The once-prevalent idea that American blacks should go back to Africa has a parallel in New Zealand where I live, where the Māori and Pacific Islander populations, now a quarter of the total nationwide and in big cities like Auckland, were not enslaved by the local settlers, at least.

But where, nonetheless, there has long been a belief among Pākehā (whites) that indigenous minorities don't belong in the cities, to which they largely immigrated after WWII, and should instead go back to the countryside and the islands.

Except, of course, that most of New Zealand (Aotearoa in Māori) is covered in mountains, and the islands of the Pacific are mostly little dots, so there isn't really anywhere to go back to, as populations have increased.

The same bundle of prejudices includes a seemingly 'enlightened' tendency to emphasise the tribal and traditional aspects of Māori life in a Dances with Wolves sense. In this way the prejudice about indigenous people not belonging in the Aotearoa/NZ city is made acceptable to liberals.

(Ironically, most old-time Māori actually dwelt in and around the sites of the future settler cities and were driven into the interior hills in the 1860s, in a series of wars. The founding of settler NZ, where just about the whole of the settler population now lives in an urbanised coastal Riviera, has a lot in common with the founding of the state of Israel in that sense. We Pākehā – you can see from my photo that I am such – grabbed the coastal des. res. real estate that was desired by all in fact, and then started to think of the Māori as hill tribes. Which is how most hill tribes got to be hill tribes in other countries as well.)

So, there is an element of same old same old in all the lands of settler colonialism perhaps, with local intonation, but always resting on the idea that the whites/settlers raised a modern country out of the wilderness; a modern country in which certain other people such as blacks or indigenous folk don't belong.

As if the blacks hadn't put in so much of the work, obviously, in building America, and as if indigenous peoples hadn't contributed the land at the very least. (As it has often been said, of course.)

And so this is the common foundational myth of all such settler societies: that you can just somehow sweep blacks and indigenous folk aside, and forget about history, mainly as an excuse to avoid some kind of reparation or repair.

Having said that, I do appreciate the comments by a couple of people who've pointed out that Lincoln probably improved somewhat toward the end.

Likewise, there are plenty of instances from Aotearoa / NZ history to show that individuals in Aotearoa / NZ held all sorts of opinions, and changed their minds right through our history.

For instance, the Māori-language anthem sung at rugby games was actually written by a nineteenth-century settler named Thomas Smith, who took the trouble to learn the indigenous language and also took part in the 1879 Smith/Nairn Commission which ruled that the Pākehā had been an unreasonably hostile neighbour to the Māori (not that too much immediate notice was taken of its findings). The words of the anthem are partly about being kind to one's neighbour, whence perhaps also current PM Jacinda Ardern's injunctions to be kind.

Now one might call Smith a white saviour, or argue that the Māori words of our present anthem ought to have been written by an actual Māori rather than some cultural appropriator! All fair enough, up to a point.

Still, it would actually be as damaging to overlook the awakening conscience of white/Pakeha progressivism, where it has appeared throughout history, often imperfectly at first, in fits and starts, as it would be to practice any other kind of amnesia. Perhaps in some ways more so, given that the whole point is to change people's minds, and that is not possible if we suppose that people can't improve.