I have a good handle on white privilege and temper my actions, ethics and comments accordingly, but I also carry no guilt for it and find the constant labelling, if not offensive, sad.
Like many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Pākehā New Zealanders, I am of Māori descent but look and am as white as can be, blue eyes and all.
Like many of those people, I know my background and treasure my Māori whakapapa, it is me and in many ways I am Māori so it does hurt when I am party to conversations denigrating tangata whenua, something I used to quietly put up with or even, to my shame, take part in to be part of the crowd.
Those days are long gone. Try that with me now and the response may not be what you would expect.
Conversely, many Māori carry European ancestry with pride in the photos on the walls of their homes and wharenui and in their surnames.
It was all mix and match in the rough old days of European settlement in New Zealand to our great fortune as a country and as a people known everywhere as simply Kiwis.
Time has moved on and with the renaissance of taha Māori in the past 50 years, a resurgence in the use of te reo, with it now becoming part of the mainstream education system at last as one of New Zealand's two spoken languages, and a wider interest in Māori culture.
We now have a Parliament where Māori across all parties are more present than ever and, lately with the resurgence of the Māori Party originally founded by Dame Tariana Turia and Sir Pita Sharples some years ago, things are looking good in Māoridom, but only in terms of visibility and representation at a national level.
Leadership from Māori at local body level is another story. Māori candidates sit in the local body elections, some successful others not, like any other candidate, but there needs to be a system where Māori are guaranteed a seat at the table to make the partnership founded in the Treaty of Waitangi work properly.
If so, how are those Māori appointed? Is it by the local iwi putting up their nominations? Should it be a democratic process where the community decides in a separate part of the local body elections who will be the Māori members of local councils? I do not know but I do know things have to improve at local body level for local iwi to feel that they have fair representation in their own rohe.
I know many will disagree with these sentiments, some very vocally. Before you choke on your Weet-bix think about what was guaranteed, in Māori eyes, with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, not in British eyes. Try to look at the world through Māori eyes if you are Pākehā. It may be hard for many but think about a full and equal partnership as two peoples making one country if that helps. That's what Māori thought they were getting.
Māori wanted the protection of the Crown and could see great advantages to sharing their lands with the British, a cessation of endless tribal wars helped by missionaries and reinforced by British forces and trade opportunities within New Zealand and with the Australian south-western colonies.
We all know, or should know things did not quite work out how Māori expected them to. Much land was taken in so-called reparation or simply stolen through government-sanctioned dodgy deals, yet to be either returned or compensated for.
European introduced diseases, alcohol, tobacco and war just about did Māori in forever, getting down to a mere 37,000 in the mid-1890s from an estimated population of more than 100,000 when Cook rocked up.
When Māori wards become a hot topic in your community, and they will soon, remember the concept of a partnership of two peoples. Māori are not asking for a privilege, they are asking for their right, that's all. Don't be scared.
