Editorial: Racism ugly and a failure to see the real person

Andrew Bonallack.

The NZ Herald reported a thoughtless, brainless comment from a New Zealand woman to another New Zealand woman: why don't I give you a ride to the airport so you can go back to where you came from.

It was said because the recipient had dark skin. Fatumata Bah, originally from Saudi Arabia, arrived in New Zealand when she was 3, around the same age my father was when he arrived in New Zealand on a converted troopship from England.

There is no difference between him and her. Both had parents who reached out for a better life. Both sets of parents were pioneers, brave people who had the strength to take an opportunity. It's just that in this instance, Fatumata Bah has different coloured skin.

To this day, we continue to have migrants arriving in this country, and I am quite certain no one would ever suggest to a person from Leicestershire or Seattle to "go back where they came from" on the basis of the colour of their skin.

I have read my grandfather's diary on his arrival in New Zealand, a Londoner demobbed from the Army and tasked with finding a home and a job before his wife and two sons arrived later by ship.

His fear, loneliness and frustration with New Zealand's post-war hassles, all recounted in his diary, are hard to read. But no one ever said to him, go back to where you came from.

To exhibit racism is to fail to see the person. It's a failure to see that the worries of another person - and the dreams - for life and the future are exactly the same as any of us.

God knows there are many, many things that people in this country, particularly those with full stomachs, a home and money in the bank, fail to see.

We think that people should stop having so many children, study better at school, work harder.

How anyone can feel better about putting down someone on the basis of skin colour is beyond me.

It is simply disgusting.

It was said that Maori chieftain Te Rauparaha had a firm grip on where he was, because he was reputed to have six toes on one foot.

But I don't think any New Zealander has such a firm grip on this land that they can suggest a person of another race can go away.