It was my first year at university when I read Dolly Alderton’s book Everything I Know About Love. Going into it, I wanted to understand what love meant. For Dolly, it was platonic friendships with women where she finally understood what that pesky little word signified. For me it was a little harder. While Dolly’s stories are sweet and familiar, my experience as a double minority – interracial and gay – has been coloured just as much by love as by casual (and not-so-casual) racism. I found it hard to know about love, but very easy to know about hate. Hate is loud, insistent, and unavoidable. It showed up in rooms before I did; it shapes the way I laugh, the way I walk, the way I choose my words.
So here it is: Everything I know about hate.
When I was a young boy, I moved to Aotearoa from South Africa. It was a shock to look around and see only one colour: white. Being non-white, insecurities I never knew I had came rushing in. My jokes didn’t land, people looked at me like I didn't belong. I felt myself becoming the jester to avoid being the joke. Like maybe if I erased parts of myself, I'd finally fit in. It wasn’t just an identity crisis; it was grief, a slow mourning for the boy I was back home. I felt that I stuck out like a sore thumb – on the rugby field, at mass on Sundays, even just walking down the street. Everything about me was amplified. Different. Wrong. It was a pervasive feeling that clung to me from high school and into uni. I hoped when I arrived at Otago that it would be different, that no one would care about such things. That nobody would see colour. I was quick to realise that this hope was naive.
The first thing most people notice about me is my hair. I was lucky enough to be born with tight, defined curls that at most times resembles a minor fro. Unfortunately, it’s something people beeline for. I honestly don't understand why people think that they have the right to touch me and my luscious locks, just because it's a little curlier than theirs. I am not a poodle. I am not something to pat. While I will always appreciate a compliment, the “Can I touch it?” follow up I’d pass.
Even when you're in a mosh pit, just one body among many, and you think you fit in… you don’t. At a Castle Street host during Re-Ori, I was having a grand time dancing with my friends, thinking I was camouflaged amongst the crowd. Suddenly a Caucasian woman apparently just had to come and have her hands all up in my fro, reminding me I was different. Her excuse: “It was just so beautiful, I couldn't help myself.” HUH? My mum raised me to know better than to stick my hands where they shouldn't be. It’s a shame this woman can't say the same.
Another thing I’ve learned about hate is that it doesn't clock out when I clock in at work. I have a part-time job at an upper-class restaurant where I serve upper-class people – rich Europeans or Americans, a lot of the time. It’s at this job that I cop about 50% of the racism I’m subjected to. A few weeks ago, a woman ordered a glass of the house Sauv, the ‘Nga Waka’. Before I could help her pronounce it, she confidently said, “I’ll have a [N-word] Waka.” I was taken aback – all the way back to ‘I had a dream’. I pulled myself together and corrected her. Then guess what? Not a single apology, just a chirpy, “That one please.” With a smile. Imagine travelling 12,000km to New Zealand to call a wine by a racial slur. Dropping off her hate crime wine, I was reminded that you can't spell hospitality without hostility. Later that same week came another blast from the racist past. While working a private American conference dinner, I walked in to clear plates when an older man clapped his hands to get the room's attention to thank “the help”. He looked straight at me while the room applauded. Like all the times before, I forced my polite smile and walked out, losing a piece of myself for letting it slide.
Racism is more persistent than scabies, it seems, because even in class it has a way of showing up. In a business tutorial (BComs once again not beating the allegations) we were doing our usual group work – or at least that’s what it was supposed to be. In reality, “group work” meant me doing all the talking while everyone else sat there contributing about as much as a houseplant. Ten minutes in, one guy – who was pale enough to make Edward Cullen look like he just got back from a Fiji holiday – decided it was time to open his mouth. With his full chest, he blurted, “Oh come on Tristan, my [N-word], surely you share.” My neck snapped so fast I think I left my soul three seconds behind. I just stared at him, blinking in disbelief. Meanwhile, he chuckled to himself, looking around for approval like he’d just delivered the joke of the century. Spoiler: no laugh track followed. In that moment, I didn’t know what was worse: the audacity, the ignorance, or the fact that this man really thought he’d just said something clever.
These are just fractions of what I've dealt with. Racism doesn't have to be your life's biggest mistake to still ruin someone else's day. Sometimes it's big and blatant, other times it's small enough that people laugh it off. Like the stranger that said “wow, you talk really proper” as if it was a compliment. The friends who say “I can say it in songs” even after being at university for 2 years. None of these made headlines, but they still stuck with me the same. Dolly Alderton wrote that she learned about love from her long-term friendships with women. Me? Everything I know about hate I learnt being different in a room full of non-different people.
I'm telling you about these experiences, not for sympathy, but to show that people are often aware of their prejudice and continue to act on it. Just because it’s normalised within our communities to laugh, doesn't mean you can't say anything to stop this kind of behaviour in the future. Racism never takes a break, even if I need it to. If you've ever laughed along, stayed silent, or brushed it off, then congratulations: you've kept hate alive. But here’s the truth: it is cooler to be different. Embrace it. Be who you are. And if whilst reading this you “mhmm”-ed or nodded that head, you’re part of the community. If you see something, say something.