Race and racism are part of the public conversation in this country on pretty much a daily basis, whether we like it or not. Yet how we perceive them, how we experience them, what we even think the words mean, is by no means a shared understanding. That’s the gap I’m Not Racist But aims to navigate.
The show’s mix of panel discussions before a studio audience, pre-recorded video reports and “social experiments” with ordinary New Zealanders will be “first and foremost, a safe environment to actually have a big gnarly, ugly conversation”, says executive producer Bailey Mackey. “If you think about where the world is and where New Zealand is, there’s this massive polarity that happens between the right and the left – and most of us are asked to draw a distinction of what part of the continuum we’re on. And I just don’t know that that’s true.”
In some ways, the idea harks back to a time when it was easier to have a common public experience: when we watched the same TV and hadn’t scattered into countless communities of interest. Stacey Morrison, who will anchor the show along with Tāmati Rimene-Sproat, compares it to a family barbecue.
“What social media can do to us is create this algorithm that puts us in an echo chamber,” she says. “So what we’re trying to do is bring each other together. It’s like, for me, family barbecues: I’ve got a very mixed whānau, I’ve got that uncle who says things that make me say … yeah. And I probably need to hear it to make sure that I don’t just have an echo chamber. So it’s like a great big whānau barbecue, but we’re getting real and there’s no alcohol.
“It’s a conversation with our country and with our people. And when you live, as we do, as Māori and Pākehā, that’s our everyday existence of being bicultural. That kind of dexterity is something we live on a daily basis. And I think the interesting thing that can bridge these conversations is actually aroha. Because aroha is not just love, it’s compassion, it’s empathy, it’s sympathy.”
Exactly who will join the conversation – or come to the barbecue – wasn’t public at the time of writing, but there will be migrant voices. And there will likely be the people who generate most of the daily public speech: politicians.
“I think there’s a power in us having our conversations to distil what we do think,” says Morrison. “Because politicians are used to saying the words every day and they say it with a different intention and an intended outcome. If we don’t talk out loud to each other, we don’t know exactly where we want to place ourselves.”
Is it fanciful? The two hosts – who have a record of reaching out to broad audiences from a place in te ao Māori – probably have as good a chance as anyone of making it work. Mackey’s production company, Pango, is also adept at making television everyone watches – albeit often from a place of sport, where social boundaries can still disappear.
The show will be recorded two days before it screens (“to allow us to avoid as many BSA [complaints] as possible,” Mackey jokes) and its exact content will be fluid until then, so its creators can respond to anything that’s in the news cycle. The pre-recorded segment the Listener was able to view is notable for containing both uncomfortable confessions and laughter. But the entire concept seems like an experiment in itself. They don’t know exactly what will happen. “Oh, to be honest,” says Mackey, “I’m scared shitless.”
I’m Not Racist, But, TVNZ 1, 8.05pm, Saturday, October 11
