Christchurch club player Sake Aca left the field in tears after copping racist abuse from Lincoln University supporters during the Christchurch senior club rugby final.

When Sake Aca was subject to racist taunts on the rugby field last month, many expressed shock and outrage. But other Cantabrians say this is only the tip of the iceberg – with a much larger, uglier picture beneath the surface. TESS MCCLURE reports.

Christchurch has long held a lingering reputation as a racist city, helped along by a skinhead presence, a relatively white population and verbal attacks like those that hit the rugby field last month. But many still say that the reputation doesn't match up with reality and racism is a rare exception. So is something rotten in the Garden City? And how does racism play out on the city's streets?

Massey University psychologist James Liu specialises in cross-cultural psychology and has spent much of his time researching racism and attitudes toward immigrants in New Zealand. He says for the most part, public racist attacks are uncommon here, but Christchurch's circumstances could force unseen prejudices to the surface.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ Sake Aca says he has forgiven the person who abused him at a club match.

"It's worth thinking about whether there is more everyday frustration and stress in Christchurch post-earthquake."

He calls the phenomenon "frustration aggression hypothesis".

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"This is the idea that when things aren't going well, and you don't have any way to lash out or correct what's not going well, you find some other target to direct it at."

So daily traffic woes, difficulty finding housing, insurance battles and the overall stress of living in post-quake Christchurch could cause underlying currents of racism to erupt in more public, aggressive ways – like verbal attacks on the rugby field.

"I suspect that some of [what has happened in Christchurch] is frustration related," Liu says.

"There's more stress people are experiencing post-quake compared to prior and that plays itself out as these kinds of attacks or lack of civility in certain situations."

But others, including Massey University sociologist Paul Spoonley, say Christchurch has long had a harder core of groups advocating more extreme racism.

Spoonley says during the late 1970s-80s, after the dawn raids era and 1981 Springbok tour, "There were some centres around the country where groups developed who wanted to preserve old white New Zealand – and the greatest number of those were in Christchurch".

Christchurch now has more white power groups and more supporters than anywhere else in the country which, he says, range "from the polite racists to the harder core of skinheads, who were involved in violent attacks that can only be described as hate crimes".

So where did they come from? Spoonley says white power in the city really took off in the 1980s when Christchurch's strong working class was hit by economic downturn. Those changes, he says, pushed a number of them towards a political racism. With Christchurch again facing pressure on housing, trouble in the dairy sector and the stresses of the rebuild, it can provide the right circumstances for racist groups or feelings to thrive again.

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Amber Clarke, lecturer on Maori health and the Treaty of Waitangi at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, says these overt expressions of racism are really just scratching the surface. Incidents like racist comments, being followed in shops by security, or pulled over at a higher rate by police are "microaggressions" that reflect a deeper problem, she says.

"Those things that you can name but not everyone will see it – but for the person who's experiencing that, it's a continual building, it's an every day occurrence. And they understand it's occurring because at some point, there's been a judgement on who they are.

"We know there's there's a prejudgement and an assumption of our abilities based on some kind of ethnic profiling."

Clarke says while they might seem small, those incidents reflect a much deeper problem, which can leave ethnic minorities less able to thrive in healthcare, education and commerce, and more likely to be arrested or imprisoned.

"There are multiple layers of looking at this – one is systemic and that has to include a historical context. Those systems have been entrenched and rendered invisible and become normalised, especially to those people whom they privilege."

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Malo Seumanutafa has had first-hand experience of prejudice based on skin colour and says the problem is widespread in Christchurch.

"I've seen it and experienced it. Employers, government agencies, our police force, store employees. Everybody does it."

He says for many people racist insults were simply part of life in Christchurch. He recalled his primary schools days:

"Sure, you get called black n*****, darkie, f****** boonger.

"That's just part of life."

Other day to day experiences might include being followed around shops by assistants, or being pulled over by police many times when he's out on the road.

"I can't prove that some policemen in Christchurch act a certain way towards people because of their colour or culture. I can only say that when all the stories are grouped together, there's a pattern. And that pattern leans towards colour profiling."

When he was young, Seumanutafa got used to name calling or racist insults and it barely bothers him any more. But he says more pervasive than insults on the street or the sports field is the subtle prejudice that can prevent you accessing jobs, higher incomes or positions of power.

"When that stuff starts to affect your life and your livelihood, that's when it matters to me.

"It's being talked down to at work, being called boy, like 'Hey boy, what are you doing boy?' And I think, 'Would you call a white man that?'

"I know so many guys who might have done the job longer and be better qualified, but they don't get the job. Instead, it'll be a blonde white girl."

Liu says there's plenty of evidence that Seumanutafa is correct, and racial discrimination comes into play in who gets hired for a job. Auckland University academics conducted a study in 2005, sending CVs with identical qualifications to human resources departments. When they changed names on the CVs to make them sound less European, or gave them qualifications from a Singaporean institution rather than a British one, candidates were much less likely to get a callback from a hiring agency.

He quotes one of the recruitment agencies interviewed in the study: "I would say that 75 per cent of clients we deal with discriminate when they describe what they want in an employee. Because the client pays us to find that employee, we in turn have to discriminate every day. It is morally and ethically against our views but the bottom line is the company's needs."

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So could post-quakes stress, housing pressures and an economic downturn as the rebuild slows lead to a resurgence of racist feelings in Christchurch?

Spoonley says it's possible that hard times could push more people toward racism.

"It always will for some members of the community – when you look at white supremacists, they tend to be working class white who believe no-one's sticking up for them."

But he believes things are changing for Christchurch and the future could hold a different picture.

"There are hopeful signs," he says, including politicians denouncing racism and anti-white supremacy marches.

"My instinct is that there are fewer of these groups and fewer supporters in Christchurch in 2015. People appreciate what migrants have done in relation to the rebuild. It's not like they've come to take our jobs and our country, it's more that they've come to help us."

Liu says Pakeha South Islanders are more likely to have cool feelings toward other cultures or ethnicities than their northern counterparts.

"Typically, urban areas tend to be more accepting of diversity than rural areas, and the north more than the south."

But he also says things are starting to get better, as the South Island becomes more ethnically diverse.

"The thing that produces tolerance is contact with other ethnic and cultural groups. So if there's a challenge for Christchurch it's to encourage groups to mix with each other, get to know each other and have more of those interactions."