Auckland the Testing Ground

Te Ao Hou, December 1963, Page 15

Auckland the Testing Ground Auckland has now become the testing ground for New Zealand's capacity to build a multiracial society; it is in this city that the actual confrontation of Maori and white is taking place. So far the signs of tension are slight but I for one am less optimistic than the Maori Affairs Department about the future. Let me restate a point that I made earlier. The problem is made not so much by the number of Maoris involved as by the quality of the contacts between the groups. Maoris are ‘visible’ to whites, that is they are distinguishable in a mixed group even when their actions are in no way different from those of other members of the group. For most white people the terms in which they think are those of, ‘that Maori!’ For white people Maoris are too often, ‘faceless’, to use James Baldwin's word, and the same applies to the reverse situation. Understanding of Maori values by whites or indeed by Maoris for that matter, is slight, our artists and writers have not yet sought to explain them to us, so that the relationship between the two groups is rather that of a truce, a kind of live and let live based on mutual ignorance. For the moment this may be good enough. In some areas where a scatter of Maoris through a white community is taking place, evaluation of the Maoris by the whites seems to be in terms of person to person relationships without much reference to stereotypes. But will this continue, I wonder, as more Maoris and other immigrants crowd into the city, as the white community becomes more resistant to changes over which it seems to have little control. What happens when economic levels drop, employment becomes harder to get, and money, the great leveller, becomes scarcer? In the housing advertisements one frequently reads ‘No Maoris’, ‘Europeans only’. A friend of mine buying a section on the shore was assured by the agent that ‘of course there are no Maoris in the district’. (The agent was lying: the next door household was mixed.)

Is this situation any concern of the schools? Children seem to be fairly free of prejudice; is there any way in which they can be prevented from developing racial prejudice? There have been a number of ideas followed up in other countries; study of the background of the group, inter-group camps, increased contacts, adoption of another school, propaganda, adult education and so on. All have some worth and applied together they probably have value. Increased contact is certainly important but it is by no means the whole answer. Once more, it is the quality of the contact that counts. Consider for a moment the situation in two schools in which I have taught in the last five years. In one, a city school, all the children came from homes of lower socio-economic status, many with a very limited educational background. In this school friendships across ethnic boundaries became fewer as the children grew older, and occurred mainly in two groups: the most intelligent, and those most actively in rebellion, the outcasts.