A former friend and I used to debate Matters Māori . He steadfastly maintained that New Zealand is racist against people with Māori ancestry. His main argument was that film director Taika Waititi has publicly claimed that New Zealand is racist.
Mr Waititi has indeed made that claim, and he’s entitled to his view. Waititi’s claim came in a 2018 interview for Dazed magazine with musician Ruban Nielson. After Nielson mooted an “idealised vision of New Zealand as like Australia without the racism,” Waititi responded, “Nah, it’s racist as f**k. I mean…it’s a racist place. People just flat-out refuse to pronounce Māori names properly…”
Waititi’s claim prompted vehement debate.
New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner back then, Dame Susan Devoy, weighed in. I’ve previously proffered my thoughts on Dame Devoy:
DAME SUSAN DEVOID
John McLean
·
21 April 2024
In a podcast with ex-Member of Parliament Paula Bennett, covered in a puff piece by The Herald on 21 April 2024, Dame Susan Devoy issued the following lament about her time as New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner:
Read full story
In praising Waititi for labelling New Zealand racist, Devoy announced publicly:
DAME SUSAN DEVOID
John McLean
·
21 April 2024
In a podcast with ex-Member of Parliament Paula Bennett, covered in a puff piece by The Herald on 21 April 2024, Dame Susan Devoy issued the following lament about her time as New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner:
Read full story
In praising Waititi for labelling New Zealand racist, Devoy announced publicly:
“I hear those stories every day in my role as race relations commissioner. These are things that happen every day in our communities. And good on Taika for having the courage to speak up and tell the truth…We need to start having those hard conversations about racism, and that's what he's doing, if we want to improve as a country.”
Broadcaster Duncan Garner took a different stance on live radio:
“I don’t not agree with [Waititi]. This guy... he's gone too far, it's too extreme. Lighten up, and change the record. Come home and re-introduce yourself to your country. It's a great little country that's not without its challenges but we're not as racist as ‘F’. Many countries use us as the model for how to deal with indigenous issues, actually. And it hasn't held Taika back, has it? Stop selling us out on the international stage. There's a word for it, and it's called 'sabotage'."
More recently, less-famous New Zealander Verity Johnson has joined the trendy “New Zealand is racist” chorus. Her 11 August 2025 column for Stuff(ed) included the following:
Out of all the national myths we tell ourselves, “New Zealand’s not racist!” is my least favourite.
‘NZ isn’t racist!’ is such an absolutist, reductive and ridiculous generalisation that in order to prove it true then you’d need proof that every Kiwi, in every place, never says anything racist.
So yes, clearly we’re still racist. But equally no, we’re not. Both are true at the same time.
Verity’s confusion is in thinking that, in order to prove that New Zealand is not racist, it would be necessary to prove that no New Zealander ever says (or does) anything racist.
At core, Verity and Waititi share the same confusion. They confuse, and can’t differentiate between, racism coming from individual humans and racism of the nation state. Of course there are racists in New Zealand; racists in the true sense - people who judge others based on their perception of others’ racial ancestry. Of course Waititi and many other brown skinned people in New Zealand have suffered racism. Does this mean that the nation state of New Zealand is racist? Far from it.
A nation state does not have feelings or perceptions. It can only express itself through its societal laws and rules, and how the apparatus of State are exercised. Do New Zealand’s societal rules discriminate against Māori people?...no. Are New Zealand’s apparatus of State (courts of law, Police, health system) employed in ways that single out Māori for differential adverse treatment?...no.
Claims that differential societal outcomes (in health, longevity, educational achievement, income, wealth etc.) are necessarily the result of “institutional racism” should be treated with skepticism. Things happen for all sorts of complicated reasons, lots of which (genetics, cultural attitudes to health, exercise, education etc.) are unrelated to individual racism or systemic racial biases. Equality of outcomes for different societal groups is not just an impossibility, it’s a recipe for totalitarianism. The world is flawed and incurable, and coercive treatments, no matter how well-intentioned, can be worse than the diseases.
And be wary of “anti-racism”. It’s sufficient to continually challenge oneself to treat others on their merits and confront true racism when one sees it. “Anti-racism” quickly turns into State-sponsored Critical Race Theory, zealous punishment for unintentional mistakes or perceived slights, censorious limits on free speech, undermining of merit and all the guilt-ridden “white privilege” twaddle. No to mention Anti-Fatness Intersectionality!
Waititi has lamented the patronising reactions he’s sometimes received from New Zealanders when he returns to New Zealand... ‘Oh, you’ve done so well, haven’t you?…For one of your people.’ (his words) But Māori can’t have it both ways. What’s not patronising about special preferences and slacker standards for Māori entry to New Zealand’s medical schools?
Waititi’s real name is Taika David Cohen. His Māori lineage comes from his father’s side. His mother has Jewish ancestry. He describes himself as a “Polynesian Jew”. I wonder what Waititi thinks of the wave of antisemitism currently washing over the Western world. That’s real racism.
I also wonder what Waititi thinks of the reaction to Hobson’s Pledge use of the image of Te Pāti Māori supporter Ellen Tamati in Hodson’s Pledge’s campaign against Māori wards in local government; the reaction that included threats of physical violence and an anonymous caller to Hobson’s Pledge’s offices repeatedly calling for “death to all white people”. Brown people can be racists too.
