid, as if he might jump us or knife us or beat us up. And I thought: Is this what it’s like to be a white person and be scared of a brown person? It wasn’t till later that I thought about the dark and the conversation with my friend and the fact that I was on crutches and that this young man was very probably drunk and/ or high and of course they were all good reasons for being afraid.

But it was that moment, the small moment in my throat and gut, when that brown boy from Mangere (just before he turned again and left us, he told us he was from Mangere) that moment when that brown boy from Mangere scared me and I felt a kind of fear of the brown male body, as if I was a racist.

Of course racism is more complicated than that. I reckon it is more like a shifting scale than like a black and white (haha) tick box: racist or not-racist or once a racist (or not-a-racist) then always-and-forever-amen. Experience of our own internal racism changes inside a lifetime or inside a period of time or place or situation. The trick is to keep an eye on ourselves: to do a bit of that Buddhist-style observing of racism in ourselves when it does happen and be curious about it. Don’t wait till when it happens and then let it run the show. And don’t get in denial about it when it happens either.

Racism happens. Just like shit, it happens. And it happens to all of us.

We are human beings and difference often freaks us out. Back in the late 90’s I travelled in Ethiopia and I remember literally making babies cry. I have a very vivid memory of a child on the street in a small town getting a look at me and running away screaming with a look of abject terror on their wee face.

One of the funniest (and cutest) things was when I would arrive somewhere, get off a bus and step into a street, people of all sizes would call out to me - ‘Michael Bolton! Michael Bolton!’. Back in the late 90s Michael Bolton, the pop singer, with his white skin and long blonde hair was popular in Ethiopia. That’s how I read in many places there, not the big cities; but me, who read as brown-skinned woman here, read as Michael Bolton there!

I went off on a tangent, but back to what I was saying. Racism happens to all of us. None of us are perfect. None of us are ascended masters beyond the evil clutches of all the vices of being a human being - of which racism is one.

If you are reading this you have probably been educated, by life or by other means, to know racism is not OK. But being on the receiving end of it over (over and over) doesn’t mean that it’s a done deal for me. Still plenty to learn. Still lots of sitting Buddha-like and watching what comes up in myself and saying, Hmm, that’s weird/ worrying, I mean, interesting.

Apart from what it means for me as a person, it also gives me an experience of what it feels like to be a David Seymour. For a moment.