When I was a kid, an old stooped Chinese man would walk past the school every day. We would all rush to the fence and chant Ching Chong Chinaman. There was no malice, it just seemed the right thing to sing.
I think about that man many times now and how he must have felt and feel so sad about him. He never ever raised his head when we sang.

When Covid began, one of my fellow volunteers who is an Asian very gentle, born here and never been to China, came in one day very shaken. She had been verbally abused and told to go back to China. I talked to her about my old Chinaman chant and how bad I felt. She said to me that she experiences being called names at least once a week and so do her kids and how sometimes she feels very afraid.

I know my own parents who weren’t visibly different from Kiwis but couldn't speak English got a lot of flak and called bloody foreigners. I remember them discussing the words and puzzling over what exactly bloody meant.

Yes, forgiveness is important and even more so...walking in another’s shoes.