I wondered what might have driven the article in “Stuffed” when I read the headline
“A Maori name is not offensive – racist reactions to them are”
Ignoring the incorrect grammar of mixing singular and plural in the headline, the article relates a personal experience of the author, Michelle Duff, in a café when the woman serving asked what Michelle’s baby’s name is
“The woman in the cafe gave my baby a smile. “Oh, he’s so CUTE!” she said, with a rising sing-song intonation. “What’s his name?”
“Ahikaroa ,” I said.
Her smile froze. She screwed her nose up, her features rearranging into a grimace. “Oh,” she scoffed. “How do you even spell that?”
With the greatest respect Michelle, I’d suggest most average people would have struggled a bit with the name. Perhaps the response wasn’t exactly ideal, maybe a bit ignorant, but OK, I get that you were upset by it.
“Back in the car, I tried to make sense of what had just happened. I felt hot, and my chest was tight. Had a stranger really just reacted with disgust at the sound of my child’s clearly Maori name? Yes. Not only that; she’d acted almost as if it were a personal insult.”
It does seem to be a bit of an overreaction but OK, I again get that you were upset by it.
Michelle goes on to say that it isn’t the first time she and her husband (who is of Maori descent) have experienced similar reactions.
“Usually people aren’t that blatant. Usually, when my children’s names don’t fit Pakeha ideals of what a name should sound like, that person doesn’t physically recoil. But there are other things they do; small things that, when you experience them again and again, paint a picture of cultural disapproval. Silence, or a tsk under the breath. Asking if it can be shortened. Misspelling it constantly. Taking forever to find it in a database.”
“The kind word for this is unconscious bias. The truer word is racism.”
Racism? People who are socially competent try to be delicate, even when they are out of their depth. Those less socially competent will often deliver clangers. That is how society is, but using terminology suggesting a name should “fit Pakeha ideals” and throwing in “the truer word is racism” is just emotive claptrap.
It has nothing to do with racism or white ideals versus Maori ideals. It is at best cynical and at worst racist to introduce racism into what is a simple cultural difference.
Culture and cultures are diverse. As defined in the Oxford Dictionary: “culture – the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group”.
We are all different and sometimes we are confronted by something completely foreign to us, something which might well be confusing to us. And yes, heaven forbid, we might even look surprised. We might even screw our noses up as we try to come to grips with it. We might look for an easier way to say it. “Taking forever to find it in a database” – well, how can anybody be surprised? It is a bit of a handful.
Those of us who are of European descent have a vast range of “cultures” with their own weird and wonderful customs, beliefs, art, ways of life, social organization and unusual names with unusual spellings and pronunciations. To suggest that those of a different culture are racist because they are ignorant of that particular culture and maybe even screw their noses up when they don’t quite get it, makes only for a sensational headline.
Maori has its own unique culture with its own customs, beliefs, language, art, way of life, social organization and unusual (to non-Maori) names and spellings. If we sometimes struggle to get it right it’s because it’s not our mother tongue, not because we’re all rampant racists.
I for one am becoming very tired of this constant assertion from certain quarters, that every misunderstanding involving Maori is somehow racism.
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