'I, Too, Am Auckland' and Racism in the Academy

In the past few weeks 3 video's have appeared on Facebook produced as part of a research project on racism in the academy.  Motivated by a project on racism in the U.S Academy called 'I, Too, Am Harvard', ' I, Too, Am Auckland' is a project undertaken by Maori and Pacifica students at the University of Auckland and guided by a member of the Department of Sociology, Dr David Mayeda.  The project also involved a number of Pacifica and Maori members of staff, some of whom appear in the third video that deals with perceptions of  targeted admission schemes. 

As someone currently researching the topic of racism within the Academy, and particularly within my discipline, criminology, the material produced by Dr Mayeda and his research team is a godsend.  To my knowledge, the project represents the first significant social science research on academic racism in Aotearoa/New Zealand; well at least one that goes out of its way to share the lived experiences of participants.  The videos that are embedded below provide details of the many and varied micro-aggressions utilised by racist assholes (my interpretation and expression, not those involved in the project!) to belittle and disempower their fellow students; descriptions enriched with the lived experiences of the participants. The decision to use video to transmit the experiences of participants was inspired as reading about them on the printed page, while important, does not have the same impact as being able to see people speak for themselves.    

One of the issues raised by participants was that academics were also responsible for behaviour they experienced as disempowering. This comes as no surprise to me, having experienced racist conduct at various points in my career, and having recently conducted research that involved Indigenous colleagues in New Zealand, Australia and North America recount numerous stories of racist, unethical conduct they had experienced during their time in the Academy.  But it does trouble me greatly that Maori and Pacifica students are also experiencing this type of behaviour from people who are meant to be working to create a safe environment for their learning.

The fact that students involved in 'I Too, Am Auckland' project reported experiencing disempowering conduct by academics, places recent statements by a spokesperson for the University of Auckland, in an interesting light.  On the weekend media asked for the University's response, which pretty much followed the standard, 'dot point', 'drag sh*t from the strategy document' response institutions rely on in the face of criticism or research that does not present the organisation in the positive light it prefers: the response was of the 'if racism occurs students should report it' and 'the University supports Maori and Pacifica students', etc, etc, kind... well for me the experiences of the students presented in the videos kinda makes these 'strategic statements' appear a little vacuous.

If the micro-aggressions and racist conduct are being perpetrated by staff, what are the chances that students will feel empowered enough, or safe enough, to report it?  After all, we are talking about students having to go up against the weight of an institution that, in my experience, will be hell bent on killing off the issue as quickly as possible.  And often 'killing off the issue' involves turning the problem back on the Maori or Pacifica student or academic, in a process that can involve a whole range of silencing strategies, from dismissives like 'you are being too sensitive' to 'your response was angry and/or aggressive'.  In other words, the focus moves from the racist act, to our response, or even (as reported by academics in my research) on the fact that we actually made a complaint, as in 'your complaint makes the institution look bad'! Seriously, this shit happens; I'm not making it up.

Anyway, back to 'I, Too, Am Auckland'.  There are so many things about the project and those involved in it to praise, including the fact that it provides further evidence of the widespread racism that occurs at academic institutions; grounded in the lived experiences of Maori and Pacifica students and academics.  But what I find most impressive is that the research took place at all given the increasing corporatisation of the tertiary education sector.  The neo-liberal education policies of recent governments have created tertiary institutions that are hyper-sensitive to research, publications and dialogue that throws anything less than a positive light on their business.  If you think about it, this situation is kind of funny given that so much of the research activity of said institutions involves critical analysis of a whole range of external institutions and their activities, including government agencies... but turn your critical gaze towards the universities themselves and sit back and watch the dummy fly across the room... but I digress: 

I am calling the research for what it is... bold, powerful and heartening. 

Bold - because it takes guts to stand up and be heard.

Powerful - because the methodology that drives the project empowers the participants to speak for themselves, thus ensuring their experiences and perspectives are the focus of the work, and not, as often occurs in academic research, mediated through the interpretative lens of an academic.  This is Indigenous Emancipatory Methodology, or Kaupapa Maori Research, or whatever term you prefer, at its best.

