I saw a race.

In that race, I saw many races, but the race was not between the races.

I saw black, and white, and brown, and what would once have been called yellow. I saw tall and short, boy and girl, knotted hair and straight, bare heads and veiled, round bodies and lean, big eyes and small, long legs and not so long.

I saw single racers, and pairs, and little groups, racing, or at least affecting to race, and some not even affecting.

It was the first morning of the school year at a little school in an inner western suburb, and I saw them race around the block, twice.

I saw runners and walkers and shufflers and talkers. I saw some who ran earnestly but slowly. I saw one who took long, loping, effortless strides, and barely seemed to move, and raced past everyone.

He might have been Somali, or Sudanese. I am no expert on race, and it doesn't matter anyway, because I saw what have seen before, many times, that kids don't see race, just the race.

I saw again that they don't see skin colour and hair colour and eye colour, because the way they see it, they're all the same, because they're all different, which makes them the same.

It didn't matter anyway because they were all Australian.

In this race, all wore yellow, the school's polo shirt's colour, and all were going the same way; between one and another, only the pace was different.

And I saw that all were happy.

On the four corners of the block, acting as marshals, I saw the parents of the race.

They wore suits, and shawls, and long rainbow African dresses, and scarves, and gym gear, and open-necked shirts, and smart casual wear, and one had his glasses pushed back on his balding head, and another wore a ponytail.

Most were white, and some were Asian, and a few were black, and what did it matter anyway?

It didn't to them, because they were all here for one reason only, for the race. They were different, but they were the same.

I saw this race that wasn't between races, and from my line of work, I thought of Adam Goodes and Majak Daw and Danny Seow and Heretier Lumumba, out on the footy ground, and how race didn't matter out there.

I thought of the park at the end of the street where the kids wear North Melbourne jumpers with Majak's number, but play soccer, and wondered who was winning that race.

I thought back on  all the Italians at Carlton and the Jews at St Kilda and the Greeks at Collingwood, when these things appeared to matter, and all the wogs of my boyhood and how we were conditioned by the times to think  that race mattered when it didn't at all.

I thought of a time before that, when sectarianism ran through footy in Melbourne – that way the masons' clubs, this way the Micks' – and how it seemed to matter so very much then and looks so ridiculous now, because when you're out there, the only race that matters is for the ball.

The only race that mattered now was around the block.

I mustn't and won't gild this lily. The little school has problems with white flight, and black flight, too. It has its own race to run. That is not my business. The race around the block doubtlessly was no more than a ploy by an enterprising teacher to wear the more boisterous edges off schoolkids before the day begins. If so, salute.

But with this race of many races and none, he or she was onto something.

This was all a year ago, before a politician decided to make a political football out of race and crime in Melbourne, and the mood darkened, and the edge sharpened, until Daw and 12 other African-Australian sportsmen this week felt compelled to write an open letter to say that they and we were in this race together. "Every individual is unique, regardless of race or religion," they wrote. "In the end, love, faith and unity come before all."

When classes resumed at the little school this year, I couldn't help notice  there was no race. I hope it resumes soon, and that in hearts and minds goes on in any case.

Because the race I saw that day, and many succeeding Mondays, is all our race. It is the human race.