Lizzie Marvelly: Change is happening — fast

The print signs in the Napier CBD. Photo / Supplied

Is it okay to be white? Apparently that's a question currently being mused upon in some quarters. So much so that someone in Napier felt inclined to print signs reading 'IT'S OKAY TO BE WHITE' and erect them in the Napier CBD.

An American tourist pointed the signs out to a local, asking him, "are you folks racist?" The local man then tore the signs down and delivered a sharp message to their creator, published in the local paper, Hawke's Bay Today: "To the person or persons responsible for this shocking display of racism: get a life."

Quite.

I can't say it's a conundrum I've ever dwelled upon, the okay-ness (or not) of my white skin. Apart from the unsightly phosphorescent glare that emanates from my legs mid-winter, I'd say my fair skin serves me quite well. Certainly, I've never lain awake at night dreaming up affirmations to print and disseminate to make me feel better about my whiteness.

Indeed, I suspect my white skin has played a part in the fact that I've never been asked where I "came from" in my home country, nor had anyone make incorrect assumptions about my socio-economic background. It's also likely a factor in the way that I can turn on the television or flick open a magazine and be sure that I'll see people who look like me. Sadly, (but luckily for me) I suspect it also has a role in the way that no one ever looks sideways at me as if wondering whether I might steal something.

So, all-in-all, in my experience anyway, being white does indeed seem to be okay.

Somehow, I don't think that was quite what the anonymous sign-writer was getting at. I imagine they meant it rather more defensively. If I were to extrapolate, I'd hazard a guess that they felt compelled to stand up for whiteness because of a rising societal consciousness of the way in which being white has been arbitrarily set as a kind of "default", how white people have disproportionately held positions of power, and how a white dominant culture has historically treated people who are not white rather badly.

Just a guess, of course, but I'd wager that the said rising societal consciousness might be making our passionate sign writer feel a little uncomfortable.

It's a feeling that I seem to come across more and more frequently, especially when I write about Māori culture, language or the injustices that Māori have faced. While many Pākehā New Zealanders are very supportive, there is something about highlighting a perspective that is not European, Pākehā or white that seems to make some white people feel anxious.

During my time writing for the Herald, I've been attacked for dishonouring my "predominant white blood" (which was the actual phrase used), accused of writing "hate speech" and being "racist towards other white people". All for taking an unapologetically Māori point of view.

After absorbing all this (and much more) and examining it with curiosity, I've slowly started to unpack what might be behind the angst around whiteness.

Pākehā culture has never been examined in the way that Māori culture has. The direction of the lens has always been focused on people of colour, who have been variously demonised, fetishised, caricatured, misrepresented, and discriminated against. Recently, however, we've started to adjust the frame. Change is happening, thick and fast. Those tired perspectives, viewing Māori through a Pākehā gaze, don't cut it anymore. New viewpoints are emerging, or perhaps they're just finally being heard. Either way, they make some people feel very apprehensive.

No one is suggesting that the same injustices that have been perpetrated against people of colour should now be perpetrated against white people, however. The general gist of our current social conversation is that there are still significant inequalities, the systems of our society are currently largely run by white people, that needs to change, and to bring about that shift a bit of self-reflection might be in order from the group that currently inhabits the top floor of the hierarchy.

None of that should be particularly scandalous. It should be possible to be white, think critically about the past, feel angry and/or upset about injustices perpetrated by white people, recognise inequality in the world, acknowledge the benefits that are granted to white people and not be consumed with either guilt or the idea that acknowledging those things means that you are being personally persecuted. Just because we are having some difficult discussions about racism, colonialism and our national identity does not mean that white people are suddenly under attack.

It's funny, really, how Māori are expected to "face up" to the fact that our people are disproportionately imprisoned, impoverished, and unemployed and take some kind of responsibility for our misfortune while many Pākehā refuse to acknowledge the role of colonialism in our current lopsided social statistics. And how Māori are expected to tolerate discussions about the appropriateness of te reo Māori because they're an expression of free speech, while the Pākehā detractors of te reo are literally seeking to restrict the free expression of a whole language.

As the ludicrous debate over the use of te reo Māori on Radio New Zealand revealed, listening to a few sentences in te reo is not going to harm English speakers. English language is not under threat. It's not a nil sum game.

So why do some white people feel so threatened? I wonder whether, for example, the Hawke's Bay sign-writer ever stopped to think that actually, the conversations we're having as a nation are not really about them at all. That we're actually having a discourse in which people of colour are speaking out and being heard, and the pros and cons of whiteness are not the subject of that discussion.

The world is changing and powerful new voices are emerging. It may be uncomfortable for some, but that discomfort is progress in action.

You could even call it a sign of a brighter future.