Heartening - because despite dealing with serious issues that can and do negatively impact Maori and Pacifica students, the project highlights a number of positives, including a) the aroha (love) and support the students give to each other, b) the depth of their strength and resilience in the face of adversity, and c) the commitment Maori and Pacifica (and no doubt some non-Maori and Pacifica) staff have to support them to succeed.

I am thankful to all those involved in the project for their wonderful, insightful work.  I am especially thankful to the students involved, and in awe of them, because if they are willing to stand up and speak out while they are STILL enrolled in their studies, given the power institutions can weld over them, just imagine what they will do when they graduate.  

Despite the racism and micro-aggressions, the students (clearly supported by Maori and Pacifica staff, and each other) are getting on with their mahi ('stuff') and succeeding.  Now imagine how much easier things would be if the White Privileged Academy got over itself, and responded meaningfully and with purpose, to the racist assholes that exist in its midst.  

The videos are inserted below:

The Death Penalty and the 'Bali 2'

Let me start by stating that I do not support the use of the death penalty as a response to crime.  The reasons for my position can be summarised as follows:

1. I find it difficult to trust the settler-colonial state to use the ultimate punishment against its citizens 'fairly', given its use of genocide against Indigenous peoples, and the propensity for the formal justice system to deploy state-sanctioned violence against the poor.
2. The state's exhortation that we 'shalt not kill' is contradicted somewhat when it gives itself the right to do so.
3. There is little evidence that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on serious offending. Research on the impact of the death penalty in the US has shown that in some of the states using this form of punishment over the past 2 decades, the rates of serious offending have either not changed or in fact increased.
4. Because the use of the ultimate, irreversible penalty requires that the 'system' be perfect.  And no justice system is perfect; not the various jurisdictions here in Australia (where I live), or New Zealand (where I grew up). These so-called 'civilised' systems of justice routinely get it wrong, as recent exoneration's demonstrate. The same can be said for the justice system of our neighbour, Indonesia.

Dominating media and political commentary right now is the possible execution of the Bali 2 Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. As a New Zealander living in Australia the massive amount of commentary on the situation has highlighted a number of interesting contradictions and patterns of behaviour on the part of Australians, particularly members of the mainstream media, political class and the much broader group of 'social commentators' (namely those who write letters to the editor or engage with talk back radio). A number of recurring 'themes' are present in a lot of their rhetoric on this issue, including:

Indonesia's justice system is barbaric

While Australia does not use the death penalty as a response to crime, it is nevertheless difficult for some international observers like myself to take seriously claims made by some Australian's that the Indonesian justice system is barbaric and uncivilised. After all, Australia is the country that incarcerates Indigenous peoples at higher rates than anyone else, and the upward trend is not, as some argue, related solely to increases in serious offending by Indigenous peoples (see discussion below). It is the jurisdiction that suspends the legislation giving all Australian's the same protections against racial discrimination so it can deploy discriminatory policies against the Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory. It is the jurisdiction where police corruption and racist practice has long been established via research and formal enquiries. It is the jurisdiction that currently avoids its international obligations by processing 'illegal immigrants', including children, in off-shore detention centres; not to mention imprisoning under-age Indonesian youth for people smuggling in contravention of international covenants against such practices. It is time that many Australian's woke up to the fact that your country's 'way of doing justice' is not viewed by some as the exemplar of western, civilised practice that you think it is.      

