Road rage and blatant racial discrimination

It has been a while but I have something to think about... When are New Zealanders going to realise that we have a responsibility toward immigrants arriving into this nation?

I ask this question because of some blatant racial discrimination I saw last week. I was driving out of the driveway of my work turning right at the traffic lights. As I sat at the intersection I saw a short middle-aged white man in a large 4 wheel drive vehicle leaning across his passanger seat yelling obsenities and racial slurs out his window at another driver. Because of the position of his vehicle and other vehicles I could not see the recipient of the monologue. It was loud, it was long and it was passionate! I cringed.

The lights went green for me and I slowly pulled out as I continued to watch the drama unfold. As the recipient came into sight I was not at all surprised to see an Asian man in the driver's seat of a mid-sized sedan. He had one of those very round Asian faces like my maths teacher used to have, he reminded me of Mr Kim (maths teacher Waitara High School 1990's) a lot, one of those faces that when the person laughs the whole face lights up and shines, I remember it so well because Mr Kim rarely laughed but when he did it was one of the funniest most enchanting things I ever saw, I loved it! So the recipient of the abuse in the mid-sized sedan had one of those faces, it wasn't laughing. The look was a mixture of fear "Is this red-necked four-wheel-drive driving kiwi bully going to get out of his wagon?" and wonder "surly one little driving mistake didn't envoke the necessity for this kind of rage". (My expectations of his thoughts).

Why, why should any person have to undergo such racial discrimination. So we sterotype foreigners as bad drivers, ask any
Aussy they will tell you kiwis are the worst drivers. So many of our immigrants have never driven in conditions like ours. That is beside the point! It wasn't just a driving error that envoked such a response, it was much more than that! Clearly it was an underlying racist and discriminatory word view. Perhaps even a threatened ego?

Why do Kiwis respond so negatively to other cultures? And I know not all Kiwis respond in such a way but I also know this is not an isolated incident, ask you local foreign shop assistant or petrol station attendent. I often wonder about our immigration policies and other such things, do we have systems for dealing with such issues? While you are talking to an Indian or Asian behind the till ask them as well what they are qualified to do, you will see the lack of our systems.

I also wonder about the theological rightness and wrongness of things such as boarder controls and passports. I know the necessity of such things but immigration policies that only allow the wealthy in and perhaps de-humanise other cultures/individuals, refugee policies which are tightly controlled, the ability to reject those on the fringes of society, the ability to send back those who don't fit in our society through temporary residency etc etc, where does the church sit on these issues? What does it mean for us to interact with the marginalised in our society, usually those who are marginalised by national policy and racial discrimination.

Perhaps, if the church wanted a context within which to be Christ to the marginalised we would all be setting up immigrant centres offering help and assistance with driving, language jobs etc for any and all. Perhaps this is where the growing edge of church ministry should sit.