MODERN DAY RACISM Tanumia Matega (she/her; Samoan Ti’avea & Lalovaea) Content warning: Racism, Explicit Mentions of Racist Slurs
PAST I attended my final year of high school at Wellington East Girls’ College in 2021. I was catching up on schoolwork and buying lunch from the canteen. It seemed like any other day. But it wasn’t. The week of 11 October, videos and images surfaced online of Palagi Wellington East Girls’ College (WEGC) students yelling offensive and racist slurs at a party. They yelled, “Māori should go back to the bush.” They wrote Nazi imagery on their chest, yelling the n-word. Repeatedly and proudly. On Wednesday 20 October 2021, Māori students confronted the racist students. Videos of the incident had spread across the school by the next period. On Friday, 22 October, the principal ‘addressed’ the situation, but it was more of a plea to stop spreading things online which would affect the College’s reputation. She had not mentioned “racism” in her four speeches to the different year groups. Did she not want to admit that racism and prejudice had yet to breathe their last breath within the walls of this institution? The following week, the school was clearly divided. The friends of the offenders defended them online, while a petition asking for the offenders’ expulsion gathered strong support as eyewitness testimonies were shared hundreds of times. That week, those in support dressed in cultural attire. Those who were friends with the offenders were silent. I had never thought racism could be so bold in a place that felt liberal. While this specific instance most directly impacted Māori students, Pasifika students supported and empathised with them as
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both communities are similarly subject to racism. This is reflected in common vernacular where the people of the Pacific are homogenised as ‘brown’. Communities are carelessly grouped to simplify the complex social issues they burden us with. WEGC’s mission statement said students will “learn, lead and participate in an environment that reflects and values diversity while fostering personal excellence”. Their ‘Recognition of Cultural Diversity’ policy reads: “Wellington East Girls’ College celebrates New Zealand’s cultural diversity and strives to ensure that all students feel culturally safe and valued. We aim to create a learning environment that is caring, inclusive, cohesive, and supports the cultural and linguistic diversity of our students.” Was the College aware that their ideologies differed from the reality of their students? Pasifika students only made up around 12% of WEGC when I was there, and staff consistently butchered the pronunciation of ethnic names. In 2021, the Poly group was prohibited from fundraising because it would seem ‘bad’ for the group to look for funding elsewhere. The school’s reputation seemed more important than support for POC, leaving our “brown” extracurriculars without proper resourcing. More than half of our prefects were POC, and the Kapa Haka and Poly groups performed well, which enhanced the College’s reputation. Everything looked great on the surface, but it was obvious from the party that WEGC and our wider society still had a long way to go.
