This approach is taking us in a dangerous direction. There is an urgent need to move away from the emerging culture of fear, cancellation and caricature, and towards patient and in-depth discussion and debate using reason, evidence, logic. We need to move beyond the knee-jerk social media-style outbursts and emotional tirades. But how do we remove the fear of being attacked for having differing views? Well, we need to relearn how to have challenging conversations. But first, we need to defuse the pejorative bomb. Let’s talk about how to do this.

Defusing the pejorative bomb

There are two ways to defuse this bomb. One is that a slur is reclaimed as a compliment or a badge of identity as people begin to stand up to bullying behaviour. For something as serious as racism, such an outcome would be disastrous. I fear this outcome and you should too. The other is that we choose to stop deploying the pejorative bomb. That requires us to do three things.

Step one: provide specifics

First, we need to stop claiming that racism is systemic or rampant in NZ. As a minority member of society, I can say, hand on heart, that New Zealand is not a country riddled with nasty racist people. Racism is far from absent, but it’s not rampant either. Most New Zealanders are decent people and we’re all getting better at living in a multicultural world. The vast majority of people aspire to see our country continue to improve. How does one respond to claims of structural or systemic or rampant racism when no details are given? Such sweeping generalisations don’t provide a means of finding solutions because they only serve to get peoples’ backs up, particularly if you deny those you accuse any right of reply. So, by all means, point to a specific problem and propose a solution. And be prepared to discuss both the problem and a range of solutions.

Step two: we need to understand what is and what is not racism

These days, many people seem to have a very black and white idea of what constitutes racism. But reality is never as simple as we might wish it to be. Here are a few examples that draw from my own experience.

As a student, I often heard the trope that Asians are good at passing exams because we just memorise facts—Asians cannot think for themselves. That stereotype was common in my student days—so much so that Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani provocatively titled a series of essays, ‘Can Asians Think?’ This trope has often been rolled out in discussions of high Asian scores for competitive entrance exams, in NZ and abroad. The starting point for an Asian is that we know that some hold an underlying assumption about our ability; despite good grades, we are assumed to lack other (more important) qualities. Perhaps, on the basis of race, we don’t fully deserve to be there. This is to confuse an individual with a stereotype. Each of us painted with that stereotype has to demonstrate, one person at a time, why the stereotype doesn’t hold. 

In the weird world of the 2020s this narrative has been replaced: Asians are now being recast by some as ‘white-adjacent’. This means that, because of our perceived success, we not only do not need any help, we are also now part of the power base, so discrimination against us is justified in order to ‘make room’ for those who are genuinely unprivileged.

What’s the issue with this? Well, ‘Asian’ is a very broad term – it covers enormous cultural and ethnic diversity, and in different parts of the world, the term refers to very different ethnic groups. Asians are not all alike. Some have come here as refugees from among the poorest countries in the world, with little education, and limited opportunities. Some are descendents of people who first arrived here in the 1800s. Some are comparatively recent arrivals. Some, like me, are part something else. 

Asians are aware of our many differences, and we are sometimes known to have fun with them; I was at the hospital recently and had to work hard to keep a straight face when talking to an excellent and very professional Filipino nurse. Why? Because the playful portrayal by Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy of the Filipino ambition to become a nurse popped into my head! This is surely a stereotype? Yes, it is. So isn’t it racist to laugh and share it? No, not if we take Jo Koy’s lead. By inviting us to laugh with him, he lifts up his community; we learn something and share in a love letter to a community, a humanising in-joke.

By contrast, to uniformly label or treat all Asians as ‘white-adjacent’ is an astonishing use of racial stereotyping. While the term originated in the US, I have heard this viewpoint from people here in NZ who specifically claim to be champions of minority groups. These individuals are frequently from the majority group, cast themselves in their role as champions of the less fortunate, and, in their self-proclaimed benevolence, have taken it upon themselves to decide who needs help, who can be ignored because they have it good enough, and who has too much privilege, all using a flimsy proxy: race.

For someone who has grown up with the, ‘Asians are good at exams but are not able to think’ trope, this strikes me as a very poorly thought out position. 

Step 3: check your privilege-checking. Can you really determine privilege by skin colour?

Let me end with a very personal example that touches on the complexities of privilege and why we can’t assume it follows race. After moving to NZ, I had a difficult time at school. In my final year of primary school, I had only one friend. He had just arrived from another school and we were thrown together by circumstance. His family were rough around the edges working class folk and, when I first met them, they were living out of a caravan. By contrast, members of both sides of my family—Japanese and British—are university educated. My friend’s family were always friendly, and made me feel welcome. There was however one thing they did which really annoyed me. They gave me a nickname based on my Japanese ancestry. I detested it because I didn’t want anyone to draw attention to my difference, but it stuck. These are the type of people one might often hear being pejoratively labelled ‘white trash’. This is accurate: they were white, my friend’s stepfather literally worked in ‘trash’, and they were from that slice of society that is short on privilege—certainly lower than my university-educated family. But they were far from being trash. My friend went on to get a university education and is successful in his chosen calling. 