Australian's have contradictory attitudes towards the use of the death penalty

It appears that the majority of Australian's are opposed to Indonesia putting the Bali 2 to death by firing squad.  As someone opposed to the death penalty I am happy that this is the case. But I do wonder where all the anti-death penalty Australian's were when Indonesia used the death penalty against the Bali bombers back in 2008? At the time there were a few commentators, those consistently against the death penalty who expressed opposition to the executions on the grounds of their opposition being a moral absolute (see for example, the editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald, March 2015 and the 2 editorials that commentary refers to in the same newspaper back in 2008). In the main, the majority of the media and political commentary was of the 'Indonesia is a sovereign nation and has the right to determine what they believe is the appropriate way to respond to crime' kind. Or, as expressed by John Howard and repeated by many Australian commentator at the time, the bombers were simply 'getting what they deserved'. In other words when Indonesia's use of the death penalty suited the response some Australian's wanted to the killing of 202 people in Bali, there was little talk of the barbarism of the Indonesian justice system or criticism of its use of the death penalty. And before people email me to say it is not appropriate to compare the Bali bombings to drug smuggling let me just say that a) the death penalty is either barbaric and an inappropriate response to all offences or it is not - the moral absolute referred to in the Sydney Morning Herald editorial mentioned above - and b) remember the devastation wrought against the Indonesian population by the drug trade, the reason why, whether we agree with them or not, many Indonesians support the use of the death penalty in drug smuggling cases.  

The mainstream media and political class routinely express condescending, colonialist attitudes towards our South Pacific and Asian neighbours

Certain attitudes support the aforementioned 'themes', in particular a slightly racist condescension on the part of some members of the mainstream media, political class and 'social commentators' towards our nearest neighbours in the South Pacific and Asia. Colonialist ideals of the inherent social and racial superiority of the 'Australian way' stinks up much of the rhetoric about Indonesia's political and justice systems. Belief in the superiority of the 'western way' lurks behind the smirks that often accompany comments about police and judicial corruption, and the barbarity of Indonesia's prison systems and use of the death penalty. Is there some truth to these allegations/attitudes? Yes, corruption of the judiciary occurs, and anecdotal evidence of the need to bribe police in order to avoid being charged is so vast that it simply cannot be ignored.

But, this country is hardly in a position to cast such dispersion's at its neighbours. Putting aside the usual response that while your own justice system is not perfect it is not as bad as others as a) an exaggeration of how 'just'  your justice system is and b) ignorance of the degree to which the system is classist, racist and misogynist, let us highlight a few home truths about the 'Australian way' (and the same can be said of the New Zealand way as well): first, as I intimated above you have probably the worst record of incarceration of Indigenous peoples in the world, and while you continue to drive up their rate of incarceration through - in part - the biased application of police discretion, implementation of racist legislation like the NTER, and through arrests related to driving offences (in the Northern Territory) and imprisonment for non-payment of fines (Western Australia) you have little justification for intimating that other country's justice systems are 'uncivilised". Similarly while you continue to incarcerate refugees including children in contravention of UN conventions, many of whom are fleeing war zones that your country was involved in creating, you don't get to condemn anyone else for unethical conduct. And lastly, while your political class is more concerned at stopping potential 'terrorists' from returning from Middle East conflicts than doing something concrete about the 'gendered terrorism' occurring every day in this country, then it is increasingly difficult to accept the inferences many of you make that country's like Indonesia are 'less civilised'. And Mr Abbott, announcing the 'strategy/taskforce or whatever photo opportunity your advisers devised recently to make you and your government look serious about domestic violence doesn't nullify my argument, given that your government recently cut funding for the community-centred DV-related services required to support survivors of domestic violence.

