“But Your English is So Good!” An Interview on Racism in Aotearoa

As part of Metanoia’s commitment to the ongoing conversation about race, society, and theology surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, we are seeking different voices and experiences of racism as it pertains to Aotearoa New Zealand. In this piece, Andrew Clark-Howard interviewed Stephanie Chan 陈雪莹 about growing up as a Chinese-New Zealander. The following article is an edited version of the conversation.

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Growing up in Aotearoa as Chinese, being born here with older New Zealand born brothers too, what did it take to ‘fit in’ or seem part of the majority culture?

Well, speaking English was a huge thing, and especially speaking English without an accent. I've had so many people tell me “Your English is so good!” I was born here, only ever spoke English with my brothers, and have been speaking English since before I started school. (My family speak Cantonese at home.) All the TV and media I watched growing up was in English, and by and large I had a very similar experience to most people regarding language here—why wouldn’t I speak English well?

I remember one very clear memory actually when I was in high school on the phone with my brother. He speaks sometimes with a little bit of a twang, but mostly with no accent. Afterwards with some of my friends they were like “Woah! If I didn’t know that was your brother I would’ve thought he was white!” Why wouldn’t a person of Chinese descent be able to speak English any differently from someone else?

Food was another huge thing. I always felt incredibly ‘other’ when I’d bring a thermos of hot food to primary and intermediate school lunch. My mum is an amazing cook—as many Chinese parents and grandparents are—and I wish she would make me as many home-cooked meals now as she did then. But in school I always felt weird and different, so I’d ask my mum to just give me sandwiches and chips. My house was also different to my Pãkehã friends. It was always kind of messy, Chinese-smelling, and my grandma has a shrine to Buddha in the dining room. And my parents speak very broken English with a strong Chinese accent. I was terrified of bringing my white friends over and experiencing their secondhand discomfort. And I still am.

All these different, everyday realities where whiteness served as ‘normal’ and ‘normative,’ what did that do for you in understanding your own cultural identity? Emma Ng makes the point that Chinese settlers arrived in Aotearoa just after the signing of Te Tiriti, and that many families have been in this land as long as some Pãkehã. Yet Asian New Zealanders of any descent are never seen as significant or established parts of our cultural imagination. There is constant legal and cultural pressure to justify your existence in a place you are arguably more tied to than a white person like me who was born overseas. How do you understand yourself as a Chinese New Zealander?

When Pãkehã came to colonise Aotearoa, they often did so by setting up structures and systems based around white people. Chinese people were first brought over as labourers, in 1865 the first Cantonese gold seeker arrived. From the mid-1800s there was this huge outcry about a “tarnishing of New Zealand identity.” Chinese were seen as immoral, heathen, dirty (see: coronavirus), and ‘rats.’ Just the other day my boyfriend was walking down Federal Street and heard someone call two men walking by speaking Chinese “fucking rats” who should “fuck off back home with their disease.”

Aotearoa has this history of excluding Chinese and treating them as ‘other.’ Anti-Asian leagues have often been set up all over the country. Through the legislative means of the poll tax, most Chinese were effectively banned from immigrating into the county for over forty years. It’s these types of ongoing attitudes of foreignness and alien imaginaries that contribute to people being surprised I ‘speak English.’ You're either ‘Chinese’ or ‘New Zealander’—you can’t be both. 

You wouldn’t believe how many white people ambush me with a ‘ni hao’ in the retail store I work at. I’m always in uniform and there as a professional team member, but they still think I’d respond to a Mandarin greeting (which, for the record, I don’t really speak).

What types of expressions of faith and experiences of race did you see growing up in the church?

My family is not Christain, and so in the churches I went to growing up everyone was white. It was so weird, everyone was just white even though the area around us had large Chinese and Korean populations. 

But it was probably in coming to seminary that I began to notice that. It was only then that I began to learn about my particularity, and therefore really begin to notice how white my church contexts back home were. Up until then ways of being and what was considered ‘normal’ for me in the faith were white ways of being. I’d never seen genuinely Chinese expressions of Christianity, never heard someone pray or read the Bible in a Chinese dialect of any kind. 

