Te Tiriti – yet again. Yes, this is important.

This post was going to be called “racism and privilege at law school”. But since it ended up going in this direction, I have renamed it. I would still like to write about racism and privilege more generally at some point – keep your eyes out, it’ll happen one day.

I wrote 90% of this post over a month ago, and then got busy and completely forgot about it. Here it is! With some very minor alterations. And yes before you ask, this blog was never intended to be entirely about racial issues, and it is not going to be either. It’s just my thing at the moment. The next post may be on veganism. If you’re lucky. So if you don’t like it, too bad, suck it up, deal with it, don’t read it. If you do, go for it. As always, feedback is appreciated.

Oh and sorry its so long. Conciseness is not my forte. My apologies! But it will be worth it if you make it to the end, promise.

Ok, here we go. Firstly, the two events that sparked this.

In my crimes lecture some months ago now, a guy sitting in front of me spent almost the entire class looking at racist memes on facebook. I’m not going to go into any detail; suffice to say they were incredibly offensive. A whole page dedicated to them. And he was laughing. I spent the whole lecture completely unable to concentrate. By the end of it my stomach was churning and my body shaking. I even cried on the way home. I just couldn’t understand how someone could find such overt racism so funny.

Then, on the second to last day of class, a guy in public law began his contribution to the class discussion by giving a mihi. Except it wasn’t a mihi, it was (apparently) a karakia which he’d learnt when he was a kid. And had no idea what it meant, or when it would be appropriate. It was pretty obvious that he was taking the piss. Even more so when the class burst into laughter and applause. I was about to start clapping too, just cos everyone else was and I didn’t think – until I suddenly clicked what had happened and how offensive it was. I sincerely hope that most of the class was just following the crowd, and did not actually condone the behaviour.

I have already addressed ideas of collective responsibility and historical injustice. These in themselves are very powerful reasons to stand up to racism. We as Pakeha must take responsibility. This is not a “Māori issue”. But its also about a basic level of respect which surely we must all have for other humans, regardless of race, class, gender, whatever. Regardless of injustice, oppression, privilege and everything else, surely we as human beings have some degree of respect for others. Surely we all have some gut feeling that its wrong to appropriate other languages and cultures to take the piss. Right? Apparently not.

So, I emailed the lecturer expressing my outrage, and got a rather unsatisfying response. He said that, in accordance with the views of his Māori colleagues, he had addressed the issue with the student directly; and it was inappropriate and unnecessary to raise it in class. I still think he missed the point slightly, that it wasn’t about the individual student (however shocking this behaviour may have been); it was about the culture of tolerating, accepting and perpetuating racist behaviour, whether consciously or not; which I find incredibly problematic. And I did emphasise that in my email.

I felt incredibly vulnerable having stuck my neck out like this, and immediately after, all I could think was “what the hell am I talking about, who am I to be challenging racism when I know nothing about this issue. Surely these “Māori colleagues”, whoever they are, understand the situation much better than I do. My reaction was ignorant and emotional, and my suggestion to raise it to the whole class was completely inappropriate and I just shouldn’t have said anything. Aaaargh.”

I have been mulling this over for the last two weeks [edit: now more like two months], almost non-stop. Paralysed by indecisiveness, lack of confidence and fear, I kept feeling the need to do something, but had no idea what would be the appropriate action to take. I had an absolutely incredible conversation yesterday [about 6 weeks ago now], with two Pakeha women who I have a lot of respect for, and who really clarified several important things.

One: this is not a “Māori issue”. One of the options I had been thinking about was talking to one of the Māori lecturers (who I really admire) to try to understand why this “low-key approach” of only talking to the individual was more appropriate. I realise now that this would have been a terrible idea. Te Tiriti is a partnership between two races. Racism is not the problem of those who are oppressed. It is a problem that belongs to those who are racist. It is incredibly unfair to keep pushing the burden onto those who are oppressed to constantly fight their own battles. We need to fight alongside them, to uphold our side of the bargain; and to not always rely on them to do it for us.

