Kel Richards: The shared flaw that makes 'Welcome to Country' ceremonies, Black Lives Matter movement inherently racist to the core

Sky News AU

13-05-2025

All 'Welcome to Country' and 'Acknowledgement of Country' ceremonies are racist.
That will look like an outrageous and offensive statement to some people.
So let me try to make my point clearer.
I am not saying that everyone who does a 'Welcome to Country' or an 'Acknowledgement of Country' is racist.
Of course they're not.
Most are well-intentioned people just trying to do the right thing.
The problem is that they (and most Australians) have not given any thought to what the action of a 'Welcome to Country' or 'Acknowledgement of Country' is, or means, or implies.
And when you unpack the unexamined assumptions behind these ceremonies they turn out to be deeply racist.
Let me go through this process step-by-step - and (I hope) at the end you will no longer be offended or horrified by the judgement with which I began.
To begin with we need a definition of racism.
The most helpful definition says this: 'Racism consists of dividing people on the basis of race.'
In other words, it's classifying or pigeon-holing people based on their racial category.
This usually means treating their racial category as the most important thing about them.
There are (at least) two types of racism.
And that complicates matters.
The reason so much debate and discourse about racism is at cross-purposes, muddled and confused is that these different types of racism exist, and function, in our society and they are simply not being clearly recognised.
Racism can be either (a) Darwinian racism, or (b) Marxist racism.
Darwinian racism is based on the notion that some races are more evolved than others.
White supremacism is an expression of Darwinian racism.
When a white South African tells me his black fellow citizens can't run the country because they are 'just out of the trees' he is exactly expressing the central notion of Darwinian racism.
Marxist racism is based on the idea that some races should be preferred over other races.
This Marxist idea of racial preference can be clearly seen in the Black Lives Matter movement.
You will remember how strongly they objected when they were told that 'all lives matter'.
Their slogan (incorporated in their title) embodied this notion that some races should be preferred over others.
These two types of racism heartily loath each other.
Darwinian racists accuse the Marxist racists of practicing 'replacement' - of aiming to 'replace' white people with black in the social structure.
While Marxist racists accuse the Darwinian racists of arrogant hatred of non-white races.
But despite the clear distinction between them, both types of racism are built on the same foundation - the same core error.
Both types of racism mistakenly believe it is racial characteristics that define a person.
And both believe that racial differences vastly outweigh common humanity.
That which distinguishes one race from another is not shallow and skin-deep (they assume) but is at the very foundation, heart and soul of each human being.
If you are of one race, then you are fundamentally different from every other race.
Most of you - not just your skin colour, hair colour, eye shape, and so on - will be deeply unlike persons from another race.
That's the error both types of racism make.
And that's why I am proposing that the best definition of racism is 'dividing people on the basis of race'.
Because division between races lies at the heart of both Darwinian racism and Marxist racism.
For the most part the dictionaries tend to offer definitions that only succeed in defining Darwinian racism (e.g. 'the belief that some races are better than others').
However, the most authoritative dictionaries include an acknowledgement that 'racism' means 'dividing people on the basis of race'.
For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary includes 'beliefs that members of a particular racial or ethnic group possess innate characteristics or qualities' as part its long and complex definition.
And the Merriam-Webster Third International makes this the lead statement in its definition, saying that racism is: 'The assumption that psychocultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race and that races differ decisively from one another'.
This belief says that people are distinguished from one another not by culture, or community influence, or intelligence, or upbringing but by DNA - by inherited racial characteristics.
This deep (and unchangeable) division of the human race according to racial categories is what all racism consists of.
And this division can express itself as a claim of superiority (Darwinian racism) or of an entitlement or preference (Marxist racism).
It's on this basis that I claim that 'Acknowledgement of Country' and 'Welcome to Country' ceremonies are inherently racist.
Such ceremonies express a preference for one race over other races.
That preference is expressed by acknowledging one race.
It is an acknowledgement of one racial category.
It is a division on the basis of race.
The alternative view of humanity is that race does not matter - that racial category is a minor, not a major, component in the identity of an individual.
That is what Martin Luther King Jr was arguing in his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech in Washington on March 28, 1963.
Delivered to tens of thousands of supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the speech called for civil and economic rights.
