Racism in New Zealand also.

Racism

The United States of America has been turned upside down because of protests about police aggression toward black people there. (other influences have inflamed the violence too) There are plenty of videos on the internet that show unwarranted aggression by police in America. Recently there was a story by a black university professor about how he was apprehended and aggressively held and questioned when he was just on his way from his parked car to the university to give a lecture. I feel so sad for the USA, for people of colour there and for the mess that seems to be happening there.

New Zealand, "God's own"

We New Zealanders are generally proud of the way we treat people of colour. We say we had a treaty with the indigenous people, and have this "partnership" with them. Indeed I am pleased to live in New Zealand because our ideals, and our laws are pretty good. But I am sad to say that racism happens in New Zealand even among the police force, though thankfully not to the same extent as it seems to be in USA.. 

Our family many years ago. You can see the two adopted Maori/Samoan boys and the youngest Fostered girl has Maori heritage. (The youngest boy is 40 this year.)

We have three mixed race children in our family.  The two boys (Maori/Samoan - now fine men with their own families) have experienced racism. When our oldest mixed race boy began a baking apprenticeship at a super market in town, he lived at the top of a street that ran down a hill to the main street of town, where his work was. He had a string of incidents where the NZ Police treated him badly. Early in the mornings he walked down the hill to work wearing his obvious branded supermarket overalls, and several times he was stopped and quizzed in a most aggressive way. Once he was driving our car from Sawyers Bay, the 10km distance into work and a police car came in behind him, followed him right into the work car park and parked beside him so that he couldn't open the door to get out of the car. Aggressive questioning followed. I took him to work once and on the Port Chalmers Rd a police car in front of us purposely slowed right down to about half the speed limit. We discussed whether we ought to overtake them. My son commented, “Don’t pass, they’ll see a Maori in the front seat and pull us over.” When there was a clear way to pass, I did overtake them safely and legally. As we passed they looked across at us, saw a Maori in the front seat, and immediately switched on their flashing lights to pull us over.  One went to the passenger door, the other to my door and aggressive questioning followed.  I was so angry (3 a.m. in the morning in my pyjamas and tracksuit) as they checked my license and registration and made their excuses for pulling us over I got out of the car, became quite assertive about their tactics and they quickly changed their mind and let us go... If I was a Maori young person would they have backed off?  Add to that I have observed reactions in stores when my boys as teenagers went in to purchase stuff. (It is one way to get service – they don't like Maori browsing.) But I was disgusted that it happens here in NZ. There are assumptions made about Maori (guilty till proven innocent) and I know my boys wore those assumptions. That is just some of the expressions of racism in our society.
But....

But I am not free of racism. During school holidays once, we had items stolen from inside our house. We then tended to get sensitive whenever we saw “unknown  adolescents” wandering our street during school holiday time. But I found I got more concerned if I saw a Maori boy wandering up the road. Why? Unconsciously I have been shaped by racists perspectives in the community about me. I make assumptions because of skin colour. It's no wonder Maori youth get aggressive attitudes. 
There are real social problems with Maori communities in our nation. Poverty, imprisonment rates, health and welfare issues, that are complicated and have to be worked through. But we as individuals have to guard against racial stereotyping, and racist assumptions. We need to fight it within ourselves, so that we do not act upon them. Once when one of our sons did get into trouble (as many older teenagers of any race do.) his comment to us was, “Well that’s what’s expected of us Maori, so why not?” When people live with racist assumptions day in and day out, it can pull them down toward those expectations, and adversely impact on how they value themselves.
New Zealand is a very good place to live, but we are not free of racism.