The men had apologised to the Kaimai Settlers Committee for turning up to the quiz night on Saturday dressed in the costumes.
The committee has come under fire for not taking action when the group first showed up at the fundraiser event in the Bay of Plenty town of Kaimai, west of Tauranga.
The Kaimai Settlers Committee said it regretted that it didn’t ask the team to leave or remove their offensive costumes.
“The fundraising committee deplores the behaviour of the quiz team. This type of behaviour is not acceptable in any community. [It] regrets it did not have a procedure in place to ask the team to leave when it arrived at the event. In the future it will ensure there are adequate procedures in place to stop anything like this happening again.”
In its apology, the team told the committee it was “deeply ashamed and embarrassed by its poor judgement and lack of awareness about the gravity of the situation”.
The committee said the team had taken responsibility for the hurt and offence they caused.
“It was completely wrong of us to act in a way that perpetuates racism and reinforces harmful stereotypes,” the team told the committee.
Attendees of the event hosted by the Kaimai Settlers Committee were left feeling outraged and one person claimed the group were commended for their “dedication” to their costumes as they refused to remove their hoods to drink.
The quiz attendee told The New Zealand Herald for an earlier story that she had her back to the door as the group arrived, but an audible gasp from the crowd made her turn her head.
“The noise [the crowd made] was really hard to describe,” she said.
At first, she thought she was misinterpreting their costumes and they unfortunately just looked like the KKK, but it quickly dawned on her that this was not the case.
“There definitely would have been other people that were kind of disgusted, but it did feel like there were a lot of people who thought it was quite funny as well."
She said she found the group “intimidating” as they shouted to the crowd, though she was not close enough to hear what they were saying.
“It made me feel sick."
Yesterday, a representative from the Kaimai Settlers Committee denied the group was commended, and claimed they “had discussed removing them”.
“However, nobody approached anyone with concerns at the time or throughout the night. Had they had, we would have acted,” the representative told the Herald.
“We have approached the group concerned and strongly suggested they front with an explanation and apology for their actions.”
The Ku Klux Klan, sometimes known as the KKK or the Klan, is the moniker of several past and present American white supremacists, far-right terrorists and hate organisations.
Their main targets include immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, Latin people, Jews, Asian Americans, Native Americans and Catholics, as well as African Americans.
He Whenua Taurikura National Centre for Countering Violent Extremism co-director Paul Spoonley questioned why anyone thought the costumes would be okay in 2023, calling them “deeply offensive”.
“Do they not know who the KKK are?” Spoonley asked.
“I mean, the KKK are described as the oldest and most infamous of the US hate groups, so it really has no place in contemporary New Zealand.”
He said he was disappointed the Kaimai Settlers Committee did not immediately kick them out, and the group “have let down our, minority, ethnic and faith communities” as a result.