This reframing of who is privileged and who is not by the New Racists is allowing privileged members of the activist class to inadvertently punch down on people who look like me but don’t have my ‘white adjacent’ status. Is an Asian refugee who fled an oppressive regime more privileged than a successful, well-educated Māori academic? I would argue that it is hard to quantify and compare privilege. Perhaps we should spend less time trying to work this out from proxies and talk to people instead.

Then there is the deliberate punching down (yes, you read that correctly) on people who in the eyes of the New Racists look white and privileged but who, like my friend and his family, are actually starting from close to the bottom and doing it tough. But they are still white, you might say, they still have privilege. Yes, they do. That ‘white’ family are the only people who get to call me by the nickname they gave me—Fuji. 

An alternative to punching up and dropping pejorative bombs

So what’s the alternative? Calm, evidence-based discussion and debate, and making an attempt to understand the reasons behind someone disagreeing with you. It helps to remember that the world is a complex place and ‘good and bad’ or ‘right and wrong’ are not always easy to establish. It also helps to be wary of overly-simplistic solutions, and to accept that sometimes we will be in disagreement on contentious matters.

Here are some personal measures I intend to take in conversations going forward; I hope you will consider doing the same.

I will tell people that it’s OK to

• Talk about race and to discuss the difficult stuff without fear of recrimination.
• Say something that you subsequently regret or realise is inappropriate.

If I don’t think something you say is appropriate

• I’ll tell you why. 
• If you apologise, I’ll accept your apology. And vice versa.

I won’t

• Shut down your right to state your opinion, even when I disagree with you.
• Get distracted by the way you deliver your message – you don’t need to sugar coat it or tread carefully.
• Presume to know what will or won’t hurt others or act to censor you on their behalf.
• Try and shut down or win an argument by calling you names.

I will

• Try to listen carefully to what you have to say, even if it is challenging for me to do so.
• Endeavour to discuss difficult topics and debate with you firmly, but fairly.
• Endeavour to sort out the content from the emotional reaction either you or I have to your delivery. I expect you to do the same.
• Tell you if I disagree with you, but I’ll use evidence to back up my position.
• Have the courage to concede when you are right. 
• Treat you as my equal. That means I will sometimes disagree with you.
• Avoid using pejorative insults or outbursts. 

As an educator I will

• Endeavour to teach others how to discuss and debate constructively.
• Not demean students by presuming I need to protect them from hurtful statements. 
• Teach students how to defend themselves calmly, and with evidence.
• Empower students to think rationally and clearly, and to debate based on evidence. 
• Teach students the value of changing one’s views in light of evidence.

As a colleague I won’t

• Act to get you removed from some position of responsibility, kicked out of your job, or bullied by others, simply because I don’t agree with you.
• Scapegoat someone so as to protect myself.
• Bow to the demands of bullies, no matter what form they take.

Photo by Romain Gal on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/4G_C_qKwi6s

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Should the use of racist, ageist or sexist slurs against members of a perceived privileged group be employed on behalf of another group? Should  ‘punching up’ be considered a necessary means to reach a noble goal? 

I argue that this tactic, even if employed with the best intentions, is wrong and dangerous. And it can provoke a response that leaves society worse off. I will do this by talking a little about my own experiences of growing up as a member of a minority group in New Zealand. In a follow-up article, I suggest some better alternatives to ‘punching up’.

The changing face of racism

As a part Asian growing up in New Zealand in the 1980s I experienced plenty of racism. It was overt, and involved physical and verbal abuse. I am proud of my heritage but there were certainly times where, had I been able, I would have gladly erased the Japaneseness from my physical appearance. I couldn’t control that, but I did insist that my mother stop putting (delicious) Japanese food in my lunchbox! By the the time the 1990s rolled around, I no longer felt the desire or the need to hide my ethnicity. New Zealand was becoming much more multicultural, and intolerance was receding. Don’t get me wrong, I still encountered overt racism, ignorant statements, faux pas, and an abundance of things that I could have rolled my eyes at, but my experience of everyday life in NZ was becoming much more positive. I no longer viewed my Japanese heritage as a badge of shame. One might say that this is all part of growing up. The taunts and physical attacks of the playground give way to maturity and decency, in the main.

In the 2020s, things have changed again. Discussions of race are everywhere, but this change has not entirely been for the better. Strangely, I have caught myself feeling tempted to exaggerate my minority status, not out of pride, but for protection.

