Personal Racism

We were expressing perhaps somewhat smug satisfaction recently that our offspring appear to be free of racial hang-ups. We had talked with old friends who, like us, have lived for some years in the South Pacific, and their kids too all seem to have linked up with, and fallen in love with, people of other races and cultures, and live around the world. Our children effortlessly played and went to school with Fijians, Indians, Samoans – indeed as part of a cultural minority where they were. They enjoyed the differences. They simply assumed the need to make personal adjustments. A safe monocultural club, society, suburb or street seems to them simply anaemic.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has just said bluntly that much of the antagonism to President Obama’s health reforms is plain racism. So many of Obama’s critics, he said, actually object to any Afro-American being President of the United States – that’s what bothers them. One of the many tragedies of our time, it seems to me, is the abyss that seems to run down the middle of US history, society and politics, including some of its awful versions of Christianity, separating people God actually made of one blood.

And from the major to the utterly minor: The NZ Geographic Board has ruled that NZ’s small city of W(h)anganui should be spelt in the Maori way, with the “h”, since it is a Maori word and might as well be correct. This led the somewhat manic mayor of W(h)anganui, Michael Laws, to publicly label the NZ Geographic Board as racist. What Mr Laws meant was that they had presumed to make a decision which favoured Maori. And that is precisely the kind of decision that seems to have power to keep many non-Maori New Zealanders awake at night. Once upon a time in NZ white folks made decisions, and the natives simply had to listen and obey.

Clifford Longley, writing in The Tablet about regulation of the media, says that Fox News is: “the blatant and unashamed example of what happens when broadcasting is insuffiently regulated. Some of the people who appear regularly on it in the United States, not just guests but anchor persons and presenters, are rabid, raucous, racist, partisan and bigoted, happy to stir up any kind of rabble-rousing nonsense such as the idea that Barack Obama isn’t really American but Kenyan and isn’t really Christian but Muslim”. And to be sure, on the few occasions I have dialled up Fox News on Sky it has seemed to me beyond belief.

I guess the roots of racism are about as complex as humanity. Many PhDs have been researched therein. But surely racism is a choice, for adults, even if millions of racists have never thought of it as such or would be incapable of understanding the implications of choice. You can choose to be otherwise. Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine expresses gratitude to Jimmy Carter for having so publicly named and nailed the evil disease, because that is what we should always do. Racism is unnecessary and destructive, immoral, blasphemous, even in its so-called benign forms.

Antisemitism is ignorant and always intolerable. Racism based on colour, equally. Religious bigotry, and the now too familiar emanations from Islam and some sections of so-called Christianity... Social discriminations of all types... to realise how embedded this is in English society read the novels of Jane Austen, the writhings of many of her early 19th century characters to be sure they are inhabiting their correct social stratum (or that of their betters) and that others remain where God in his infinite wisdom has placed them.

The relentless paranoia of much of right-wing politics... I have lived long enough to cease trying to find excuses for these things. Our friends seem all now to have seen the new movie, The Young Victoria, which portrays Lord Melbourne as a kindly avuncular guy, precisely the kind of bloke a teenage queen might want as her Prime Minister. He was in fact a rancid and promiscuous old bigot who stubbornly resisted social change, and maintained the primacy of privilege. Just a little bit of that does emerge slightly in the movie.

I suppose I am suggesting that one of the principle tasks of maturity in today’s world is to be personally free of racism and of all tribal attitudes which tend that way. I am beyond making global claims, but I would think that this would be one of the best contributions anyone could make towards world peace. Simply refuse to have adversaries or enemies, anywhere. Don’t permit them that power over you. And if they are people who are seeking to eliminate you, well... it’s tough, sure, but still don’t make them enemies. Jesus was right about that.

No dogs on Aitutaki

There are no dogs on Aitutaki. It’s worth a mention, because the dogs on the parent island, Rarotonga, are endemic, mangy, flea-ridden, sullen, starved and generally obnoxious. They bark and howl at night, they range and prowl, they foul the ground. But on Aitutaki they are mercifully conspicuous by their absence. No one seems to know why there are no dogs. Some chief long ago banned them, perhaps. The island is therefore free also of dog owners.

Back on Rarotonga however, some woman called Esther Honey made provision for a charity veterinary service where dogs hit by vehicles can have a leg amputated. There are notices outside this clinic appealing for money to help the dogs.

Aitutaki is a long way from where you ever are normally. 50 minutes by Air Rarotonga, from Rarotonga. You fly over the featureless Pacific, and then, suddenly, below, there is this breathtakingly exquisite atoll with its huge turquoise lagoon, its islets and coconut palms. Some parts of the Cook Islands are even more remote – Penrhyn, Pukapuka, Palmerston...

We stayed at a resort with nice clean villas – but the dining area and bar were another story. The owner had begun with romantic visions of guests dining on the beach, which is always a bad idea. So the tables and chairs are all on the sand, and nothing is actually level or stable, or free of insects, birds, vermin and other people. The owner herself sits at the bar and gets steadily less coherent as the day goes by. You share your food with predatory minah birds, cats and crabs. You also share it with the resident deity (pictured), whose name is Tangaroa, and who needs some pants.

Downtown on Aitutaki things heat up somewhat. The Blue Nun Cafe is straight out of Graham Greene. It’s right on the waterfront, and you can imagine pirates and yachties lurching ashore to grab a beer and a woman. Any vestige of sophistication has long ago been abandoned. Minimalism rules. A Fijian woman with about 30% metabolism staffs the cafe during the day. Of course we asked her why she came to the Cook Islands. She said, for the job. Well, it’s fairly low on the ladder of human advancement, one might think. Perhaps it’s a stark commentary on the regime of silly Bainimarama, back in Fiji. This manager of the Blue Nun Cafe takes 20 minutes to make a black coffee. But we have it on good authority that, at night, the Blue Nun Cafe really rocks.

One does get weary of tourist rip-offs. The Rarotonga departure tax at the airport is $55 per person, to be paid in cash. If you want to drive a motor vehicle you have to line up at the central police station in two queues, one to pay $20 for a one-year licence (never mind that you want it for only 2 weeks), and the other to have your photo taken. All of this can occupy an hour or two. Most restaurants are seriously overpriced. The toilets anywhere else but at the major resorts range from marginal to sordid. And don’t buy black pearls at the Avarua Saturday market if you want to be sure of their provenance. It’s better not to ask about the government or about corruption or competence... Every time you drive around Rarotonga you pass the sad, derelict Hilton hotel complex, never finished, bankrupt, and it just about bankrupted the country.

But a day out on the lagoon in sunny weather is a very redemptive thing. We visited three islands on the reef – Maina, Moturakau, Tapuaetai.