Figure: An image from CARE's "I Choose Highbury" campaign
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the land of stunning landscapes and a purportedly egalitarian spirit, there's an undercurrent that often goes unspoken: a culture of mediocrity intertwined with whiteness that systematically sidelines bold, disruptive work—especially when it challenges the Pākehā status quo. This isn't just abstract theory; it's lived experience. Let me share a recent reflection from my own journey in academia, one that highlights how white privilege operates through funding panels, perpetuates mediocrity, and ultimately wastes resources while marginalizing brown excellence.
The Grant Rejection: Praise from Peers, Dismissal from the Panel
It started with a grant application to a major New Zealand funder. Our project proposal underwent external peer review, and the feedback was glowing. Reviewers lauded its methodological rigor, ambitious scope, theoretical relevance, novelty, and potential for real social impact. We were addressing critical issues at the intersections of culture, equity, and community—work designed to uplift marginalized voices in ways that could ripple through society.
Yet, the panel rejected it. In New Zealand, these panels are often assembled by specific societies, pulling from internal networks.
This is where white privilege subtly—but powerfully—plays out. You select people from your networks, who in turn select from theirs, creating echo chambers of familiarity and sameness. Whiteness, as a system of unearned advantages, thrives in such environments, where economic power and class blind those it benefits most to its own existence.
In academia here, this manifests as institutional racism that favors Pākehā perspectives, often at the expense of Māori and Pasifika scholars.
When we inquired further about the rejection, the response was telling: the proposal was "too ambitious" and methodologically "sought to do too much."
This rationale rings hollow against the peer reviews.
It echoes a broader pattern in New Zealand's research funding landscape, where biases creep into decisions, disadvantaging innovative or unconventional ideas—particularly those from non-white researchers. Studies and expert analyses have pointed to how funding agencies can exhibit bias against novel approaches, with reviewers sometimes penalizing projects that push boundaries rather than sticking to safe, incremental progress.
The Culture of Mediocrity: Unseeing Brown Excellence
This isn't an isolated incident; it's symptomatic of a "culture of mediocrity" that plagues Aotearoa.
Mediocrity here isn't about individual talent—New Zealand has plenty of brilliant minds—but about systemic norms that reward the familiar and punish ambition, especially when it disrupts whiteness. Whiteness deliberately "unsees" brown excellence, viewing it as a threat to the established order. This is even more so when the hegemonic structures of whiteness are threatened.
In politics, religion, and even environmental policy, this manifests as a reluctance to strive for excellence, settling instead for the status quo.
Critics have long noted New Zealand's slide into mediocrity, from economic underperformance to unwelcoming policies that fail to harness diverse potential.
In academia, this culture is amplified by funding mechanisms that favor established networks.
Māori, Pacifica, and migrant representation in university strategies is often tokenized or absent, with recent claims of racism at institutions underscoring how whiteness maintains its grip. Vision Matauranga statements become tokenized tick mark exercises that keep whiteness intact.
Research on privilege awareness in New Zealand reveals that many Pākehā are unaware of these dynamics, perpetuating a "color-blind" approach that ignores systemic inequities. And while some argue white privilege doesn't exist here—pointing to successful Māori, pacifica and migrant individuals within structures—this misses the point: it's a structural issue, not negated by exceptions.
Funding biases exacerbate this.
Globally and in New Zealand, grant allocation can be skewed by geography, ideology, gender, and novelty aversion. In the Marsden Fund, for instance, limitations in scope have led to biased outcomes and futile applications in certain panels. Even efforts like partial randomization to combat bias—adopted by some funders—highlight the problem's persistence.
Defenses and Reforms: A Balanced View
To be fair, not everyone sees the system as broken.
Defenders of New Zealand's research funding argue that recent overhauls, like the creation of Research Funding New Zealand in 2025, aim to simplify and streamline processes, making it easier for researchers to focus on innovation rather than bureaucracy.
This single independent board consolidates decision-making from multiple agencies, ostensibly boosting economic growth and global competitiveness.
Proponents claim it reduces fragmentation and underfunding, which has plagued the system under successive governments.
However, critics worry this centralization could amplify ministerial oversight, potentially worsening biases rather than alleviating them.
Pushing Forward: Resilience and the Politics of Funding
Despite the rejection, our team didn't stop. With modest internal university funding and the strength of our community networks, we accomplished about 50% of the proposed project. The project generated community-led interventions upholding food security, material solutions addressing poverty, and social cohesion solutions addressing diverse needs for cultural recognition and sustenance. Academically, it generated 7 peer reviewed research papers and 3 white papers, alongside national level campaign interventions.
When compared with 7 projects that received funding in the same time frame, the insights are revealing. Most of these projects generated between zero and three peer reviewed publications, based on a cursory search on google scholar. The social impact of the projects in community are hard to gauge because the funder portal doesn't connect to a resource where impact reports are deposited or a public interface where the impact is articulated. The lack of transparency, while drawing on public funds, further reproduces the culture of mediocrity.
The point I want to turn toward though is the power and excellence that inhabits community spaces. Communities at the margins are vitally strong and resilient.
This resilience speaks volumes—brown excellence persists, even when unseen or underfunded. The excellence that is generated in Brown communities at the margins thrives in spite of the challenges set up by whiteness. This culture of thriving excellence is rooted in the historic struggles that communities have worked through in sustained spaces of joy and healing.
But it also raises deeper questions about the politics of funding in New Zealand.
How much waste occurs when ambitious projects are dismissed? Data shows that a substantive percentage of Health Research Council grants go to projects with no dissemination evidence, representing millions in potential squander.
And at the margins, where social impact is most needed, do we really require massive budgets? Our partial success suggests that community-driven efforts can achieve meaningful change with far less, challenging the notion that big funding equals big results.
Ultimately, this culture of mediocrity, rooted in whiteness, is designed to keep the status quo intact. But by naming it, disrupting it, and persisting, we can begin to dismantle it. Aotearoa deserves better: a funding system that embraces ambition, diversity, and true excellence for all.