Race Relations

Dame Susan Devoy has just been appointed the new Race Relations Conciliator.  She succeeds Joris de Bres, who has always known what it is like to be part of a minority – and who is known as a thinker, researcher and humanitarian.  Dame Susan is known as a brilliant former champion squash player and as having adopted some worthy charities.  I believe she is about to receive an honorary doctorate from Waikato University, but it’s difficult to know what that is actually for.  Waikato University will no doubt make a good job of the citation on the day.

I once heard Dame Susan give the main address at a university graduation ceremony.  She was egocentric and insightless.  She informed us at length how she got to where she is today.  In its setting it could scarcely have been more inappropriate.  I do not know why she was damed, except that we always have some odd decisions in the honours department. 

New Zealand’s Race Relations Conciliator has to be someone of wisdom, education, keen sensitivity and experience of ethnic issues.  Our population is increasingly mixed, with citizens and residents from all over the South Pacific, Asia, Africa and Europe.  The Maori-Pakeha interface does not get less challenging.  People whose origins are in the British Isles are fewer proportionately.

Today I learned that Christchurch is approaching its annual demonstration in the streets by the Right Wing Resistance, an event of which I had not previously heard.  The Right Wing Resistance has a website, with photos.  They turn out to be a sad, male, overweight, ignorant, utterly pathetic bunch of racist simpletons, all decked out in black tracksuits and heavy black boots and caps.  On stage they would be a great comedy item.  But parts of their website are sinister.  There is a video of Hitler amid much approval, and even clips of Jewish people being dragged around.  They claim to have branches all through the country, but Christchurch appears to be their centre at present.  That has to be an embarrassment. 

There is to be a counter demonstration by people outraged by this.  But what is the point of that?  A lot of shouting and abuse, placards, and the police having to be deployed to keep people apart.  The best counter, it seems to me, is utter ridicule.  Our best humorists and great names should be deployed to get everyone laughing at these ignorant clowns.  Otherwise, ignore them.

I am sad if I do Susan Devoy an injustice – and maybe she should be given a chance – but I don’t believe she is up to this stuff.  I find it hard to believe she would ever begin to understand the roots of all this in history, or the mental state of those who behave with racial hatred and Nazi salutes, and want to dress up in imitation of Hitler’s fascists.  Joris de Bres was one generation away from his family’s personal experience of all that in The Netherlands.  But will Dame Susan instinctively know where the seeds of racial hatred lie?  What makes people afraid of difference?  The thought of Dame Susan trying to conciliate in some of these conflicts… oh no. 

We could have had a properly trained Samoan, Chinese, Indian, or South African Race Relations Conciliator.  We could have had someone learned in history or sociology.  But our Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, who seems to have learned her public service in the Margaret Thatcher School of Charm and Management, appointed Dame Susan Devoy.  When this was questioned, she switched on her excruciating and ingratiating smile and said, “Dame Susan will do very well…”   OK, I guess it’s possible.