Despite being "old school," New Zealanders indeed know racism when they see 
it.  This excerpt is from a recent television series about two young New 
Zealanders who immigrated to New York: 
http://vodpod.com/watch/2096945-flight-of-the-conchords-racism

On Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:40:19 -0700, Michael H Goldhaber 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Thanks, Mandi, for your particularly eloquent and thoughtful response. 
>
>At present my inclination is to keep Robert on moderation, but, as I now feel 
obliged to examine his remarks more carefully than before, fewer of his  posts 
will get by. Robert can ameliorate this by indicating that he has sincerely 
understood what Mandi, Chandler, Stuart and Michael Balter have said on this 
subject and that he will truly be more careful with his language in future. 
>
>(Incidentally, you mention the Rwandan Interahamwe's use of the term 
cockroach to describe Tutsis before the genocide there; the Nazis also called 
Jews vermin and insects before their own genocidal actions. )
>
>(Incidentally also, I visited NZ eight years ago, and never heard the 
term "chow," nor any racially derogatory term that I recognized. The country 
also seemed very advanced in terms of taking women's rights seriously.) 
>
>Best,
>Michael
>
>On Aug 20, 2010, at 12:52 AM, Mandi Smallhorne wrote:
>
>> As most of you know, I am a lefty born and bred in South Africa, a country 
in which the defining issue of the 20th and 21st centuries has been group 
prejudices.
>> 
>> One thing I’ve learned is that you cannot allow the ‘mildly derogatory’ 
remarks to pass, because they provide permission for the real horrors to come 
roaring out from behind the woodwork. I let my tax accountant’s use of the 
term ‘floppy’ go by (that’s an awful but fairly light-hearted term for black 
people– as seen by the whites who use it, not by blacks). This gave him tacit 
permission to expound his neo-nazi views on what should be done in SA. 
(Which meant I had to spend an hour fighting, no fun. It taught me to make 
my position very clear immediately, to avoid such encounters in future.)
>> 
>> Secondly, the user of a term cannot be the judge of its impact. They are 
often in positions of power or perceived superiority, and that can give such 
terms a sting that the user simply is unable to comprehend. (Robert may live 
in a small country only a Pacific away from a billion Chinese, but he profits 
from being a member of the ultimate global mainstream – white, anglo-saxon 
males!)
>> 
>> I have been interested to see how the heft of terms used for whites in my 
country has altered over the last decade – as the white community begins to 
grasp that its hand is no long on the tiller of political power, and it is being 
asked to yield a fair share of economic power, whites have begun to take 
offence at comments which previously would have been laughed off. Having 
entered the job market in 1980, I lived through a period of sexism on the work 
front which was probably the equivalent of the 60s and 70s elsewhere, and 
the use of the word ‘chick’ still makes my skin crawl – because of the impact 
that belittling, diminishing attitude had on my dignity and my income. Other 
women my age understand that; men don’t.
>> 
>> I think all debaters on interweb fora would do well to learn the lesson 
Chandler articulates – that is, to distinguish between the person/people and 
the content or policy they espouse. Insults are far too easy through 
cyberspace – I feel it would do us good to ask ourselves if we could look 
someone in the eye, face to face, and call them the name we’re committing to 
text: hey, chow… listen, you smug, opinionated sexist pig…. Umm, no, maybe 
not.
>> 
>> Dishing out casual derogatory terms when they are unnecessary to the 
force of your argument, in the end, tells your interlocutors more about you  
and how you think than anything else. Terms like ‘floppies’ and ‘chows’ 
are ‘othering’ terms – they enable you to make less-than-human people who 
are individuals with loves and hopes and rights and dreams. The most powerful 
demonstration of ‘othering’ comes from Rwanda, where calling 
Tsutsis ‘cockroaches’ made them the other, and finally killable.
>> 
>> Sorry, bit of a screed. I have lifelong reasons to get verbose over this: I’m 
not prepared to accept that asking a simple question is ‘working up a PC rage’, 
for starters, and I will never accept that prejudiced terms are a mere ‘quibble’.
>> 
>> Mandi
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:SCIENCE-FOR-THE-
[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Balter
>> Sent: 20 August 2010 08:35 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: ROBERT MANN'S EXPLANATION
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> By the way, a quick Googling of New Zealand and racism makes clear that 
racist attitudes are NOT accepted nor the norm in the country. See for 
example this government Web site entry on immigration:
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/history-of-immigration/15
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Which includes the following passage. If racism was recognized as such in 
New Zealand by the 1970s, then there are no excuses today.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> By 1971 the proportion of New Zealand’s foreign-born population who were 
from countries outside the white British Commonwealth was 30% – double that 
of 20 years before. As the colour of the population changed, so did attitudes. 
Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community encouraged New 
Zealand to consider its identity as a Pacific, if not Asian, nation. 
Independence movements in the British colonies, civil rights crusades in the 
United States and a Māori cultural revival in New Zealand forced many New 
Zealanders to confront the racist assumptions in their past. By 1970 a writer 
on New Zealand immigration noted, ‘This is a world in which racist attitudes, 
once regarded as perfectly natural and needing no apology in an age of 
European domination of the non-Europeans’ world, are now looked at askance, 
even when they are not condemned outright.’ 1
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Michael Balter 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> Robert's "explanation" of his racist remarks is basically a defense of them, 
although he admits that they are derogatory. It is the same kind of 
explanation that most racists use to escape criticism, and like most racists 
who have been caught out he tries to imply that we are too sensitive 
and "PC." Some New Zealanders may be "old school," but New Zealand 
scientists and intellectuals generally are not, and I am pretty confident that 
the term "chows" would be recognized as racist by most of them. And there 
are lots of "old school" people still living in Britain itself, but there is a very low 
tolerance for overt racism in that society.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> My personal feeling is that Robert should be banned from the list, but 
continuing to keep him on moderation would be an alternative solution.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> MB
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Michael H Goldhaber <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:
>> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I have just approved (for list publication) Robert Mann's attempted 
explanation of his use of the word "chows." It should appear shortly, if not 
already. 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> New Zealand is a small, isolated  country, relatively homogeneous until 
quite recently, and in many ways still quite "old-school" British.  I am not sure 
all of that makes the remark acceptable, and would like others' opinions about 
how to handle it. 
>> 
>>  
>> Best,
>> Michael
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> ******************************************
>> Michael Balter
>> Contributing Correspondent, Science
>> Adjunct Professor of Journalism,
>> New York University
>> 
>> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>> Web:    michaelbalter.com
>> NYU:    journalism.nyu.edu/faculty/balter.html
>> ****************************************** 
>> 
>> "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the 
poor have no food, they call me a Communist." -- Hélder Pessoa Câmara
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> ******************************************
>> Michael Balter
>> Contributing Correspondent, Science
>> Adjunct Professor of Journalism,
>> New York University
>> 
>> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>> Web:    michaelbalter.com
>> NYU:    journalism.nyu.edu/faculty/balter.html
>> ****************************************** 
>> 
>> "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the 
poor have no food, they call me a Communist." -- Hélder Pessoa Câmara
>> 
>>  
>> 
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>
>