For an American visitor to Napier last Saturday it caused bemusement and then a chuckle — but for several locals, the mayor and tourism folk it was anything but a joke.
It was a printed sign, in black ink on an A3-size sheet of paper, and in large capital letters featured the words "ITS OKAY TO BE WHITE".
Three posters were pasted together on a specially built sign pillar directly opposite the Sound Shell and just a short walk from the Napier i-Site Centre where hundreds of visitors from two visiting cruise ships came and went during the day.
The local spotted them during the morning but he had missed them at first passing and it was only after the tourist approached him that he took them in.
"He was African-American and he asked 'are you folks racists?" the local man, who asked not to be named, said.