Two: this is not about this particular lecturer, or even the particular class. I already knew it was not about the student. But I had been far more frustrated at the lecturer than was fair. It is not about blame. I still think he possibly could have handled the situation better, and now I know that my email to him was justified, but this is not the point. The problem is far more deeply ingrained than that; it is about how Te Tiriti is approached in general; how racism is dealt with in general; and how we as Pakeha need to learn to acknowledge and understand our privilege. These are all very difficult issues, and it was maybe naïve of me to expect this lecturer to respond favourable to my request. But something needs to happen at a much more fundamental level.

Three: Te Tiriti, as a whole, is also not a “Māori issue”. I thought I knew this, but I realised that I didn’t understand it as well as I should. I found myself talking about the Treaty module as a whole and how crappy it was; but reiterated what I have said to several people: that this lecturer has never taught it before, was doing his best, and that the usual Māori lecturer is probably much better. They were shocked. Why should a Māori lecturer have to teach the Treaty? Why should a Pakeha not be held to the same standard, in terms of understanding the issues and being able to teach it well? In fact, it should be taught by a Pakeha, for the reasons above: the obligations to uphold Te Tiriti do not rest with Māori alone.

Four: not in this particular conversation, but on the same day, Catherine Delahunty was talking about how the principles of the Treaty are just a bunch of crap invented by lawyers. I was amused, slightly shocked, and kinda surprised. Having just spent 4 weeks in public law learning about how great the principles are because they reconcile the differences between the texts, I was really surprised that she would so quickly dismiss them. It was only on reflection, and talking to a friend of mine, that I realised why this was. Once again, I was shocked at my own failure to see the obvious.

It is worth recalling that neither the Treaty, nor Te Tiriti, has any legal force. The principles do, in some, limited situations. They are: partnership and reciprocity, active protection, and redress. These are breached constantly by the Government, although the courts do their best to uphold them when they can. Of course, Māori would be much better off if these principles were taken seriously by their Treaty partner. But after being told how fantastic the principles were, I had completely missed the elephant in the room: nowhere in the principles is there any mention of te tino rangatirantaga – or Māori sovereignty, which is guaranteed by article 2 of Te Tiriti.

This is highly problematic, deliberate, and not surprising at all.  Despite the judiciary sometimes being alightly awesome, and upholding the Treaty a hell of a lot better than the government does, it still works within a colonial framework, so it recognises, and refuses to challenge, Parliamentary supremacy. The principles, the Waitangi Tribunal, and the Treaty court cases have actually had the effect of squeezing the full force of Māori resistance into a narrow colonial paradigm, giving them no real power at all.

I don’t know how to resolve this. I think it is a huge problem, and needs addressing, urgently. Moana Jackson, who is brilliant, distinguishes between constitutional reform (tinkering round the edges) and constitutional transformation. Obviously transformation is what we need; whether most Pakeha are ready for that is highly unlikely, given then levels of racism and lack of understanding referred to above.

Anyway, I digress. Well, not really, this is all interrelated, of course. The Treaty’s place in the legal system obviously informs how it is taught at law school, which in turn informs the issues of racism and privilege that inspired this post. As someone else said to me the other day, it’s an outrage, really, that the Treaty is a four week section of the public law course; rather than being an integral, underlying theme of the entire course. This is a clear reflection, I think, of how it is seen by most of society: a side issue, which must be addressed in a tokenistic fashion in order to be “PC”; something of historical interest, sure, but not something which should be a living, breathing part of our constitutional framework which informs everything we do.

I don’t know how to conclude this. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what I’m going to do about this issue. The easy option, obviously, is to ignore it. But like most things which are easily ignored, the unfortunate reality is that this will not make it go away. The course is over, but like I said, the focus is not on the individual. It has been suggested to me that I talk to the course co-coordinator, to try to improve things for next year’s class. Maybe I will, but I have no idea what I would say.  Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, I will continue to mull.