ABSTRACT
New Zealanders are extremely proud of their reputation for good race relations. In official publications and speeches, they tell the world that ‘Maoris and Pakehas live on terms of complete unity and equality’ and ‘get on better together than any other two races in the world’. But an American sociologist has attacked this claim as ‘unwarrantably sanguine and complacent’ (Ausubel, 1960), and a leading New Zealand scholar writes that ‘if one gets even a little beneath the surface a less happy situation reveals itself’ (Sutherland, 1952: 149). Maori-Pakeha relations may be relatively good on a world-wide basis, but they are not nearly as good as we like to think.