The last point I want to make on this issue relates to the tendency of the mainstream media, political class and social commentators to 'feign outrage' - to look for reasons to make disparaging, negative comments about Indonesian officials involved in the row over the fate of the Bali 2. A classic example of this strategy occurred recently in response to the massive police and military deployment when the Bali 2 were transferred to another prison. It was reported that up to 700 personnel were deployed during the exercise, along with numerous armoured vehicles, jet fighters, etc. Yes, the response was completely over the top and unnecessary. But the outrage from some media and Abbot et al is hard to take seriously when a similar situation recently occurred here.  I am referring to police and 'security' institutions across Australia deploying up to 800 personnel in an anti-terrorist exercise, called Operation Appleby, that netted a massive total of... 2 arrests. The Australian Federal Police and others involved were heavily criticised by the Muslim community and so-called 'lefties' (as they were described by mainstream media) for the excessive force deployed against their communities. They were accused of political opportunism; of carrying out an exaggerated response to the situation in order to display - through media, an exaggerated level of threat. The official response, that the number of people involved was required to ensure 'safety' etc, simply didn't stack up. My point is that the political class and justice officials of this country are not above using exaggerated responses  to 'threats' for political purposes in order to gain positive media headlines, any less than their Indonesian counterparts are. In the case of Operation Appleby the population of convenience for an exercise in exaggerated moral panic were Muslims; Australia's current 'go to' community for the expression of exaggerated outrage, fear and risk.  In the Indonesian context what better community to target for an exaggerated response than Australian drug smugglers, a target group officials know is easy to justify due to decades of condescending rhetoric and behaviour towards that country from Australia's politicians and populist media. And for those New Zealander's reading this, it wouldn't pay to get too cocky; you might care to recall the massive deployment of police against the Tuhoe peoples in the Bay of Plenty to arrest all those 'terrorists' a few years back - you know the ones that were eventually charged with firearm offences?

As for the Bali 2, Andrew and Myuran, I hope current attempts to halt their execution are successful. I hope that one day they can return to Australia and demonstrate to their families, friends and communities the extent of their rehabilitation, and to teach young people here the price that can be paid for getting involved in the drug trade. I only hope that the ham-fisted, condescending and colonialist rhetoric that spews forth from this country's mainstream media, politicians and 'social commentators' has not pissed Indonesian officials off so much that Andrew and Myuran's chances of avoiding the ultimate punishment have in any way been diminished.  

Breaking the Criminal Justice-Criminology Nexus - Empowering Indigenous Communities

Introduction

I want to begin by telling two stories in order to provide context for the issues I will cover in this presentation:

The stories

The 2013 European Criminology Conference: (see description of this case study included in the Indigenous Criminologist post of 29/10/2013).

Drivers of Crime: In 2008 New Zealand's Ministry of Justice organised a 1 day hui (meeting) with a range of service providers, researchers, academics, and community members as part of the consultation process for the development of what is now called the Drivers of Crime project.  In the lead up to the hui various government agencies 'bargained' with the Minister of Justice (and by extension, senior officials at MoJ) to ensure that the list of invitees represented a cross-section of the 'community'.  Te Puni Kokiri (the Ministry of Maori Development) was one of those agencies, and attempted to have added to the list myself and other 'critical Maori commentators', and current and past gang members who worked with this particular community to deliver social services.  Officials from the Minister's office and MoJ attempted to block our inclusion on the list and if not for Te Puni Kokiri officials standing their ground and persuading the then Minister for Maori Affairs (firmly supported by Dame Tariana Turia) were we eventually invited, thus ensuring a range of Maori voices were heard on the day.  But it would be wrong to think that 'we' won: when MoJ summary of the main points of discussion was released some weeks later the vast majority of issues raised by the critical Maori caucus was excluded; including repeated concerns expressed about the lack of Maori input into the development of crime control policy, racist/biased policing, overuse of imprisonment, and other significant, structural failures on the part of the formal justice system.

Since then a number of other similar incidents have been experienced by Indigenous scholars residing in Settler-Colonial jurisdictions with whom I am in regular contact.  These individuals have discussed a number of incidents, some historical, some more recent, that mirror my own experiences.  Our common experience of the white privileged, arrogant conduct of some members of the Policy Industry and criminology, has made me realise that in all our critical analysis of the many and varied Colonial Projects that are deployed in Settler-Colonial contexts to subjugate Indigenous peoples, one that requires our urgent empirical attention on our part, is the criminal justice/criminology nexus.  The rationale for this claim, this empirical call to arms, so to speak, is quite straightforward: it is essential that we expose the nefarious effects of the parasitic relationship between members of Western, Authoritarian Criminology and members of the Policy Industry, given the hegemony this nexus has on the development of empirical knowledge about Indigenous crime.

