So a few weekends we got out for a walk in Dunedin and were wandering about and realized that we didn’t feel like cooking, so we toddled off to the local fish and chip shop. On our way there we ran into a bunch of the local students out on some kind of pub crawl.

Now, a bit of background: when Canadian students go out to get drunk and it’s not halloween we just get on with it. We put on clothing to cover out nakedness and, you know, drink. Kiwi students, not content with merely getting drunk, feel the need to dress up in costumes. At least once a year, perhaps based on some bizarre ritual that I, as a Canadian know nothing about, the Scarfies get dressed up in the bizarre, offensive racial/ethnic stereotypes one can imagine.

This years lot outdid themselves. We started off, at the low end of the scale, with idiots in ponchos and sombreros and fake beards. Things progressed rapididly down hill from here. There was a nice young fellow, a future leader of NZ industry or somesuch no doubt, in a conical hat (Vietnam) with a Japanese flag t-shirt (ehm?) and yellow face on. There were other young men (because it was mostly men) in rags with bones and clubs in blackface. The topper, the absolute best, was the fellow with a black sweater, little mustache drawn on with makeup and a red armband with a swastika on it.

Moving on from there, Christine and I were out for a walk a day or so later while the lad was off on a play date. We popped into a shop that Lucas doesn’t really like, so we could a leisurely poke about. The store sold what they called “Licorice dolls” and what others would know as “gollywog” or dolls. I remember my Mom telling me she had one when she was little, about 60 or so years ago.

Discussing this with Christine we had a moment where we wondered if much of this wasn’t racism, but rather just pure ignorance/naivite/the off shoot of a largely (or at least until recently) monocultural society.

Then I thought back to the young, drunk men we saw wandering by the chip shop. Dunedin, because of the University, the Polytech and the foundation year program at the Uni, has a small but growing Arab population. Waiting for their meals were two young men speaking in arabic while, outside, were there of their friends. The drunk young men wandered past this group. The looks on the Arab men’s faces ranged from worry/fear to disgust.

So I guess my question is this, is there ever a time when blackface/racial stereotyping of this variety ISN’T racist?

If blackface is worn in a cultural setting where it has almost no baggage is it ok?

I know how I feel, but I’m wondering what others think.

In Pulp Fiction Jules and Vincent have this conversation as they drive along, in it Vincent says: 

It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it’s just – it’s just there it’s a little different.

Living here in Dunedin I now totally get it… 

They speak English (at least mostly - Kiwi English has it’s quirks), there’s Subway and McDonalds and Burger King and KFC and Pizza Hut etc etc. Instead of Home Depot there is Mitre 10 (same colours, same basic branding), it goes on and on… but it’s all like looking at a picture in a news paper where they have blown the registration, it’s all a bit off. 

Take the bank machine for example: At home you go to the bank machine to make a deposit, you take an envelope from the holder in front of the machine and pop your money/cheque in and then move through the process.

Here the envelope gets given to you by the machine and you put a deposit slip into the envelope. Almost the same, but a bit different. 

The post office is also an odd experience: you can do mail through it, just like at home. But it’s also a state owned bank, and a place to pay all your bills. 

Food shopping remains one of the great sources of odd. Apart from food being insanely expensive here (our rough calculation is about 1.5 to 2 times the price of back home)  things are often just a little different.

Take “tomato sauce”, we couldn’t work out why our homemade pizza (store bought pizza shells) tasted so sweet and odd.. The issue was resolved when I discovered that tomato sauce is what North American’s call ketchup. 

I haven’t totally figured this out yet, but chocolate chip cookies that look like chocolate cookies elude me: the butter here seems greasier (the difference between grass fed vs grain fed?) so our cookies always sort of spread out and look more fried than baked. 

Skim milk is trim, diet coke tastes like crap where as Coke Zero is lovely. What we call chips are labeled both “crisps” and “chips”, you get all your take-out food (take-away) from either a Chinese person or a “Turkish” person (most of the “Turkish” people are actually selling variations on Lebanese food - my theory is that Turkish is Kiwi for “middle eastern”). This includes burgers and fries and fish and chips…

The oddest thing remains dog food. 

A story to explain why: 

Our first weekend here I went off to the local grocery store to get some food… I basically got lost because nothing was where I expected it to be (little differences again…). I kept walking past this case of food and thinking to myself “Wow New Zealanders sure love their baloney”. 

Finally I stopped to look at what it was. 

It was a great big roll of dog food. Huge. Gigantic. Horrifying. 

Sometimes the differences aren’t so little.

… happened to me the other day as I was leaving to go and pick Lucas up from the daycare.

This late 20’s guy came up to me at the door and said “Are you the owner of this house?”

I was prepared for “yes I am, but seriously I don’t want your cleaning service/painting service whatever”. But he surprised me, he said “I’m here to applogize and to try and make amends. It was my birthday last night and I got drunk and then one of my buddies gave me a can of paint. Like an idiot I painted my name on your wall. I’m so very sorry, there is no excuse for my doing that.” (I’m translating here, very roughly). I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.

Well actually, let’s be realistic here: The wall is a mess. It needs brick work (which will be done in May) and there were already some tags on the wall that I should have taken care of in the Fall. Also, and this is maybe just me, but I really can’t stand watching people squirm with embarrassment. It kills me inside. So I thanked him for his honesty, accepted his apology and sent him on his way.

Leaving me behind utterly shocked and stunned.