Shame, Shame, Shame
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
IT was a report to fill Pakeha New Zealanders (and that includes me) with shame. It showed that, far from acquiring the maturity and tolerance we like to think we possess, we have learned little about our place in a Pacific country over the last five years.
What we have learned is even more cause for shame. We have learned to disguise our racism; to be a bit more subtle about the discrimi nation we practise against the Maori and Pacific Islands people who make up about 20 per cent of the population of this country.
We have learned to practise what Race Relations Commissioner Chris Laidlaw calls “polite racism” a misnomer if ever there was one, but you can see what he means.
We’re talking about racism in the housing market. But there’s no doubt it’s just as prevalent in most other sectors of daily life in this multicultural Pacific nation. We don’t often acknowledge it publicly few Poly
nesians or Pakeha care to dwell on it but it’s there and it’s a blight on a society we like to present to the rest of the world as happily multiracial.
In 1986, the Race Relations Office published a study that showed widespread discrimination on ethnic grounds in rental housing in Auckland, despite the existence of laws which expressly forbid it. The report concluded: “Some private landlords and a very high proportion of members of the Real Estate Institute actively prevent Maori and Pacific Islanders from gaining access to rental accommodation.”
Following the publicity, the number of formal complaints to the Race Relations Office dropped by more than half and stayed that way until the middle of 1990. They suddenly jumped back by 50 per cent in the following 12 months, but the office found discrimination was difficult to prove.
The reason was established with a new study that showed racial discrimination in rental housing was just as prevalent but landlords and real estate agents were now mofe aware of how to avoid being obvious about it. The trend, says Race Relations Commissioner, Laidlaw, was towards “a more benigh and subtle form of exclusion”.
In calling it “polite racism”, he says the most insidious aspect is that the discrimination is so discreet that people not even realise they are being discriminated against.
The report shows the discrimination only showed up when Pakeha, Maori and Pacific Island field workers compared notes after carrying out identical approaches to real estate agents and accommodation agencies while ostensibly searching for rental
housing.
All were of similar age, dressed tidily in neat, conservative, clothes and given similar income, family and occupational profiles. Fo rule out possible non-racial, class-based, bias, their occupations were carefully chosen. They included a social worker, teacher, university tutor, doctor, archaelogist, re searcher and student.
All were well presented and articulate. All expected some discrimination but were nonetheless taken aback by the extent of it, the report said. “They had developed positive strategies to deal with the little prejudices of everyday life, and with one exception came through relatively unscathed from what must be regarded as an unpleasant exercise.” 1 he exception was a young Pacific Island woman who, the
report said, “while able to deal with the blatant prejudice, became upset when the difference in the way she had been treated became obvious only after comparisons were made with the other field workers.”
The report noted: “Real estate agents acted as though (hey were treating her no differently, were polite and even friendly when in fact they were giving her different information. It was this deception that she found most difficult to deal with. She dropped out before the investigation was completed.”
A Pakeha field worker said: “I did not expect to be hassled and I wasn’t. What affected me was having such concrete proof through the experi ence of the other field workers about that automatic Pakeha privilege it was something I ‘knew’ about, but had not often in my life seen the discrimination operating first-hand.
“I felt upset at having to watch my colleagues experience things so differently to me and how
the confidence of one of them had been undermined after participating in the field work for a couple of weeks. She had been ground down by the insidiousness of the discrimination.
It seemed to be a shock to her as a young person who thought well of herself.”
The report noted that the woman was in her mid-20s and younger than the others. Signficantly, it added “... it is (his very age group, old enough to be forming a new household but less likely to have attained home ownership, that forms the bulk of the group seeking rental accommodation.”
Past surveys have indicated that people from the Pacific Islands living in New Zealand want to own their own houses just as much as the rest of the population. But while three quarters of Pakeha households and 45 per cent of Maori own their own homes, only 35 per cent of Pacific Island families are able to do so.
This means they are more reliant on a rental housing market that discriminates against them than any other sector. And most of the island communities live in Auckland and Wellington, the most difficult and expensive areas to rent accommodation.
It’s a distressing thought that the proportionately higher numbers of Pacific Islands people reaching reproductive age and beginning families will mean increased dependency on rental housing in the future.
This comes at a time when the New Zealand government is moving to transform the Housing Corporation that has in the past provided a bulwark against discrimination.
The Race Relations Conciliator’s report says: “There exists a very real danger that as a result of placing the onus of responsibility for an essential social service on the shoulders of part-time property investors (as the majority of landlords are) society will face an increase in the numbers of people in substandard accommodation, if indeed they have a home at all.”
It’s a sad commentary on the stale of things in New Zealand today that most of those people will be from the Pacific Islands.
It’s an even sadder commentary, after the July 30 Budget that enshrined a principle of “every person for himself’ into New Zealand society, that most other people won’t care. □