Nigger. Wop. Wog. Kike. Darkie. Hoorie. Whitey. Kaffir. Bongo. Slant. Golliwog. And, perhaps my favourite, “Bloody Maoris,” but rendered with that annoying Euro twang that makes it come out as “Maaaaries.”

“I’m not a racist, but…” Who’s heard this before? Often as not there follows a statement that includes one of the terms I’ve helpfully listed above. “I’m not a racist, but…” is one of those terms I wince at, because I know what’s coming. It’s second only to “Some of my best friends are ___________, but…” as a signifier that someone’s about to embarrass themselves.

Because racism is an embarrassment, in an age where science has clearly debunked the notion that “superiority” – that mythic concept - is endemic to the lightness of your skin or racial ancestry. We now know that the “superior” can be any colour, with perhaps the ultimate rebuttal to the bitter rednecks sticking to their racial guns being the mixed-race man who now occupies the White House.

Embarrassment or not, it’s still with us. It takes many forms, breeding in the dank, ignorant corners of human minds – and University offices, lecture rooms and halls.

Waikato University is, perhaps more than any other in New Zealand, strongly connected to Maori – a commitment reflected in the upcoming celebration of Kingitanga day. Partly because of this connection, Waikato University prides itself on its engagement with Maori and Maori issues, down to the student level. Its law school places a particular emphasis on Maori issues, and when I arrived here it drove me crazy.

I’d been raised to respect all races as fundamentally equal, and going to a primary school in the country with an 80 percent Maori roll mean that some of my best friends were Maori. My best mate through High School was part-Maori, and I never thought anything of it. I thought, with justification, that I was not in any way racist. Then I arrived at University and was told, in my classes, that I was.

Not in as many words, but that was the overwhelming impression we had, sitting in our lectures and tutorials. We were taught Maori mythology like it was scripture, we were told of the countless injustices of the past, and it was made clear that, in some kind of way, we – Pakeha – had to bear the burden of guilt passed by our ancestors. I felt like it was racism, towards me, and I felt it was unfair. I’d never done a racist thing in my life, and here I was being told it was all my fault.

Cracks began to show. One day a Maori woman sitting by the front began to scream, loud and shrill, about the many evils colonialism had wrought, then and now. It was horrible. My Pakeha friends began muttering darkly in tutorials, and plenty of Maori mates thought it was over the top. We took the piss accordingly. When the formation of the Maori party was praised from the lectern as being a positive step towards true tino rangatiratanga I doodled a white fist raised against a Confederate flag background, the symbol of the “European Party” we laughed about creating. Sure, we were kidding. Mostly. I know I felt real resentment, and many of my friends felt it deeper.

The more it was gently beat into us the more we felt it. We weren’t racists, but we were, we felt, being forced into the mold – with only one escape: acquiescence.

We could go the route we felt we were being quietly pushed to take – that of accepting a largely “academic” guilt. Or, and this is the action I know many took, we could take the resentment and nurse it or bury it, only to have it bubble up every time a politician took the stage talking about Maori rights and entitlements in a bare-faced attempt to buy votes. I know when Don Brash made the infamous Orewa speech it resonated with me, and with many of my colleagues. Concerted campaigns of “awareness” had made me aware, all right, and I hated it.

Luckily, I quit law school and have since had time to reflect. When I looked into the content of Brash’s speech I found much of it a myth. The Maori entitlement machine is a mostly a creation of lazy minds. It’s too bad that many still believe in it, and at this University, I lay at least some of the blame on the way and the content of what we were taught.

I think part of the problem is because any talk that could be labelled racism has become a taboo, a “hate speech” that can’t be uttered, forced into the subconscious. I’m not talking hard-core white supremacists here – they are what they are, and I pity them. But for the “ordinary Kiwis,” National went after that election campaign, the quiet millions on the fences – you can’t say what you think. And because there’s no real dialogue, there’s no redress for when people say things – often quietly, to themselves, while watching the news – that are utterly wrong.

The only way to reverse this is through education, and not the smug, “we’re right” lectures I got in law school. That’s why I think Kingitanga Day is an excellent opportunity to stop, examine your prejudices – because that’s what they are, and we all have them – and see if there’s any actual basis in fact. Do some reading – a book called Bullshit, Backlash and Bleeding Hearts, by David Slack, available in the University Library, is a great place to start. When you find yourself thinking “Bloody Maaaries,” if that’s the kind of thing you’re prone to doing, ask yourself why. We’re all exactly the same, under the skin, and I think that’s as good a place as any to start thinking.