The Provocations

• The parasitic relationship between Eurocentric Criminology and the Policy Industry is one of the most affective, ‘subtle’ colonial projects deployed in settler-colonial contexts to subjugate Indigenous peoples.

And

• We must become more aggressive in our critique of, and challenge to, this relationship if we are to decrease the damage it does to our communities.

What follows represents the tentative explorations of two questions that are of increasing concern to Indigenous scholars (and our critical, non-Indigenous colleagues), namely:

• What role, if any, does the Criminal Justice-Criminology nexus (or relationship) play in the Settler Colonial subjugation of Indigenous peoples?

And

• What should we do about it?

Part of the rationale for privileging empirical analysis of the nexus between white criminology and the policy industry, is historical – the historical relationship between a) coloniality, b) criminal justice and c) the academy.  Biko Agozino has effectively exposed that the discipline of criminology developed significantly under colonialism, and was an essential player in the colonial states subjugation of Indigenes.  You cannot explain the contemporary moment; the ways in which peoples are subjugated, without reference to the past.  In the words of Hayden (2004):

"Rather than distance ourselves from the past, as the centrist amnesiacs would counsel, perhaps we should finally peel back the scabs and take a closer look at why all the wounds haven’t healed". 

Colonial Projects in the Neo-Colonial Context
As the Nigerian criminologist Biko Agozino has demonstrated, criminal justice is one of the most potent Colonial Projects the Settler Colonial state utilises in its ongoing subjugation of Indigenous peoples.  One of its key functions is in assisting the state to ‘control’ what it defines as significant wicked problems, i.e., Indigenous over-representation, which is invariable portrayed in governmental discourse as a ‘fact of criminal justice life’.  It is a ‘social fact’ so significant that that it poses a threat to social order that requires meaningful, authoritative, indeed at times violent, intervention in relation to the practice of crime control.

And if you think my use of the term ‘violent’ is perhaps overstating things a little, all I need say in response is ‘the Tuhoe raids’. 

In New Zealand the ‘Maori problem’ is described in governmental and media discourse as being so significant that our crime problem would disappear if we could significantly reduce it, because, according to an ACT party member quoted in the Otago Daily Times in 2012, we are “full of crime”. 

If I may I would like to interrupt the flow of my analysis to divert to an interesting argument I heard posited by a young Maori scholar at an International Indigenous law conference held in Brisbane in June last year: Kiritapu Allen made what I think is a highly provocative, but accurate statement that given the violence and disfuntionality that permeates criminal justice in New Zealand, perhaps including the term ‘system’ in its title is somewhat misleading.  Instead, we should view it as a series of inter-linked incidents of violence, coated in the stink of colonialism. 

Much of the criminal justice system response to the ‘wicked problem’ of Maori over-representation comes in the form of structural violence, including, but not exclusively

• militaristic-style policing strategies;

• biased application of public disorder offences and discretionary powers;

• the criminal justice-led large-scale removal of Indigenous children and youth to detention centres; and

• and of Indigenous adults to the prison system – a form of displacement and confinement that O’Connor calls the ‘New Removals’ and Chris Cunneen ‘the new stolen generation’, with reference to the Australian context. 

I consider these ‘strategies’ as examples of overt violence perpetrated by the criminal justice sector against Indigenous peoples. 

Then we have a range of subtle, insidious strategies of containment and control, including:

• the aforementioned strategy of blocking Maori participation in forums that impact the design of policy;

• reliance on in-house Maori ‘experts’ to direct the development of policies for Maori, in place of meaningful engagement with Maori communities and Maori ‘experts’

• meaningless consultation exercises undertaken after policies and interventions have been designed and signed off by a CE, Minister or Cabinet;

• reliance on Maori/Aboriginal strategies that have no impact on an agencies bottom-line, and that make little or no reference to the socio-economic marginalisation of Indigenous peoples and used by agencies to market themselves as ‘culturally aware’;

• restricting or blocking access to sites of justice and undertaking independent, empirical research, and blocking research on criminal justice issues of importance to Maori, including bias, experiences of policing and imprisonment;

