Councillor calls out racist comments

JUNE 17, 2021
Updated 31 minutes ago

Auckland

An email exchange over the Auckland harbour cycleway included one racist criticism too far for an Auckland councillor, who says she encounters it “all the time”

An Auckland councillor fed up with racist comments from members of the public has posted one on her social media accounts to try to draw out the problem and make it stop.

Josephine Bartley, who is the first Pasifika woman councillor, was told by a person who contacted her on her council email address about the Waitematā cycle crossing that: “I actually thought you brown skinned people gave a toss. Obviously I was mistaken. Time you go. Goodbye at the next election.”

After receiving the Wednesday evening message she decided to post it on Facebook and Twitter to try to make people see the racism councillors can face. Her own comment was, simply: ‘Can we just keep it to the issues, please? The colour of my skin has nothing to do with it.”

“I’m just sick of it,” she told Newsroom.  “I get it probably once a week… lots and lots of it. It just sucks when the colour of a person’s skin comes into it.”

She worried the racial comments would discourage others from seeking public roles. “It’s not really a great message for diversity, for people to put themselves forward.”

Bartley, who represents the Maugakiekie ward and joined the council in 2018, said her family and others had even suggested she consider stepping down to lessen the stress of racial and other abuse. “They just worry about me. They think it’s not worth it for me to undergo all this criticism and anger when I do this because I care about people.”

She’d thought about their suggestion, she told Newsroom. “But I don’t want to do that. I stood for my community and I’m not going to let them down because of bullies.”

She’d referred this week’s racist comment to the council’s democracy services officials and security who were looking into it. “I don’t feel like there’s any protection. I get that people say ‘you put yourselves up there to be elected and this is just part of it, but….”

“I don’t know if it’s because I’m the first Pasifika woman to be elected. Maybe they think women are easier targets?”

Bartley said that with the help of a fellow councillor, Cathy Casey, she’d referred at least one previous comment to the police. “But because they are not directly threats against me… it’s a comment like ‘Pacific Islanders are violent dogs that need to be put down, in a post about me that time, nothing could be done.”

The level of racist criticism had been a surprise when she became a councillor. It had not arisen when she was chair of the Maugakiekie local board, or in her previous work roles with organisations like the Red Cross.

“Never. Never. It’s since being a councillor.

“Wow. It’s so much about race. I’ve never faced racism before. I accept people have go’s at politician. But just keep it on the issue. There’s no reason why the colour of my skin can be brought into it.”

The email this week, about the cycleway, seemed to have been based on a belief that because she was a Pasifika councillor that she would oppose the cycleway. “I think they were expecting me to publicly oppose the cycleway because it is a lot of money and because I’m a Pacific Islander, and Pacific Islanders are concerned with other ways to spend that money.”

She had regularly had members of the public tell her she deserved to lose her job. “Things like ‘I hope you don’t have a mortgage because you won’t be back in to pay it back’ despite the fact I earned more in my last job.”

She said people had issues they were passionate about, for example about Auckland’s trees, or over the Maunga authority, and when things got angry or rude she tried to ‘”suck it up and try to get back on the actual issue and not deal with racist stuff.

“Sometimes I’ve tried to talk to them about the racist stuff they bring up but it’s hard to challenge someone’s thinking in a phone call.” 

Her ethnicity had been raised face-to-face in meetings at times, but mainly through people saying she should be voting a certain way because she was a Pacific Islander.

Bartley was aware other councillors faced some race-based comments “but the others don’t get it like we get it.

“Even Efeso (Collins, a fellow councillor) has said to me that he doesn’t get it as much as me and he feels sorry for me.”

She wondered if people’s motivation for the comments was to stop her running again for the council seat.

The response on social media through Thursday had been “supportive and disgusted in seeing colour bring brought up in this day and age.”

Because she had not encountered racism in the past, Bartley did not want to make broad generalisations about Auckland or New Zealand today. 

“I know Auckland is much better than that. That’s why I’m doing this because I want to build a better Auckland for everybody.

“I don’t want my grand niece growing up with people like this dominating public discussion.”

Newsroom emailed the correspondent who brought Bartley’s skin colour into his email on Wednesday about the cycleway. No response has been received.