Race, Racism and Everyday Communication in Aotearoa New Zealand

This essay is based on theories of ‘new racism’, which explain how race and racism continue to play an integral role in our lives, but in subtle and often hidden ways. This approach informs the discussion in this essay that focuses on some of the issues that emerged from a critical collaborative autoethnographic project that explored how race is manifested in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand. The discussion, more specifically, draws on what we call here ‘conversational tact’ and its three sub-themes of ‘everyday racialised ethnic terms’, ‘the everyday racialised use of ethnic stereotypes’, and ‘everyday censorship and silence around race in conversation’. These themes have been chosen as the focus of this essay because they sit together under a larger theme that looks at the way in which people communicate race through their everyday patterns of speech and vocabulary in New Zealand and help us unmask ‘racial micro aggressions’ (DeAngelis, 2009; Sue et al, 2007).