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Fretful Sleepers and Other Essays
II
II
By far the best section of the book is the two chapters on race relations. Here Dr Ausubel has been more fortunate in his informants, both Maoris with their traditional courtesy, and pakehas, since there are few subjects on which a New Zealand pakeha is so willing to pronounce, often without knowledge, as what he probably calls 'the Maori problem'. Dr. Ausubel conducted extended and informal interviews with 'hundreds of Maoris and pakehas in all walks of life and in a large variety of North Island districts' (p. 152). He does not claim that his findings are representative (pp. 152, 171) or that he can determine the proportions of some of the expressed pakeha attitudes to the Maori. Nevertheless, he has presented a wide (and probably complete) range of such attitudes, and most New Zealand readers will have met some of them in their own experience. I can confirm, from experience canvassing several hundred houses and flats in Parnell with the recent petition against the exclusion of Maoris from selection for the South African tour of a national rugby team, that most of these attitudes are current, and that a common pakeha attitude is one of confused patronising goodwill that is fundamentally hostile to attempts by Maoris to order their own affairs. Besides this, Dr Ausubel presents, what is unusual in discussions of race relations in New Zealand, a range of Maori attitudes to the pakeha and Maori reactions to pakeha prejudice. For a brief popular survey of current pakeha attitudes to the Maori and current Maori attitudes to the pakeha, these 67 pages are both valuable and unique. Dr Ausubel admits that the racial situation is, in relation to that of page 91 some other countries, reasonably good (pp. 155-6, 211); he complains, however, that the situation is not nearly so good as most pakehas like to believe, and that the worst feature is 'the national self-delusion which blocks recognition of the existence of a problem' (p. 156). He was surprised at the frequency of frankly anti-Maori sentiments; he soon could define the outline of a common pakeha stereotype of the Maori as lazy, shiftless, unreliable, improvident, happy-go-lucky, with such occasional concomitants as living off social security and family benefits, being sexually promiscuous and frequently drunk. Behind patronising attitudes he found a deep-seated belief in Maori inferiority, a belief partly reflected in the ignorance of and indifference to the history and traditions of local Maoris, and more seriously reflected in unwillingness to understand current problems the Maori people are facing. Many pakehas are willing to accept Maoris as equals only if they conform to European values and standards, while other pakehas may deride them for attempting to act otherwise than they are expected to. Many pakehas, too, are unable to distinguish between the enforced segregation of a minority and segregation that is desired by them: thus, some pakehas, in the name of an abstract equality will advocate the abolition of the four Maori seats and the Maori schools at the same time as they are complacent about the exclusion of Maoris from the more desirable suburbs. For most pakehas integration means assimilation and they dislike any perpetuation of distinctively Maori values and traditions since it offends their desire for complete conformity. Dr Ausubel is right to point out that a nation that boasts of being a modern welfare state should be ashamed of the standards of health and sanitation that exist in some rural Maori communities. Besides this critical survey of the attitudes of a majority to a minority, Dr Ausubel recognises the existence of a number of pakehas who live and work unselfishly among Maoris, speaking their language, knowing their culture and traditions, and working with them for their advancement. Turning to the attitudes of the Maori, Dr Ausubel finds a range of attitudes, from shyness and suspicion through a relatively benign hostility and some surviving bitterness over confiscations to sullenness in reaction to pakeha prejudice. He also discusses the attitudes of Maoris to themselves, attitudes formed in the context of pakeha prejudice: feelings of inferiority and self-contempt, as well as an increasing attitude of pride in being Maori.
