Sure, we don't have lone nutters running amok every five minutes, and although there have been several such incidents in the past none of those was starkly "terror" attacks – slaughter of a defined sector of society by someone driven by extremist views.
Indeed, excepting the French Government's sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, causing the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, this is the first terrorist attack we've suffered.
But we cannot claim to be innocent when it comes to racism.
Scratch any New Zealander and beneath the surface you will almost always find some germ of prejudice, most often along the lines of "dirty / lazy / greedy / lying" Māori or Pākehā (depending on your own colour).
For that matter, many born here view migrants – especially those from "non-traditional" countries – with suspicion.
We may not usually distinguish on the basis of a person's religion – thankfully we're egalitarian to that extent at least – but their cultural values we question and, often, quietly reject.
Sometimes loudly, too. Anti-migrant populists like Winston Peters don't spring out of nothing.
In the words of JB Heperi-Smith, the man at the centre of the racially charged incident at Otane I happened to be writing about last Friday, we're still growing up as a nation, and don't yet fully understand each other.
Well, perhaps this is the wake-up call we need to realise that, and finally grow into the equal society we're still fooling ourselves we already are.
But we cannot reasonably hope to achieve that goal when hatred goes unchecked, and vilification and belittlement must be shrugged off as everyday occurrences.
And especially when the power of the internet and the media are used to promote and sustain prejudice in all its forms.
It's great that major companies are withdrawing advertising from the likes of Facebook and Twitter until they sort out their protocols to limit hate-speech. Even better if the net giants manage to put a lid on the sort of video content that allowed the killer to livestream his murderous rampage.
But we need more. We need television and print media, like this newspaper, to stand up and say no to hate speech of all kinds.
Telling someone who's here legitimately to "go back to their own country" is hate speech.
Implying Māori don't deserve Treaty settlements – despite the legitimacy of that process – or that iwi are not using settlement funds "properly" is hate speech. Both are rooted in racism, and neither is excusable.
Yet we see letters and texts in the paper more days than not making just such statements.
Any addict needs support, and while ours might be at the lower level of addiction, nevertheless we're addicted to racism.
To own up to that and put it behind us, we need to stop being told that to be racist is okay. As Christchurch bleakly proves, it isn't.
* Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.