In the youth group at church my friend group was basically all white. I remember one time we went away together. I was cuddling one of my friends’ dogs—because I love dogs and I love cuddling them—and the senior pastor's wife, who was also my friend's mum, told me jokingly “Don’t eat the dog!” When someone in somewhat of a shock told her she can’t say that she just replied, “It’s okay, Steph and I are friends.” I was 16. I had no idea how to respond.

The thing was, maybe she just told that joke because she thought I’d laugh with her at it. Maybe she thought I’d agree with her that I’m not one of ‘those’ Chinese—those dirty, heathen, dog-eating Chinese because I had set myself up as so assimilated. I used to love it when people would say “You’re so pretty for an Asian,” or “You’re not like those Asians.”

But you know what’s crazy? Those ‘Asians’ are my parents and grandparents. They came from and grew up in China. They came from places that ate dogs and cats, as well as cows and pigs and fish and chicken just like here.  

The recent conflict and outbreak of resistance against police brutality and black injustice in America has shaken many parts of the world. And it’s got a lot of people beginning to reflect on the centring of whiteness in their own countries and histories and the consequences this has on non-white bodies. What is it about BLM that affects you?

It’s hard to even find the words to say. It’s just so horrific. I am devastated that so many black men and women are dying simply because of the skin they were born into. This is a factor completely outside of control. And it’s perpetuated by a system that has always privileged white people above others. 

I have black friends and I can’t imagine if I were to wake up and hear on the news one day they’d been shot or strangled for the colour of their skin. I think about those who go out and wonder if they will make it home one day if they are stopped by police; or about parents who worry about their kids making it home one day. It’s been six years since the last ‘I can’t breathe’ and nothing’s changed. Six years later we shouldn’t be saying ‘I can’t breathe’ again. 

Jesus was a brown man. One of the most powerful things I’ve heard in this time was that Jesus himself was lynched. How can I say every Easter that I am devastated for the lynching of Jesus and not be devastated for the ongoing violence that occurs against black people in America and beyond?

If there is something, or a number of things you wish you could say to your white friends (including me) about this issue, what would it be?

There seems to be a growing popularity in talking about white privilege. There are a lot of people I know personally who are talking about white privilege, asking people to check their white privilege—but they still can’t pronounce names in te reo Mãori right or still don’t understand Te Tiriti to be an important document.

Posting about Black Lives Matter on social media doesn’t cost much. And personally, if you don’t feel uncomfortable when confronting issues of privilege then I don’t think you are doing it right. White people very, very rarely have to feel uncomfortable about the colour of their skin. And they still can avoid the conversation if they want to. Put yourself into spaces that make you feel uncomfortable.

For myself, I have to confront my own family’s prejudices against Mãori, whom they have little to no relationship with. I often leave the dinner table feeling defeated and burdened, arguing to no end, knowing that my siblings and parents condemn the perceived ‘special privileges’ given to Mãori. I often feel ashamed and heartbroken at the attitudes many new Asian immigrants have toward Mãori. I would love for my whãnau to know about the beautiful early Mãori-Chinese relationships that existed that I’m just beginning to learn about, and it’s on me to begin to share these stories.

Take those things you are advocating for on social media and contextualise it. Systemic racism exists in Aotearoa. How can you care about Black Lives Matter and not care for the violence, incarceration, or mortality rates that exists against Mãori? How can you talk about white privilege when your own families or friendship groups, attitudes, and ignorance of history goes unchecked and perpetuate racist realities for people of colour, uniquely towards tangata whenua?

To me, attitudes of ‘low cost’ social media activism often indicate that someone doesn't really know any people of colour, and if they do they have’t actually heard their stories. It looks good on the ‘gram, but hasn’t confronted you personally. Get some friends who aren’t white, and listen to them. We’re a really good time. 

And the food’s a lot better! (Though I really like pasta too…)

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Stephanie Chan 陈雪莹 is a theology student in Tāmaki Makaurau. Andrew Clark-Howard is a current editor of Metanoia.