Since Dr Ausubel does not generalise too freely, and recognises that Maori attitudes vary from district to district, it is difficult to fault this section of the book. Nevertheless, there are a number of minor criticisms I should like to make. There is a difference in degree between the two expressions Dr Ausubel cites on p. 161: 'Maori physical training' and 'The only good Maori is a dead Maori'. The second I cannot claim to have heard, not in those words anyway; the attitude, as I will show later, I have met, though I suspect it is very infrequent. The first implies a pakeha sense of superiority, but it is (in my experience) said as often in good page 92 nature as in contempt. An Auckland Maori student (himself a lecturer, and one who, for various reasons, I cannot suspect of telling me what he thinks I would like to be told) has told me he has had no experience of what Dr Ausubel on p. 179 calls ' "the silent treatment" from pakeha students, and being responded to as if they were simple-minded or incapable of understanding English'. Again, while Dr Ausubel is right to say on p. 159: 'If skin colour had no significance in this country, half-castes would be regarded as half-caste Europeans just as frequently as they are regarded as half-caste Maoris', it nevertheless makes some difference that most half- and quarter-castes prefer to regard themselves as Maoris and associate with Maoris (and, according to Dr Ausubel on p. 182, marry Maoris), and that even eighth-castes frequently boast of their Maori ancestry. If there were any serious social penalty, they would not do so. It would have helped Dr Ausubel's case if he had realised that the extra post-primary and university bursaries he mentions on p. 190 are not 'special privileges' but come from Maori money administered by the Maori Purposes Trust Board. I feel too that Dr Ausubel himself has accepted too readily some of the components of the pakeha stereotype of the Maori on p. 186, especially 'greater incidence of alcoholism, delinquency and premarital sex relations, non- payment of rates; failure to develop their land adequately', which he accepts as 'factually true in part' and extenuates rather too easily in terms of 'acculturational difficulties'. Even to state these half-truths in these terms is to falsify the situations that have led to their currency among pakehas, and to explain them away so loosely is to ignore the real and complex social and economic factors that have produced them: uneconomic land holdings, for example, cannot be fairly attributed, with however much forgiveness, to Maori 'failure'. I would be interested too in the source of the figures on which Dr Ausubel bases his assertion (p. 182, note) that the incidence of Maori-pakeha marriages has been decreasing over the past generation.
This part of the book should be read and considered by every New Zealander who believes or professes to believe that racial equality is one of the fundamental premisses of the New Zealand social code. Dr Ausubel makes a prediction that 'as long as New Zealanders persist in deluding themselves that all is well in the sphere of race relations, the only realistic prospect for the future is the emergence of a brown proletariat segregated in the urban slums and living in a state of chronic tension with their white neighbours'. The prediction may strike us as far-fetched but, since we have been warned, we have only ourselves to blame if it should turn out to be true. A similar forecast of the future of race relations in New Zealand, in the light of extrapolations of Maori population trends, has been hinted at in Dr Borrie's statement that in a situation of increasing occupational and residential contiguity between Maori and pakeha, 'the maintenance of cultural and social segregation has explosive possibilities'.3 The warning has generally been treated lightly in the Round Table discussions at the page 93 Regional Conferences of Young Maori Leaders in the Auckland Province in 1960, where the common opinion has been that the prejudice from which racial tension might develop can be removed by education leading to mutual understanding.4 It is possible that this view is naive and over-optimistic. It is, in any case, true that a determined effort of patience and understanding, especially on the pakeha side, is needed for the rest of the century, if Dr Ausubel's prediction is to be forfended.
I should like to add a caution of my own. During my canvassing, I ran into an anti-Maori attitude more extreme than I should have thought possible. The speaker was a youth of about 20 who had been in Borstal for some crime against property. He said he would like to see Maoris exterminated, 'just like Hitler tried to do with the Jews'. He added that his hatred was very deep and that it was based on his association with Maori youths in Borstal and that it was commonly shared by other pakeha inmates. It seemed that what he objected to was Maori cliquishness: that his attitude was a reaction to an attitude which was itself probably a reaction to earlier pakeha prejudice. It is possible of course that the antipathy between the two groups reflects a difference in the psychological tensions or pressures that motivated their crimes. Nevertheless, since the racial ratio in Borstal is probably different from that outside, and nearer to what may hold in the cities in the future, I think some research into the aetiology of racial tension in Borstal would be very valuable.
Dr Ausubel's book then contains both a criticism of New Zealand pakeha attitudes, which needs sifting of his own prejudices and hasty conclusions, and a survey of race relations that is valuable and unique. In his Preface he promises another volume on 'Maori national character' and 'the historical forces and current social factors shaping its development, particularly among youth'. It is to be hoped that it is more carefully thought than his section on the pakeha national character, and more in the spirit of his section on race relations. One can be sure that it will at least be more friendly in its approach than his section on pakehas, but it could be harmful and misleading if it is as hasty and reckless.