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.
