Dr Sereana Naepi (left), editor of Oceans Between Us, and contributing writer Dr Marcia Leenen-Young. (Photo: University of Auckland)

“Our political landscape is showing us that the fight for equity and against racism is far from done,” writes Dr Sereana Naepi, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, in Oceans Between Us, a new book that confronts racism against Pacific people in New Zealand. A crucial part of that fight, as Sereana and other Pacific scholars argue, is reclaiming the use of the word racism.

My Pākehā dad is not a man of many words. He tends to observe and offer words only when necessary. A few weeks ago, he was visiting Tāmaki and asked me about my work. This doesn’t happen often: we have an agree-to-disagree arrangement in our family for some things.

We talked about Te Tiriti and racism for a bit, then he took a deep breath and simply said: “I worry that the escalation on both sides will mean that your mum and I won’t be accepted or allowed again.”

Those words have sat with me for the last few weeks as we prepare to launch a book on racism and Pacific peoples in Aotearoa. They highlight the challenge that we face whenever we try to expose and address the racism baked into our society: How can we have meaningful discussions about how racism operates in Aotearoa in ways that move things forward, not backward?

As a group of 13 emerging Pacific scholars and thinkers, we initially envisioned Oceans Between Us as a way to provide our communities with the evidence of the racism they experience every day.

The final draft of our book came together in December 2023, just as the coalition agreement between National, ACT and New Zealand First had been finalised. And as we edited and proofread the book, the impact of those agreements became clearer. We were entering a social space where Pacific peoples and others would be gaslit by rhetoric around race-based funding and inequitable citizenship, and the evidence became even more crucial.

In the months since that coalition agreement, we’ve witnessed a systematic dismantling of policies designed to address structural racism. The evidence of this government’s impact on Pacific peoples is stark and undeniable.

Pacific funding has been cut by $26 million annually, with programmes targeting housing, skills, training and business development for Pacific communities being axed. The Regulatory Standards Bill threatens to roll back decades of progress in embedding equity considerations into government decision-making. Meanwhile, the ending of pay equity claims has disproportionately affected Pacific women, who are overrepresented in care work and other undervalued sectors.

These policy changes aren’t happening in isolation. They’re part of a broader political project that seeks to reframe equity as division, and structural racism as individual failing.

There has been a doubling down on rhetoric about “race-based division”, at the same time as policies that entrench racial inequity have been implemented.

For Pacific peoples, this represents a familiar pattern. We’re being told that we’re the problem while the systems that disadvantage us remain unchanged. We’re told that naming racism is itself racist, beginning a circular logic that silences critique while protecting the very systems we’re trying to expose. This circular argument draws attention away from the evidence presented and deflects attention from the issue to the messenger.

This is why we wrote Oceans Between Us. Too often, discussions about racism in Aotearoa get bogged down in whether racism exists at all. (It does.) Politicians and commentators tie themselves in knots avoiding the word, preferring euphemisms like “unconscious bias” or “demographic challenges”.

Oceans Between Us, published by Auckland University Press, will be launched this week on July 10.

But, as we argue in the book, racism is not a dirty word. It’s a precise diagnostic tool that helps us understand how systems work to the advantage of some while disadvantaging others. It is a term that helps us to identify where the blocks are and, therefore, where we should be focusing our attention. It’s not a matter of whether David Seymour should have said what he said about the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, but about why he felt that he had the social licence to not only say it but also defend it.

The book brings together evidence from across sectors to show how structural racism operates in Aotearoa. This isn’t about individual prejudice, though that matters too. It’s about how historical processes of colonisation have created systems that consistently produce racially inequitable outcomes.

When Pacific peoples have lower life expectancies, lower educational achievement, lower home ownership rates, lower levels of wealth, inequitable pay and higher incarceration rates, this isn’t a coincidence. It’s evidence of how the system works.

When Pacific families struggle to access quality healthcare, when Pacific students are steered away from advanced classes, when Pacific workers are passed over for promotion, these aren’t isolated incidents. They’re part of a pattern that becomes visible when we have the courage to name it. Racism.

This is a word that Pacific communities have come to understand since arriving in Aotearoa, and it is a word we need to use more often and more precisely to push back against the idea that we are somehow undeserving of a good life.

This brings me back to the couch with my dad and my hope that this book will be a tool for many to push back against the move towards making racism more acceptable.

The current political moment feels dangerous, precisely because it’s making previously unacceptable ideas seem normal again. The challenge is how to respond without confirming the fears of people like my dad, who worry that any discussion of racism will create more division.

The answer lies in grounding our conversations in evidence and focusing on shared aspirations. Where do we collectively want to be in the next 10 years? What legacy do we want to leave the next generation?

My dad’s worry about acceptance reflects a genuine concern about how we navigate difference in Aotearoa. But the evidence in Oceans Between Us suggests that the path forward isn’t about choosing sides. It’s about choosing systems that work for everyone.

That requires all of us to get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations about racism, because the alternative of pretending it doesn’t exist while it continues to shape outcomes serves no one.

The question isn’t whether we can afford to have these conversations. It’s whether we can afford not to.

Oceans Between Us, edited by Sereana Naepi and published by Auckland University Press, will be launched next Thursday at the University of Auckland.

Sereana Naepi (Fijian, Pākehā) is an associate professor in sociology at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. Her research focus is on equity in higher education, Indigenous research methodologies, and the experiences of Pacific peoples, Māori, and early-career researchers in academia. She is committed to addressing systemic barriers to success in universities and advocating for institutional change. Sereana has co-authored research on decolonising universities and improving pathways for underrepresented scholars. She is a recipient of the Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and Spencer Education grants.

E-Tangata, 2025