OPINION: Let's keep this short and simple.

Pākehā is not a slur.

The word "Pākehā" is not a racist insult.

I don't know how many times people need to keep saying this, but I hope this is the last.

Pākehā is just a noun.

There is no ulterior motive, there is no grand joke or conspiracy at play.

Pākehā is a perfectly fine word, one which is a fitting and useful descriptor of a group of people.

Yet somehow, a surprisingly large number of people believe this innocent noun is out to get them. These people are wrong.

It is an insult to this country's intelligence and education system that real people believe this easily debunked and divisive myth.

But year after year, our media outlets carry near identical stories on the topic of the word "Pākehā" and how offensive it is or isn't.

This week, we hear from a Christchurch woman who stopped an academic at a council meeting.

He had used the perfectly fine word, and she wanted to wrongly inform him it was "casual racism".

According to the academic, associate professor Ekant Veer, she said the name "means 'long white pig'".

Here, we have a classic case of New Zealanders being sadly poorly educated in te reo.

Because they were "born here", many Kiwis seem to hold ill-founded authority on matters of Māori culture.

They need to do the mahi.

I'd like to think these people are in the minority – but even then I'm still worried.

A recent Stuff and Neilson survey found 20 per cent of parents objected to te reo being taught in schools.

This ridiculous objection to the teaching of te reo and New Zealand history has led to generations of people with ill-found confidence on matters they are utterly ignorant of.

The assertion Pākehā means pigs is the etymological equivalent of believing in flat earth. It is simply wrong, factually vacant and built on hearsay rather than easily Googleable facts.

Here are the facts. Experts in te reo and history generally believe the word Pākehā was derived from pākehakeha and pakepakehā.

These two terms pre-date Pākehā and describe mythical, fair skinned sea spirits.

They're not bad descriptions of a group of fair skinned Europeans who arrived via sailing ships, speaking in tongues. (For more, read Maria Jellie's thesis on the topic.)

Now we've got that out of the way, my question is: When will this deadbeat complaint stop being spread?

Last year "Pākehā" was banned from Red Dead Redemption II because it was "obscene". Shortly before, Newshub posted a story based off a social media thread asking: "Is 'pākehā' (sic) a racist term?"

These are the same discussions we were having back in the 1930s.

On October 2, 1933, a writer at the New Zealand Railways Magazine wrote a story similar to what I've written here. 

"Some absurd statements concerning the origin and meaning of Maori words and place-names often find their way into the newspapers," they said.

The writer addressed a claim made in the press that Māori developed the word as a swear to laugh at whalers.

Railways Magazine continued: "Those unfortunate early whalers are blamed for so many things! They cannot, however, be held accountable for 'Pākehā'."

It was, the magazine said, "probably derived from or associated with 'pakehakeha,' which is an expression to denote fair-skinned legendary beings".

How concerning it is that 86 years later, people are still having the same discussions.