Thankful for heritage

I’m a 70-year-old white male of Irish and Scottish extraction.

I am really getting tired of opening the paper or turning on the radio or TV and being told that I’m racist (even though I don’t know that I am), that I am too white, that I am male or many other imagined faults.

I spent most of my working life communicating with suppliers and customers in places like Germany and France and the UK and Iceland and China and Indonesia and India and Israel, so I get tired of being told that I need to learn Maori.

It happens that all those contacts know the English language better than most Maori in New Zealand do.

The more I hear these endless complaints that some air-head says about being racist or white advantage etc, the more resistant I become to taking anything seriously that these claims make. I am proud of my heritage and I’m extremely thankful that my native language is English and that it is the international language. I’m thankful of the work ethic that my parents passed onto me and I feel sorry for those who think that blaming someone else for various troubles is the solution to their – usually self imposed – disadvantaged situation.

Barry Burke, Hamilton