Bay of Plenty Times opinion: We must celebrate our differences

Flowers lay at a memorial near the Masjid Al Noor mosque for victims in last week's shooting in Christchurch. Photo / AP

A week after the horrific terrorist attacks in Christchurch, and what have we learned?

We know our gun control laws needed to change. We know how dangerous social media can be in spreading messages of hate.

We know we have a Prime Minister who, under the most trying of circumstances, is capable of setting the tone for the nation's response to a terrible tragedy.

"New Zealand is their home," she said of the victims, "they are us."

The country followed her lead this week. New Zealand has been a nation united in grief - the country threw its arms around the Muslim community in a show of solitude and support.

Vigils are being held across the country, thousands of flowers and messages have been left outside mosques, donations are flooding in for families, condolence books are being signed, church congregations have prayed for the victims of the attack.

Members of New Zealand's Muslim community responded in kind. Saima Anis, a Muslim woman living in Tauranga, wrote an open letter of thanks to New Zealand saying she was stunned and overwhelmingly appreciative of the support that had been shown.

The question now is: Will this sense of unity and acceptance be long-lasting?

There are already signs of fatigue. More than one person I know has said the blanket coverage of the tragedy - the endless stream of images and stories coming out of Christchurch - is so confronting that they feel compelled to switch off.

Such a reaction is understandable, but the danger is it increases the likelihood that broader issues arising from this event will not be confronted.

That would be a tragedy in itself.

There are hard questions to be asked about race relations in the wake of this tragedy, and we must be brave enough to ask them.

How welcoming were we before the attack in Christchurch? How much effort did we make to learn about the vast range of cultures in New Zealand? Did we confront racism when we witnessed it?

Former race relations commissioner Susan Devoy touched on this a day after the attack, writing in The Spinoff, she said Muslim Kiwis have faced hatred, abuse and extremists in our country for years.

Devoy said every Muslim woman she knew had faced racist abuse in New Zealand - in person, online or in the media.

"When people ask what can we do today, the answer is the same as it was yesterday, last year and the year before that: we must never, ever let hatred and racism go unchallenged when we see it in our communities – on a bus, on Facebook, on the street," she wrote.

We also, in my view, need to challenge a distorted view of egalitarianism that holds that Kiwis must be the same. That those who choose to call this country home should cast aside the customs of their homeland to fit it.

If we truly accept the values inherent in the statement "they are us" then we need to embrace and celebrate our differences as Kiwis.