New Zealand\u2019s racism has a specific texture, writes Diana Simumpande. It hides behind platitudes like \u2018we don\u2019t see colour\u2019 and \u2018that\u2019s not who we are\u2019.<\/p>\n
I\u2018m standing on a sticky floor in the middle of a mosh pit at a JID concert. There\u2019s something about a crowd that chose to be here, for this specific artist, that feels safe. Like maybe, just for tonight, I\u2019m with people who might get it.<\/p>\n
The music stops. The stage lights dim. JID leans into the microphone, and the crowd holds its breath. He starts talking about where he\u2019s from. About growing up Black in Atlanta and how that affected his family, his community, and what it cost them. The room is still. As the words sink in, my eyes dart to a white guy, a few rows over. He turns around, groans and rolls his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor f***\u2019s sake.\u201d<\/p>\n
My boyfriend and I look at each other. We find a familiar exhaustion in each other\u2019s eyes. Our humanity, it turns out, just wasn\u2019t entertaining enough.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Going to see a Black artist in New Zealand is more than just seeing an artist I like. It\u2019s a chance to connect with a part of myself. A shared consciousness. A shared vibration. I remember being at a Tyler, The Creator concert, watching his eyes scan the crowd for a Black face. Finding one. The split-second acknowledgement that means we are here and I see you. I don\u2019t get to have that in many places in this country, so that small moment means something.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So when JID stopped to talk about where he came from, I wasn\u2019t really listening as a fan. I was listening as someone who needed to hear it. And when that white boy rolled his eyes, he wanted the show. The energy. The raw performance of Blackness. But the minute JID became a real person with an uncomfortable history, the consumer got impatient. Just shut up and entertain me. Sell the fantasy. Just not any of the humanity.<\/p>\n
He wanted to consume the parts of Blackness that felt good, without actually engaging with it on a meaningful level. Which, if I\u2019m being honest, is not all that different from what I navigate in my everyday life.<\/p>\n
It felt like two concerts were happening at once: one for people who actually came for what his music means and where it comes from. And one for those just seeking the spectacle of Blackness. I think about how I fit in that space. Am I there to watch an artist I like? Or am I simply there as background decoration, validating someone\u2019s access to Black culture?<\/p>\n
A friend said something to me recently. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed that in certain rooms, not a lot of people really know what to make of you.\u201d I felt seen in a way I hadn\u2019t expected. Because that is probably the most accurate summary of my entire life in this country.<\/p>\n
For the first four years of my life, I didn\u2019t know I was Black. That\u2019s because I was born in Zambia, where most people are Black, which means no one really is. It wasn\u2019t until I moved to the UK and eventually to New Zealand that the world started giving me a version of myself I didn\u2019t quite recognise. I realised that being Black came with invisible strings attached. It was a problem. A performance, everything but me.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re Black in New Zealand, you\u2019re both desired and dismissed. My Blackness is always up for consumption, but my humanity is invisible. This creates a kind of loneliness: people see a projection rather than a person. Each time I enter a room, I wonder what version of me they\u2019ve already decided on, and how much energy it will take to attempt to be myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In New Zealand, you\u2019re a minority within a minority, inside a country that is still, in many ways, learning that you exist at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, New Zealand has black people now?\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of that is structural. Blackness in New Zealand is treated as one-size-fits-all. But Black people here come from everywhere: Zambia, Ghana, Jamaica, the UK. We\u2019re not bound together by a shared history like Black Americans or Black Britons. What connects us here is mainly how other people see us. And the strongest reference point most people have is an ultra-commodified version of African American culture, packaged up and sold to the world. So that becomes the version you\u2019re supposed to perform. Supposed to recognise yourself in. The version that allows you to move freely. Because it\u2019s the only one they know.<\/p>\n
New Zealand\u2019s racism has a specific texture. It doesn\u2019t announce itself with a megaphone. It hides behind platitudes like \u201cwe don\u2019t see colour\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s not who we are.\u201d A liberalism so defensive of its own self-image that it treats the naming of actual harm as a bigger sin than the harm itself. Your wound is bleeding, but first, you must spend hours proving the existence of the knife.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So when something does happen, you\u2019re alone in that, too. Sometimes it\u2019s jokes about chicken or absent fathers. Maybe someone treats you as their free pass to say the n-word. Other times, you\u2019re the novelty Black friend who gets passed around like a party trick. On the bus, a stranger\u2019s hands find their way into your afro without asking.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s just a Tuesday. I think about being at a friend\u2019s house as a teenager. Their dad asks me to hold up my palms under the bright kitchen lights. He says, \u201cSee, they\u2019re white! That\u2019s because when God spraypainted you Black, you were on all fours.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is smiling. I remember the heat rushing to my face. I look around to see if anyone is reacting, still not quite believing what I heard. But mostly, I remember the humiliation. Everyone is laughing. No one thinks anything is wrong but me.<\/p>\n
Then comes the instantaneous arithmetic your brain performs in milliseconds. Do I say something? Do I ruin the dinner party? Do I defend my basic humanity alone in a kitchen where I am a guest, and still have to sit at their table and ask them to pass the salt?<\/p>\n
And if you do speak up, you get the race card. You\u2019re overreacting. Racism isn\u2019t really a thing here. Be Grateful. Or worse, they cry, and suddenly you\u2019re comforting the person who hurt you while your pain sits unaddressed on the floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Or do you simply tuck it away in the corner of your mind, hold up your palms and smile? Get through it, go home, and wake up the next day like it never happened, because you know the math never works out in your favour.<\/p>\n
For a long time, I performed. To make things easier, to feel less rejection, to be less threatening. But I am learning that performing for those who limit me to their shallow idea of Blackness costs me my joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
People call Black women strong. I\u2019d push back on that. I\u2019d say resilient. Strong implies you don\u2019t feel it. Resilience means you feel it all and get back up anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And I do get back up.<\/p>\n
I get back up with the courage to finally say: I am not a monolith. I am not a performance. I\u2019m not your pass to say the n-word.<\/p>\n
I am a person. A multilayered, complicated, contradictory, joyful and deeply exhausted person. Treat me like one. Engage with my Blackness if you want to, but really engage with it. Not just the parts that look cool. Take all of it. The performance and the person behind it. I\u2019m not asking for much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s racism has a specific texture, writes Diana Simumpande. It hides behind platitudes like \u2018we don\u2019t see…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[235646,111,43,139,69,2935,72868],"class_list":["post-465142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-african-diaspora","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-society","tag-the-spinoff-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}