Dame Susan Devoy says there are some New Zealanders who will never be educated out of their racism.
“We will never be a fully multicultural society until we’ve fully adopted our bicultural foundations, and that’s the struggle,” Devoy said in an interview with Grey Areas host Petra Bagust, released on Thursday morning.
“It’s an intractable problem – it’s always going to be there, it’s never going to be eradicated.”
Devoy served as race relations commissioner for five years between 2013 and 2018, and told Bagust that 75% of the complaints she received during that time “were all from the same demographic”.
“They were old, not always men, but predominantly men, white – you couldn’t call them Pākehā because that offended them as well – and threatened ...that something that was never theirs in the beginning was going to be taken away from them,” Devoy said.
“I don’t think any education in the world is going to change that attitude, and I think that attitude has been slightly empowered ... the minute they hear politicians using dog-whistle politics, they feel beholden in themselves to be able to say the things they only thought, but to say them out loud and to other people.
“Whatever I say is not going to change their point of view. The only thing that is going to change is that eventually they will pass away, and let’s hope the next generation haven’t inherited those beliefs that they have.”
The 59-year-old recalled an incident in which she was accused of “abolishing” Christmas after working with Belong Aotearoa, then known as the Auckland Regional Migrants Society, a service set up to support refugees and new arrivals settling into New Zealand.
A Christmas lunch was being held for the collective but most of the migrants weren’t Christian and didn’t feel a connection with the holiday, so a more inclusive seasonal message replaced “Merry Christmas”.
“Honestly, that escalated beyond actual belief – I got accused of wanting to ban Christmas, and I got Christmas cards galore,” Devoy laughed.
A self-described Christian, she thought the backlash was “rather ironic” due to the teaching of Jesus Christ.
“Someone sent me a box of faeces that was wrapped up in beautiful Christmas paper. The box didn’t offend me so much; it was the fact that someone had come down my driveway in the middle of the night and left it there,” Devoy said.
“What would Jesus do? I think he would want us all to celebrate in the manner that we do, and this is where I can’t quite understand the IQ of people sometimes.”