• arrogant dismissal of Maori knowledge and programmatic response to social harm in preference for importing theories, policies, legislation and interventions from western, high crime contexts;

• privileging academic literature and research on Indigenous issues and peoples carried out by white, western, administrative/authoritarian criminologists, whilst ignoring the Indigenous research lexicon; and

• indigenisation, or the inappropriate utilisation of Indigenous symbols, language and cultural artifacts to ‘sex up’ imported, ineffective crime control policies, like boot camps or Multi-Systemic Therapy, that are then forced upon our communities, and which do little to alleviate our over-representation in the criminal justice system. 

The white privileged criminological academy isn’t much better.  The range of disempowering behaviours perpetrated by its members is just as extensive, including:

• confine their critical criminological gaze to issues relating to state-defined problem populations, more often than not people of colour and working class youth, without significant engagement with individuals or communities from these populations – in other words they privilege the use of non-engaging methodologies; a reliance on statistical analysis and restrictive surveys at the expense of actually talking with brown people;

• confine their uncritical criminological gaze to state-run justice processes, policies, legislation and issues that the state deems important, for which they receive generous remuneration via the establishment of parasitic contractual relations;

• limit their ‘critical analysis’ of state systems and policies on programme effectiveness and evaluation largely devoid of historical context and the wider political economy of the state’s dominance of ‘justice’ in the neo-liberal moment – in other words their research and analysis is devoid of critical consideration of minor issues like genocide, coloniality, land grabs, destruction of key social and political institutions, biological and cultural warfare, etc; and

• empower themselves through the veil of scientism, an ideological construct that privileges the Eurocentric, supposedly ‘enlightened’ approach to measuring the Indigenous life-world, whilst denigrating Indigenous (and other) forms of knowledge that seek to explain the social world from the perspective of the Other.

Doing Imperialism Quietly?  The Criminal Justice-Criminology Nexus as Structural Violence

No longer able to attain political legitimacy by deploying overtly racist, assimilationist strategies such as the forced removal of our children in militaristic fashion, least it results in international condemnation, or banning our language and cultural practices through legislation, or replicating the physical genocide of the Indian Wars carried out in Canada and the U.S, or the killing times in Australia, the neo-liberal settler state and its supporting institutions of the body politic, in particular the white privileged academy, nevertheless continues to deploy structural violence against Indigenous peoples.  This comes in the form of  the development and application of racist criminological knowledge and interventions, made possible via collusion between white privileged academics and the policy sector.

This brings me full circle, to the stories I told at the beginning of the presentation.  How is it that policy workers and white privileged criminologists continue to produce bullshit about Maori and other Indigenous peoples?  More importantly, how is it that this bullshit still holds sway with the policy sector?  Answering these questions in full would require a whole presentation of its own.  So I’ll restrict myself to just 2 key reasons: a) because of their arrogance, related to a) because we are too nice. 

Doing Things for Ourselves

There are a number of practical, administrative responses either underway or that should be considered, including:

Research Project – Racism in the Academy;

International Journal of Indigenous Justice (IJIJ);

International Congress of Indigenous Justice (ICIJ);

All of these activities were discussed in the Indigenous Criminologist blog released on 31/7/2014.  

We urgently require a major change in our approach to the trash the Policy Industry and its parasitic partner, Authoritarian Criminology, produce about Indigenous peoples.  We need to become more aggressive in our approach to exposing the racism and white, colonial privilege that underpins their approach to the ‘Indigenous problem’.  Only by challenging the criminal justice-criminology nexus in an aggressive manner, and through the development and application of a Critical Indigenous Criminology, will we challenge the hegemony the members of this 'axis of bullshit' hold over the development of supposedly ‘legitimate’ knowledge about 'the Indigenous experience'.  Perhaps then we might finally have a say in the development of policies, legislation and interventions that reflect our approaches to dealing with social harm and our lived experiences, rather than the exotic fantasies of white privileged policy workers and academics.