Whiteness, academe, silence Doing good, openness, equal opportunity Diversity, equity, justice Talk, all talk Talk that sounds good And gives me the reassurance that academe is somehow opening up To difference. And yet The talk is far from the truth Whiteness carries out in the actions of the benevolent White man and woman Who believes she has taught the world The logics of empowerment And takes it on herself To save the downtrodden and the oppressed From the Third. Whiteness and its specters Couched as doing good Couched as altruism and progress Telling me that I am backward That I have to refer back to the games of Whiteness In order to qualify as a participant. Whiteness and its specters Telling me That the knowledge of my culture is primitive So she is going to send her missionaries and mercenaries and democracy promoters and war mongers and public health professionals To teach me to behave To pick up the language So I could be empowered under her Imperial guises.
March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute