Thank you for writing this article, it is a great and intense read highlighting the institutionalised racism that black people face in the United Sates of America. As I am not from the United States of America I was able to find some parallels between this and my own country, New Zealand.

One of the confronting things was that I can see how your ideas can apply to New Zealand. We also have some of the same institutionalised racism here that was discussed in the article, you only need think about what the idea of a “better school” or “nicer area” means to get this point. Or in New Zealand history you can look at the two different translations of the treaty of Waitangi, the land grabs, the native schools act, the land taking court, the dawn raids and the poll tax among many, many other events.

Before any kiwi reading tells me “but New Zealand has the best race relations in the world” (which is something you tend to hear in NZ) or “at least we are not as bad as Australia, South Africa, Canada or The United States of America”, it is not a competition about who is the “least”racist colonial country. It is about acknowledging that we live within a system of institutionalised racism and working out what we can do to make it better.