Much has been written of Australian soccer captain Sam Kerr’s big night out in the back of a London cab. A recent piece by Luke Pearson of ‘indigenousX’, ‘Is it possible to be racist to white people?’, was his attempt to explain the controversy over the alleged remarks by Kerr, whose father is part-Indian and mother white, against a white policeman in England.

Sam Kerr’s genealogy should not matter. But, in the minds of many, like Luke Pearson, it is crucial to her guilt or innocence. Luke runs courses in anti-racism. Luke has a father of Aboriginal descent, but his mother does not, meaning that he is both oppressed and oppressor. To squeeze every advantage from his love of critical race theory and race-based ideology, he believes that all ills can be laid at the feet of racism, even when he, as a graduate, is privileged. He seems to be an angry man who possibly learned his radicalism from his alma mater, the University of Newcastle, which specialises in identity recovery.

One of his courses explores ‘the 500-year story of race and racism’. Five hundred years ago is about the time that Europeans started their discovery of the new world, that is, the commencement of so-called ‘colonialism’. Except, it wasn’t. Luke had better hide from his students the four volumes of the Cambridge World History of Slavery. Slavery was the most common form of subjugation in all societies capable of keeping slaves. Asians and Arabs, when they were more powerful, took whites into slavery. Hunter-gatherers did not. Not because they were not racist, but because they could not keep slaves. They could barely keep themselves. The irony is that it takes a certain amount of civilisation to keep slaves. It takes a heck of a lot more to prevent it; only the Europeans, the white man, in the first instance, have done so.

As an exercise, Luke asks people in his workshops how indigenous people can use racism to ‘reduce the average life expectancy of white people’, ‘increase their likelihood of incarceration’, ‘increase their chances of having their children removed from their care’, and so on. He rails, that is what racism does to ‘us’, ‘so if we can be racist to them, why doesn’t it have the same impact on them? Why doesn’t racism benefit us in the way it benefits white supremacy?’  The exercise leads students to lay all the blame on one cause – the white man’s racism, just like the white policeman.

Luke has swallowed the whole race theory thing. How sad. Here he is, privileged, educated, and apparently bitter. He fails to realise that he will have the same life expectancy as other Australians consistent with his genetic makeup because he completed school, is a teacher, and has his own business. If he looks after himself, for which he alone is responsible, he will have a good life, a loving family, and be free of incarceration.

Luke wrongly suggests that racism arose ‘around the Enlightenment when white people were positioning themselves as the superior race, with not just superior cultures, superior intellects and superior institutions but also superior morals and ethics’. They do ‘terrible things for power and profit while still believing themselves to be good people’. Alas, dear Luke, you suffer from what Nigel Biggar (Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning) labels an ‘unscrupulous indifference to historical truth’. The Enlightenment did not invent empire; tell that to the Assyrians. It did invent the equal value of each person.

Luke’s anger extends to good people of Aboriginal descent. ‘Imagine an indigenous person who builds a political career… from denying the existence of racism or the ongoing impacts of colonisation on other indigenous people. They can directly benefit from racism for personal and political gain’. A shot at Senator Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine and others?

According to Luke, ‘collectively, only white people as a group benefit from racism… white people are not the victims of racism’. But Sam Kerr is filthy rich, not the white policeman. The soccer player has the media and elites behind her, not the white copper. But the white copper may have the institution of the courts on his side. Whether the courts can stomach the backlash coming their way if a woman of colour taunts a white policeman will be revealing of whether our cherished institutions have succumbed to critical race theory, or as Yascha Mounk calls it, the ‘identity synthesis’, incorporating gender and other identities.

Luke should also hide from his students that his radical views were written by privileged white men – from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Michel Foucault. As Jeff Fynn-Paul wrote in his brilliant book, Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World, ‘I know of no more efficient way to create poverty, despair and violence in native communities than to teach identity politics and identity history’. Think about that, Luke; perhaps you should return to the University of Newcastle and teach your teachers to stop their classes on identity politics and identity history and teach their students to count, read and write.

Merit made the modern world, Luke; you have some – don’t abuse it.