Book of the Week: When white liberalism gets fed up with the oppressed

Newsroom

16-07-2025

Racism is a topic we talk about a lot in our house. Covid brought two extra mouths to our dinner table. Holly, whose whakapapa includes Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, then 19, joined us because science has yet to find a way to keep two 19 year olds in love apart, no matter how serious the pandemic. And Tanaka, then 12, joined because of my friendship with her mother.
Tanaka was born here and has a Zimbabwean mother and a New Zealand father. As she says of her experiences as a Black girl in Aotearoa, 'The circle of people who connect with my personal cultural experience is very small, yet very kind and always welcoming. But being a Black person in Aotearoa is tough. Living as a Black person, I've been set apart from other children my age, marked as different.'
Our family was fortunate to be able to welcome these lovely rangitahi, who brought with them stories and histories quite different from our own – stories and histories defined by the experience of racism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Tanaka explains, 'Every school, shop and community I walked into has treated me as a Black person. Stares and sly comments from older and whiter strangers asking about my roots, teachers questioning my academic abilities. That has been my experience of Aotearoa.'
As an American from Tennessee, welcoming a Black New Zealander and a Māori teen into my home was a delight and chance to grow our whānau and deepen our connections with others here in our chosen home. But it also meant we needed to expand our vocabulary and our understanding of what life here was like for the young people who joined our family. And being young people, they too needed to learn the words to talk about their experiences and how those experiences are shaped by larger structures, history, and forces that were operating long before they were even born.
In Tanaka's words, 'Feeling alone in my culture is something I struggled with from a very young age. I didn't know how to learn about what I was experiencing. I knew it affected others, but didn't know much more than that. I did know being Black was dangerous. For a long time I thought the fear I felt walking down the street was in my head. But I saw other Black, Pacifica and Māori girls having the same experiences. It wasn't until later that I came to understand that we were experiencing something systemic. It was racism. And it left me feeling excluded and angry.'
Racism hurts and it kills. An animating force for so much of our politics, racism and love of money combine to immiserate far too many here in Aotearoa and around the world, even as we still struggle to find words and stories to talk about it. A new collection of essays, Oceans Between Us: Pacific Peoples and Racism in Aotearoa offers a dissection of racism and is just the kind of book whānau like mine need. Its editor, Serena Naepi, writes, 'Racism. There, we said it. You can let your shoulders drop now that you know we will say the word and not sidestep it to protect people's comfort. Or, you can raise your shoulders in preparation for tension as you realise that this book will not talk about unconscious bias or other terms that enable us to excuse ourselves from our own complicity in, inaction on, or upholding of racist structures.'
Thirteen Pacific scholars weave together a truth about how structural racial oppression organises our society and how we can do the work of remaking it. The book combines hard facts with glimpses of the human toll behind those facts, and allows an understanding of how racism defines the experiences of Pacific Islanders in Aotearoa.
There are essays on history, economics, climate, health and other issues. Writing on migration policy, Evalesi Tu'inukuafe details the unfairness of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, which appears designed, intentionally or not, to entrap Pacific Islanders in exploitative labour relationships. Generously sharing his own family history of migration and solidarity during the era of the Dawn Raids, Tu'inukuafe uses storytelling to elaborate on what might otherwise feel dry and abstract. He tells us of his own whānau, 'My uncle Karl and aunty Naima helped many students, family members, and friends during the Dawn Raids, risking not only their own their safety, but also the safety of their three children so that others could have a chance to start a new life in New Zealand.'
Barbara-Luhia Graham focuses on Section 127 of the Sentencing Act 2002. With searing clarity, she details the life of 'Fetu', a fictional stand-in, bringing readers into the life of a young Pacifica man entangled in the criminal justice system. 'Fetu's story of suffering,' she writes, 'starts before he was born, with the colonial powers' expansion in the Pacific Islands from the late 1700s'. From here we follow Fetu and his whānau as they struggle against systems that put barriers and challenges in front of them at every turn. Intertwined with explanations about how Pacific Islanders fare under New Zealand's immigration and criminal justice systems, she leaves it to readers to choose a future for Fetu, a literary choice that invites readers to think carefully and offers brilliant opportunities for classroom use in both secondary and tertiary settings.
In his essay on health, Caleb Marsters makes a compelling case for a full transformation in our health systems and asks where the responsibility for that change should lie. He writes, 'I fear that the drain of structural racism becomes twofold for Pacific communities, in that the same communities impacted by these structural disparities will also bear the brunt of attempting to solve these issues … What we have to do, if we are to get real about addressing structural racism, is to ensure that resources and opportunities, or the social determinants of health, are shared in an equitable way so that Pacific and other marginalised communities are able to live in a country that values their cultures, worldviews, and ways of knowing and being just as much as European Pākekā cultures, worldviews, and ways of knowing and being.'
At a time when privatisation and service cuts are dominating our political imaginations, Marsters offers a refreshing alternative vision.
Chelsea Naepi brings in the voice of youth and a focus on the future in the concluding chapter. She calls out the current Government for their dismantling of policies that served to move us closer to a world less based in racism, policies that benefited everyone including Smokefree Aotearoa and Fair Pay Agreements. Naepi writes with the full power and urgency of youth, crafting a vision of an Aotearoa where the values of 'love, empathy (mafana or aroha), relationality (fakatauiaga or whakawhanaungatanga), and reciprocity (fakatautonu or utu),' are used as 'tools' to realise a positive vision for Aotearoa's future.
At the same time she calls out white liberalism: 'The removal of these policies confirms that movements of anti-racism and equality can quickly come to a halt once White liberalism becomes fed up with the demands of the oppressed.'
There is always a risk with a book like this that those not from Pacific communities will overlook it and consider it not for them. But this book is for all of us in Aotearoa. I discussed it with Tanaka and she said, 'I know this book can change people. Going into reading this with an open mind and an open heart can help to bring about a transformation in our understanding of racism in Aotearoa. I found solace and support in the stories shared. Books like this are a vital part of the journey towards an Aotearoa where all people are welcomed.'
The political winds of the moment are blowing us backwards in frightening ways. To right our collective ship, we need the voices and wisdom of the contributors to this book – and we need scholars like these to help us all to find the courage to talk about racism and to help our rangitahi learn the words and the facts they need to name the old evil. The fight is all of ours and, as this book reminds us, the moment to redouble our efforts is now.
Oceans Between Us: Pacific Peoples and Racism in Aotearoa edited by Sereana Naepi (Auckland University Press, $39.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.