In the course of that speech, King said: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.'
This is a bold assertion that race ('the colour of their skin') does not matter - that there are other characteristics of each person that matter far more.
Both types of racism, both Darwinian and Marxist, are based on this mistake.
People are not defined by their racial characteristics.
Race is not the most important thing - the most distinguishing thing - between persons.
There are scientific, theological and common-sense arguments to support this.
In his book 'The Language Instinct' Steven Pinker writes about the findings of two geneticists.
This is how he summarises their findings: 'Eighty-five per cent of human genetic variation consists of the differences between one person and another within the same ethnic group, tribe or nation. Another eight per cent is between ethnic groups, and a mere seven per cent is between races'.
In other words, the genetic difference between, say, two randomly picked Swedes is about twelve times as large as the genetic difference between the average Swede and the average Apache or Warlpiri.
Our common humanity is vastly greater than our racial differences.
Or as Pinker puts it: 'Among laypeople, race is lamentably salient, but for biologists it is virtually invisible.'
Race is mere skin-deep.
The trouble is that it can be seen - in skin colour, hair colour, eye shape and similar superficial differences.
But the human heart is the human heart.
And the human soul is the human soul.
And, despite the assumptions of the Darwinian racists and the Marist racists, the human soul has no racial characteristics.
That's why the same point can be put in theological terms.
The founding claim of the Judea-Christian worldview on which Western civilisation is based is that the human race is made in the image of God.
And that means the whole of the human race - every man, woman and child regardless of their family tree or their personal DNA.
Everyone is an image bearer of God.
So, in theological terms, there is only one race - the human race.
All those superficial racial distinctions are just that - superficial.
Common sense sees this clearly.
When the Indigenous Voice referendum was put to Australian voters on October 14, 2023, the implication was that the roughly 800,000 Australians who identify as Indigenous could be treated as a single, homogenous group.
The unexamined (and mentally lazy) assumption behind the referendum proposal was everyone in the 'Indigenous' racial category was sufficiently alike as to have the same problems, the same concerns, and the same political needs.
That is why common sense rejected the Indigenous Voice proposal by 60 to 40 per cent in the outcome of the referendum.
Common sense lines up with science and theology on this.
The racists (whether they be Darwinian or Marxist) will, of course, reject his.
They will continue to claim that you are defined by your family tree, by the racial characteristics in your DNA.
I have debated this on talkback radio and been told that the high number of Jewish winners of the Nobel Prize proves that racial characteristics are central and defining.
That argument does not hold water.
The success of Jewish scientists in winning the Nobel Prize is best explained in terms of culture and community not race.
The Jewish people have a 3000-year history of literacy and stressing the importance of education and rational debate (Talmudic debate).
That is a culture that produces Nobel Prize winners.
There is no gene in Jewish DNA (yet to be discovered!) that will explain this as racially inherited.
We need to learn to treat racial categories as unimportant. Race does not matter.
Except that we are surrounded by people who claim the opposite.
The Darwinian racists and the Marxist racists are defying the science, the theology and common sense to claim that race is all important - that people need to be categorised, divided, pigeon-holed on the basis of race.
That is what makes each 'Welcome to Country' or 'Acknowledgement of Country' a racist act - even when performed innocently by well-intentioned people - because it is a ceremonial announcement of racial division.
If you have one particular family tree (one race) then you are entitled to welcome all other races to 'country.'
But if you have the wrong family tree (belong to the wrong race) you are not allowed to.
Similarly, in 'Acknowledgement of country' one race is to be acknowledged to the exclusion of all others.
So, what are we to do about this?
Well, the answer depends on what sort of Australia we want to live in.
If we are comfortable having the Australian population divided along racial lines we will continue to encourage 'Welcome to Country' and 'Acknowledgement of Country' ceremonies as public ways displaying the deep division we wish to see characterise Australia.
However, if we want to stress our common humanity, our easy-going acceptance of each other (what Lawson and Paterson would have called 'mateship') and the relaxed friendship and loyalty of all Australians then we will lend our voices to a demand that all 'Welcome to Country' and all 'Acknowledgement of Country' ceremonies will cease.
Kel Richards is a veteran Australian broadcaster and author whose distinguished media career includes hosting the ABC current affairs show AM and his own talkback commercial radio shows. He is also a frequent on-air contributor for Sky News Australia