The reason is simple: some of the people who are championing support for minorities are actually making things less safe, less open, and potentially more dangerous for the minorities they claim to be lifting up. The primary reason is an intimidatory tactic designed to shut down discussion and debate. 

This tactic? Deploying what I call the pejorative bomb. 

What is a pejorative bomb? In part, it is old-fashioned name-calling, of the type I and many minorities have experienced, but it is aimed at the majority, accusing them for instance of being racist.

Let me first explain something about name-calling. Many people fear being called names. Bullies who use this tactic are clever: they know exactly how to hit you where it hurts and it is challenging to fight back against this type of behaviour. Growing up, I had to regularly endure pejorative references to my ethnicity. I couldn’t do much about that as my ethnicity was something I had no control over.

But what I am calling pejorative bombs are different. A pejorative bomb uses the tactics of the bully, but it is being used as a way of shutting down debate by attacking someone’s physical attributes: age, sex or ethnicity. An example is the term ‘pale, stale, male’, to pejoratively dismiss the views of an older white man.

Indeed, I am struck by the increase in the casual use of terms like racist, white supremacist, old white male, and colonist, to name a few, by educated adults who see themselves as supporting minorities. They use these terms as a way to shut down or even preemptively kill off discussion. Often these pejorative bombs are being mouthed by people who are themselves white. 

Having spent a chunk of my formative years dealing with bullies, and having had to think about race my entire life, I can tell you that the latter requires careful, considered thinking and reading. The former? Well I can spot a bully from a mile away. Believing one has the moral high ground and that this justifies acting like a bully still makes you a bully.

What our aversion to being labelled racist reveals about society

Why is this type of insult so effective at silencing people? 

Ironically, it works because so few people are genuinely racist.  Hence people genuinely fear being labelled racist. This is a big change: once upon a time, stating this fact when one was on the receiving end of racist slurs had zero effect. It was simply laughed off because it meant nothing to the perpetrator. The insult works today precisely because so few people harbour genuinely racist views any longer. Instead, most people are mortified to be associated with such views. Granted, people do put their foot in it from time to time, but their intent is most often not to insult. There are of course still people out there who are genuinely racist, but our society has improved enormously on matters of race in my lifetime.

Calling people racist works so well because, for someone who is white, it’s the ultimate insult: denying it is as futile as not responding – the fact has been stated, leaving it pinned on you as a badge of shame. The strategy being employed here is so effective at shutting down debate that it in turn clears the way for change to be pushed through by fiat. When wielded by people with influence, change can be pushed through even if we don’t agree, because the majority feels intimidated. That’s crafty, and in the worst instances where it is used, it is a tool for antidemocratic change.

The pernicious effects of name calling

This brings us to the unintended consequences. My concern is that open, reasoned, and frank discussion and debate are becoming more difficult because of this nefarious strain of bullying. This has two impacts. First, it actually makes it harder for minorities to hold diverse views. Instead, we are all being coerced into conforming to a specific set of views that a particular group demands we hold. 

Even worse, agitating on behalf of minorities risks making minorities the focus of a future backlash.

Working out how to get along in a multicultural milieu despite our differences is a difficult problem that requires careful thought. Working out how to improve society is also difficult. It requires challenging conversations and listening to a diverse range of views; some enticing solutions may actually be bigger problems in disguise. The discussion we need is not happening, in part because of the use of the bully’s approach to shutting down diverse opinions. 

It is one of the strangest ironies that shutting down diverse opinions is being championed in the name of promoting diversity. Witness the rise of the slur, ‘race traitor’, a peculiar concept that refers to a person of a particular race who is deemed to hold an opinion that is contrary to what someone else expects someone of that race to hold. This is a terrible stereotype of racial groups as necessarily uniform in thought, a caricature that a group of people should think the same on the basis of something as biologically meaningless as their skin colour.

That the term race traitor has been used by alt-right white supremacists and by left-wing ‘antiracists’ alike illustrates that such groups are intolerant of diversity of opinion, and underscores the tribal nature of such movements: if you are not with us you are against us. 

Both usages appear disturbingly alike, but let’s think about this for a moment.

Society largely views white supremacists with ridicule, but I fear that the New Racists will give them a new lease of life: the frequent, and frequently unwarranted, pejorative attacks on white people who are not racists, but not ardent antiracists, can engender a counter position: people can get fed up, their hearts can harden towards the minorities that the vocal antiracists purport to be in support of. These people don’t necessarily become racists, but if an antiracist can decide it is justified to call someone a race traitor, well, anything is possible. 

The direction we are heading seems astonishing to me and other minority ethnic academics like Dr. Melissa Derby. In an excellent article on the late Martin Luther King, she reminds us of one of his most seminal insights. King said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. It’s high time we heeded that advice.

The header image for this article was taken from Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/KflQqYcFknk).

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