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| pn341 |
Systemic racism affects the very structures of a society. For example, an American study found Blacks were significantly worse off than Whites in Wealth (90% White owned); Employment (Blacks twice as much unemployed);Education (Blacks stood down three times more than Whites for same infractions); Housing (Only 18% Blacks owned their home); Surveillance on roads (Blacks 30% more likely to be pulled over) and Healthcare (67% White doctors had bias against Black patients).
I don't know of any comparable New Zealand study but there's evidence that Maori and Pasifika compare worse than Pakeha on these and other measures such as arrests and imprisonment, education qualifications, homelessness and housing quality, life expectacy, dental and other health care. Systemic racism is not the same as casual racism, the subject of my next post pn342.
Now, these comments in the wake of the Christchurch killings:
"One of the more perceptive accounts of (Jacindra Ardern's) response (to the Christchurch killing) has come from Dr Ghassen Hage, Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne, in a short piece entitled, ‘You Can’t Copy Love: Why Other Politicians Fall Short of Jacinda Ardern’. Although he makes no reference to restorative justice or restorative practice, Hage offers two compelling observations that are pertinent to those of us working in the restorative justice field.
"First, he speaks of his admiration for the “multidimensional restorative potential” of Ardern’s style of politics. Hage describes white nationalist racism, like all ethno-nationalist racism, as a “shattering force”. It is not only physically violent, it is also psychically and spiritually violent as well.
"Systemic racism is like a destructive tornado whose centripetal forces fracture communities and alienate people from sources of identity, value and belonging.
"It shatters communities, ruptures relationships, and fragments and disperses identities. Racism is not only a “weapon of economic dispossession, but also a weapon of mass psychosocial destruction and communal disintegration.
"Given its splintering impact, the only remedy is “a fundamental and sustained politics of restoration that unleashes all the possible economic, practical and affective centrifugal forces to counter the corrosive effects of the disintegrative politics that has prevailed so long.
"What a powerful image this is! Systemic racism is like a destructive tornado whose centripetal forces fracture communities and alienate people from sources of identity, value and belonging. To counteract this trajectory of dissolution and dispersal, a restorative politics is needed that releases centrifugal forces of integration and connection.
"This requires more than policy efforts to close the inequality gap between minority and majority communities. It also requires a more fundamental, grass roots commitment to resist all the social and ideological forces that separate and alienate and subordinate communities of difference, while nurturing efforts to build just relationships and forge affective connections between citizens.
"This need to create both just relationships and empathetic connections between people is exactly what restorative practices aspire to do. Which means that any serious attempt to advance “restorative politics” on a societal scale can only benefit by drawing heavily on the democratic values and discursive practices of restorative philosophy. Restorative practices, in other words, have the potential to build the social capital needed if restorative politics is to strike at the root of systemic racism.
"The second observation Hage makes about Ardern’s response is the way it exemplified a “special kind of love”, or what he calls the “difficult love” that crosses cultural boundaries and embraces multiplicity and difference. “While love on its own leads us nowhere, a restorative politics is not complete without it being permeated by a deeply felt love, a love that can cross rather than erect cultural boundaries and that can heal rather than entrench divisions. It is in this regard that Jacinda Ardern’s restorative politics is so crucial ... it provides a glimmer of hope that a politics that heals the shattering effects of white ethno-nationalist racism is possible”.
"Once again, this description of a putative restorative politics echoes the nature of restorative justice on an interpersonal level. Restorative dialogue also seeks to transcend barriers of hostility and alienation, and to heal rather than entrench division. And its transformative potential lies in the fact that such a way of responding to harm and hostility manifests the inherent power of love, albeit a difficult kind of love.
"Tellingly, Hage suggests that it was Ardern’s display of authentic love that makes her example so difficult for other politicians to emulate. For it is not just what Ardern did but how she did it that was crucial. The gift of support she gave to those traumatised by the massacre was imbued with the spirit in which she offered it, and without that spirit - without that sincerely felt love - her gift would not have had its restorative power.
None of this is to imply that Ardern is a saint or super human. Quite the opposite. The reason why she has had such an astonishing impact on millions of people, here and around the world, devastated by the massacre is because she responded in such a genuinely human way, a way that allowed compassion rather than political calculation to guide her actions."
Extracts from Newsroom
READ ALSO
Casual racism: 'Why are you so dirty and brown?
* Peter Leitch racism row a learning opportunity
* An Open Letter to all New Zealanders
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