Essay : Racism in NZ

Racism is one of the most controversial issues in the world, as globalisation has escalated. Although the differences of races are theoretically considered and accepted with similarities as human, people are reluctant to accept and respect them when they encounter the differences in their real lives. Racism has increased social concern and has caused quite a few problems. Even in New Zealand, one of the developed countries, having multi-cultural ethnicity, the social concern of racism has been increased accompanying with a growth of the immigrants.

Racism is defined as discrimination against people who are from different culture or country and have different physical appearance such as skin colour. There are quite a few races from different cultural background in New Zealand including Maori, who were believed to be indigenous people in Aotearoa, and recently, Asians who have immigrated. As the number of Asians has increased, racism against them seems to have increased as well.

In fact, the concern about racism is not a new story. Africans were discriminated as slaves by Europeans in Medieval days, anti-Semitism threatened enormous Jews' lives during World War 2, and recently, KKK has been a notorious group among African-Americans in the USA. As for New Zealand, racism against Asians has gained popularity among young kiwis more recently.

This current trend seems to have started with "superiority" which is the idea that Caucasians are better than other races, or "prejudice" that people who project their experience of one ‘sample’ of foreigners onto the whole. Of course, people are well aware of the fact that it is impossible that there are only good samples in society. On the other hand, people tend to sanction tacitly that bad samples confirm their stereotypes.

In addition, another possible reason about racism is a "conservative" idea mostly relying on the conventional way of living or "antipathy" arising from a worry that new immigrants may ruin traditional culture. This feeling could be similar to that which the landlords might encounter when strangers trespass on private properties or start to live with new flatmates without knowing detailed information like personality, individual interest or culture. They might feel potential danger or concern about the possibility of losing, sharing, and changing their own lifestyle and what they value on to.

Finally, the media is likely to have contributed to this trend emphasizing crimes or antisocial behaviour committed by Asians only. So, the minorities suffering from unreasonable threat and might be the target to be blamed about negative events in society.

However, racism must be stopped. This is not only because it has caused conflicts socially but also because every individual's value cannot be measured in terms of the basis on human dignity whether the person is from Europe or Asia, is educated or not, is Christian or Muslim, is male or female, is child or adult, and is disabled or not. Also, every way of living and traditional culture should be respected as it is.

It might be true that European culture has developed human history and has increased the quality of our lives. It also might be true that Westernisation has brought unprecedented convenience into modern lives. However, in the past, Africans were the origin of ancient humans in Paleolithic period and Egyptians were the most civilised race a few millennium ago. Chinese had the most developed ancient technology a thousand years ago. All of them are now targets of such racism, either because of skin colour or the weak power of their home countries.

I believe that human history has changed a lot and the power of the countries in the world has also shifted as time has gone by. Also, in the future, this tendency will probably continue as history has shown. Therefore, people should be aware of social relationships based on human dignity and negative consequences of racism. If not, our offspring might be a target under the name of another group of the racists in the future.