Te Aniwa Hurihanganui: tired of racism, of speaking, writing and living it

By Te Aniwa Hurihanganui, RNZ

OPINION:

I shouldn’t have been checking my work emails. It was Saturday night and I was in my favorite place, at my grandparents’ house, where the rooms carry memories of my childhood and the walls have the faces of my tūpuna.

In the kitchen, my whānau were sitting around the table, filling their faces with nana’s roast dinner and enjoying our first meeting since we left the lockdown.

My three-year-old niece, who shares my middle name Māreikura, crawled on top of me when I heard my phone ping.

I lifted her little body from my lap and sat her next to me as I opened an email from a sender I didn’t recognize.

“You are a European hate member of a slightly brown group of people who represent New Zealand’s worst statistics,” the email read.

“Murder, rape, child abuse, fraud, unemployment. Ni ** er pooch.”

I was surprised. Before I had time to understand what I had read, there was another ping.

“… misinformed, poorly educated, overweight brown pig, whose antecedents no doubt involve European sailors, whalers and convicts.

“Like all so-called Maori in this country, you have a mile-wide chip on your shoulder. Report on Maori gang members, Maori rape rates, Maori murdering their partners and children, drug use, unemployment, fraud.

“You are a confusing joke.”

Maybe if I was somewhere else, surrounded by different people, I would have laughed and deleted it. That’s what I usually do when I get racist emails, and I get a lot.

But this time it felt different. I looked at my family, which is not one of the things the sender described; that nurtures and loves me, protects and guides me.

I looked at my niece, who was so small and so beautiful, and the thought that one day I might receive a message like this made my heart sink.

Before I knew it, tears were rolling down my face.

My reaction surprised me. Since I started my career as a Maori news journalist, receiving racist emails has become a normal part of the job.

I spend a lot of my time writing stories about racism and every time I do so, a wave of offended Pākehā pops up in my DMs, not offended by racism, but offended that I called it that.

They will accuse me of being a Maori activist disguised as a journalist.

Every time I post a story about the state that takes a Maori baby from a mother, someone cries, “But Maori are just bad mothers!”

If I mark the anniversary of a historic event where Maori rights were trampled on, such as Parihaka, someone will tell me that Maori deserved it because they were “cannibals” and “lawless.”

Don’t even make me talk about the Maori neighborhoods: “Special treatment!” “Racist for Pākehā!” Roll your eyes. I’ve heard it all before and I’m sure Maori journalists everywhere have, too.

Messages and emails aren’t just predictable and boring, they’re stupid too. They are the same tired and unfounded arguments that New Zealand’s white conservative has clung to for years to justify colonization. And they stink of fear and shame.

So why did I feel so affected this time? Maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just tired of everything.

In this job I have learned a lot about what it means to be Maori.

I have met Maori teachers and nurses who have taken to the streets to demand better pay. I have met activists who flock to Parliament at every opportunity they get to challenge racist policies and laws.

I have met people who dedicate their lives to revitalizing or reclaiming the Maori tea. I have met iwi leaders, students, volunteers, and coaches, each of whom has their own unique life stories and experiences.

But there is a common thread in all their stories.

Maori always fight for something.

They fight for better access to health care or equal pay. They fight to get their children back or for an educational system that treats them fairly.

Maori journalists also fight; we fight against the dominant narrative and we fight to give voice to our people. It is a privilege to do what we do, to give voice to our people who fight for a better reality.

But it’s exhausting facing that fight with them and then coming home to ours every day.

Report and find the sender

The emails reminded me that the fight doesn’t end when the day is done. It reminded me of how tired I was talking about racism, writing about it and living it.

My whānau reminded me that day why we must fight. When they finally realized something was wrong, I reluctantly showed them the emails.

In a matter of seconds, my brothers had devised a series of possible attack plans. You could file a complaint under the Harmful Digital Communications Act. It could expose the sender online. I could answer.

My older brother, who somehow managed to trace the sender’s number and address from an old online ad, was eager to deal with the situation the “old way”.

What I saw in each of them was the desire to do something, anything, to make sure that the sender would never bother me again. And then I realized why we fight racism. We fight so that our brothers, our nieces and nephews and their children don’t have to.

Instead, I told my work, who quickly blocked the sender from messaging me again. I also considered a complaint from Netsafe, but decided to go one step further and report the sender to the police.

I remembered a story I had written about the Maori language scholar Vincent Olsen-Reeder, who had received his own racist emails and did the same.

The police can set up an archive and monitor future emails from the sender. They can also contact them directly.

A few days later I received a call from the police. They had paid a visit to the sender, who turned out to be an older white male. Shock. The man told them that a friend had taken his phone and wrote the emails on his behalf.

The police gave him a warning and left him alone. It’s the result I was hoping for, but I was comforted to imagine her face when the police knocked on the door.

I guess looking back, I shouldn’t have checked my work emails on a Saturday night at my grandparents’ house because it allowed old racist rhetoric to creep into my safe place.

But it is because of this safe place, my tūpuna on the walls and my whānau that raised me, that I know that rhetoric is unacceptable. It must always be called and condemned.

My job allows me to write stories about amazing people, iwi, and communities who work every day to improve the lives of those around them, and it is truly an honor.

Disrupting narratives and diverting racist emails are my small contribution to dismantling the colonized mentalities and institutions on which this nation is based.

It is an uphill battle and a burden that I hope my niece Māreikura never has to carry. But, until then, ka whawhai tonu mātou.