Accounting for Racism Against Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Discourse Analytic Study of the Views of Maori Adults: Racism against Maori in Aotearoa New Zealand
Previous discursive studies on the construction, reproduction and justification of racism have focussed on the accounts of perpetrators to the exclusion of the targets of racist talk. The current study redresses this imbalance by exploring the talk of targets of racism in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Interviews were conducted with 24 participants, 19 Maori and five Pakeha partners. Our social constructionist discourse analysis identifies four primary discourses that participants drew on to account for racism, two of which resonated strongly with the literature and two which spotlighted new areas of interest. A discourse of ignorance functioned to allow participants to account for racism by highlighting Pakeha ignorance of Maori people and culture, and of racism itself. The second discourse implicated the media for emphasising negative Maori news, avoiding positive Maori achievements and promoting negative stereotypes. A third discourse constructed Pakeha as possessing an innate sense of superiority which contributed to racism, and fourthly, institutionalised racism was used by participants to construct a colonial society which continued to marginalise Maori. Finally we consider the implications of these findings with respect to existing literature, some implications around the intersectionality and relationship between these discourses, and the importance of potential gains in understanding made possible through the study of targets' perspectives. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.