Dear Sir Rapiti: For the past few weeks in letters to the Sun we have seen a side of what some may call Maori bashing and others a reality check on the cultural pendulum swinging out of control in favour of Maori.
We have read the raw and racist comments from both Maori and Pakeha and all it does is pour salt on old wounds.
The letters from Mary Brooks are very hurtful and show a lot of ignorance and very little empathy. If Mary Brooks had to use a seperate toilet because the flash one was only for Pakeha down on the Strand, as was the case for my mother's generation, I am sure she would have a different attitude toward Maori. When I first started as a columnist I was given some wise advice from an old kaumatua when I couldn't deal with the poison pens and the racist hate mail that I regularly received. 'Save it and use it as wall paper” he said, 'to show your kids how far we have come from the dark days when Maori were treated as second class citizens on their own whenua.” Mary's letters will become part of that wallpaper. If she could change the ink in her pen from poison to compassion she could then become part of the solution not the problem. Surely we should be all learning from yesterday's wrongs and building a better tomorrow for our kids to inherit?
We have come a long way and we still have a long way to go but we cant go back to the dark days, and we must make every effort to forgive but not forget yesterday's mistakes.
If we cant fix up our own backyard with a little bit of love, laughter and learning in our letters to the editor then what hope is there for fixing up the rest of the world?

Tommy Kapai, Te Puna.