What would a racist New Zealand look like? A New Zealand with laws giving people with a particular racial ancestry preferential representation in Parliament and unelected spots on local government councils? A New Zealand with laws mandating that a unique and superior “world view” of people of a certain race must be incorporated in resource management, the health system, child welfare, education, vocational training, roading and a myriad of other areas? Would that be a New Zealand on the verge of being racist?...or an already-racist Aotearoa? Are particular brands of State-sponsored racism okay?
Waititi recently courted controversy when his wife, Rita Ora, posted pictures of trays of cigarettes that featured at Waititi’s 50th birthday party.
The pictures drew the ire of one of New Zealand’s most sanctimonious, self-absorbed and vapid “journalists”, Stuff’s Joel Maxwell.
Click to view
Juvenile Joel’s piece (naturally English/Māori bilingual) included the following:
My first angry thought was that we are here in Aotearoa fighting for our people’s health, while Waititi’s over in Ibiza, undoing it all
I can say with a clear conscience that when I turned 50 I didn’t introduce new generations to a killer addiction
Māori are a cancer-riddled population if ever there was one.
But is this really what Māori aspire to: Making Thor: Love and Thunder, and becoming a public-health hazard?
My only hope is that our rangatahi don’t get influenced into thinking tobacco is cool again. I mean, if the birthday party literally proves anything, it’s that Waititi is getting pretty old.
Crusading Joel Maxwell is accusing Waititi of being a traitor to his race. He levels the same accusation at any Māori person – the likes of David Seymour, Winston Peters and Shane Jones - who doesn’t subscribe to his firebrand Māori separatist activism.
Perhaps Taika and Rita posted the pictures because they’re sick of being told what to do and say by pious health and race zealots like Joel Maxwell.
Maxwell appears to think that any Pakeha who does not aspire to learn the Māori language is a racist - “I hope a Pākehā is someone who embraces the infinitely beautiful first language of this land...A person…who understands they share a land with the people who were there first.” (Stuff 9 July 2018).
Racists are in fact very rare in New Zealand. There’s no better chance of finding one than in the ranks of the Māori Party. And given racism is about racial stereotyping, Joel Maxwell should take a good look at himself.
John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced.
12 comments:
Re: “People…refuse to pronounce Māori names properly”:
Or simply, when we’re speaking English, many people use what are now the conventional English pronunciations. To use English but not Maori pronunciation is not racist. It’s merely the use of the nationally acknowledged and understood alternative pronunciations, many of which have been around for generations.
We can extend this also to the simplifying and shortening of place names — for example, ‘Parapram’ and ‘Otahu’. Languages do sometimes simplify. It’s not racist.
it is not antisemitic to criticize Israel's barbaric genocide in Gaza. It is simply humane to point out violent fascism wherever it occurs. Including in the USA. Get over your ignorance John. There are none so blind as those who will not see Israel's vile disgusting criminality.
“People…refuse to pronounce Māori names properly”
Well - flip the script. Many Maori people refuse to pronounce English words properly.
Official racist policies have become normal since the 1970s , starting with the Waitangi Tribunal .
We have become undeniably racist at the insistence of Maori leaders, politicians, and radicals.
It has to stop now - if only Luxon had the courage to act.
Our Progressive education ( influenced by social Darwinism) has caused the inequity in education. Maori along with lower socio-economic groups are disadvantaged by the lack of explicit instruction, discipline , strong knowledge content, work ethics , and morality that progressivism has promoted. Traditional values and methods as we used to have did not produce the long tail of underachievement we have now. That is entirely a product of Progressivism , which has merged with CRT. To support my view is NZ born Katherine Burbalsinge, a promoter of traditional values , who has produced in her low decile school , students who perform academically as well as those students from exclusive English private schools.
Progressivism in education is the enemy of the original egalitarianism we had from our early settlers. Socialism and Marxism produce the complete opposite of what they promote .
We need to reclaim the values of the past which promoted strong individuals with a personal responsibility for their own actions and behaviours and contribute to society not break it down by feelings of victimhood and parasitic on the state as an entitlement.
And the 'vile disgusting criminality' of Hamas is fine with you? What a hypocrite you are, whoever you are!
A tricky one. I woke up today feeling really racist. Then after breakfast I felt less racist. By the afternoon, I had lost all my racism. By tea, I was very anti-racist....
Very well said: "Socialism and Marxism produce the complete opposite of what they promote ." - that is the truest statement I have seen regarding the rank stupidity that these two -isms invariably result in.
How about a referendum on the name for our country? You can be pretty sure that some would say that such a referendum would be 'racist', in other words, we would have no right to our opinion. For one minority group to arrogate for itself to do the thinking for the majority would be as totalitarian as it gets. So how about putting it to the test?
There is racism - and then there's wokism - and bigotry - and most common of all stupidity - ya reckon 1.32?
Legislation over the years has promoted race based law which has allowed the promotion of a divided system taken advantage of by radicals.
Politicians have a lot to answer for.
Potato, patato, tomatoe, tamato, let’s call this whole b***shit pronounciation for what it is. BS. It is just gaslighting people. I will purposely mispronounce Maori to wind up the zealots.
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