now i'm all for alternative points of view being expressed and corroborated but this point was honestly just plain nonsensical

"Despite every terrible thing that happened under colonialism, most African countries actually faired better and had higher standards of living under colonialism. Rhodesia is a perfect example of that, the bread basket of Africa, they exported food across the continent while under white rule, and now they can't even feed themselves. "

one only has to look at the boer wars and other examples to understand what europeans brought to africa and perpetuate to this day in terms of violence

but obviously thats not even the worse part as you so eloquently said africans cannot feed themselves... well the question is why?

the continent itself is by far the most resource rich country in the world so why can't they utilise them to enrich themselves... well if someone points a gun at you and demands that you hand over what is yours what can you do?

i suppose the point could be made that africans should have developed their weaponry enough to defend themselves against the europeans i suppose that is a valid point 

so now you have a situation where so called somali "pirates" attack european shipping vessels carrying stolen resources from africa such as oil, which, imo is just like those old westerns that show the whites being oppressed by indians in america when in actuality its them invading and killing the indians

"Racism, Slavery, and Colonialism are all just excuses. How much time needs to pass before as a people, they collectively get their act together?"

again you have a very simplistic view of how things work its like saying that when the moors ruled europe the whites despite being enslaved basically should still have risen to the top... and the moors ruled europe for centuries btw...

You have no idea what you are talking about. But that's ok, keep ignoring the real history and eat up what they tell you about the poor Africans.

http://www.voortrekker-history.co.za/massacre_great_trek.php#.U-4VuXL8hlc

Those boers wanted peace. You go and do your research. But their leaders were slain in cold blood while attempting a treaty. Some of your points may be correct, but don't be as gullible as everyone about how nothing is the "poor African's" fault.

You conveniently ignore the massacre of blacks by blacks. Rwanda is a telling (recent - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide) example, but there are many more. One must also come to the inevitable conclusion that most of the most heinous crimes will never be known of due to the lack of a tradition of keeping historical data.

Male ligers cannot reproduce with female ligers though i dont think. Because male ligers are sterile while female ligers are not

As for the finches, maybe they are a different species because if two different types of finches mate, their offspring wouldnt have the proper characterists to survive. Just a guess here

You zoomed in on one example in one of his points, just 3 words, and used it to dismiss his entire comment as coming from ignorance.

Then you basically said "don't trust history. Except for these historical articles. You can trust them because I agree with them."

Then you mentioned Rwanda. What? violence in a country that's predominantly one race involve people of a race killing their own race? What a surprise! Next you'll say most crimes done by Japanese people in Japan affect Japanese people.

Species can also be determined by behavioral reproductive barriers. Wolves, for example, have Coyote mitochondrial DNA, which implies that male wolves have mated with female coyotes. There is much less coyote Y DNA however, not because they can't reproduce, but because they choose not to (female wolves are large compared to male coyotes.) This is a barrier that allows scientists to classify them as different species (beause gene-flow is miniscule.) Often we consider Neanderthals, Denisovian man, etc, etc as different species from modern day humans, but they have as much gene-flow (if not more) with modern man than some Human African pygmee populations do with other human beings. Although, I'd say it would be better to label these populations as Homo Sapiens (which they are starting to with Neanderthals) than to consider different modern populations of human beings as different species. I'm not yet convinced either way that there are various genetic sub-species (races) of humans, as that would require a polytypic (genetically) human population, in which we can structure major geneflow groupings. As it is now, in human population genetics, we've been able to see a branching structure between all non-Subsaharan Africans sharing a much closer affinity with eachother than with Sub Saharan Africans, almost as if those who left Africa were a subset of many African "populations" (the biological term.) After this, there seems to be a continuum among non Sub-Saharan Africans, from Europe to Oceania with Native Americans acting as a very homogenous branch of North East-Asians. This is caused likely by the founder effect, but also by interbreeding with older Human "species" (neanderthals and denisovian man".) 

This is what many of the modern PCA plots look like for Human population genetics. (Source: Discover Magazine and NIH.gov) 

CEU = European (Utah White Americans) YRI = African (Yoruba Sample) JPT = East Asians (Japanese) CHB = East Asians (Han Chinese)  Each quadrant represents a different PCA plot. 

i'm not really sure what your point is about the boer wars so i have no comment the point at the end of the day is that its an example of baseless violence perpetuated against africans by europeans 

you have a situation where people are invading your land and putting sanctions against you... are you really telling me that that is in anyway justifiable? lol if thats the road you're going down then i can only conclude you've already taken a massive leap off the deep end

how is violence of blacks against blacks relevent in any way to the point i  made? in fact let me ask you do you even understand the point the point i was making?

there has been genocide of europeans by europeans so???? how does it apply to the point made????

"One must also come to the inevitable conclusion that most of the most heinous crimes will never be known of due to the lack of a tradition of keeping historical data"

yes i absolutely agree with you there as they say the victors or the ones who run things determine what information is dsitributed to the public and in this case who runs things?

and as a result who is the record of history going to favor?

is it really likely to favor the african point of view when europeans were the victors? i'll let that cook in your head for a while

1. Nobody asserts that the statistical average for one "race" can't be different from the statistical average for another one. The assertion is never "Africans have a lower mean intelligence than Caucasians". It's always "Africans are less intelligent than Caucasians". What's racist is to assert that the difference is somehow inherent, or that it's in some way a sweeping truth across the board. Most people who assert that Africans are less intelligent base their claim on IQ, which is not the same thing as intelligence. There are many forms of intelligence, of which the IQ test only tests a few, and most components of IQ tests are about education (can you work out the next number in this geometric sequence?) rather than anything more "innate".

Intelligence is affected by developmental circumstances. People who grow up in poor families will typically rate at a lower intelligence... not because of something inherent, but because of reduced food quality, lower educational opportunities, etc. And Africa has the lion's share of poor people. In America, white families have, historically, started with much more, and had more opportunities - this difference has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with oppression and slavery. Add in social/cultural influences, and you can see where this comes from.

But when it comes down to it, a lower average intelligence wouldn't mean any individual is less intelligent. There are black geniuses just as there are white geniuses. Most people who assert that black people are less intelligent are far less intelligent than some very notable black people, and they would refuse to admit to being less intelligent than those people.

2. I'm sorry, but where did you hear that malarkey? All humans share far more than 99% common DNA - indeed, 99.9% at least between any two people. Heck, chimpanzees have about 97% of DNA in common with humans, and cows have 80% in common with humans. Indeed, even the fruit fly has about 60% of its DNA in common with humans. And while there are certainly differences in genes between different ethnicities, such differences can be traced back through regular DNA mutation within humans, plus an element of interbreeding between pre-human homo species, such as neanderthals, cro magnons, etc. And those interbreedings happened so long ago that the genes are spread rather thinly throughout humanity.

Meanwhile, "caucasian" is a very broad, mostly-meaningless term that scientifically equates to "has light skin". The ancient egyptians likely fell within the "caucasoid" grouping, but probably within the semitic component, whereas most people who are referred to as "caucasian" are of the aryan subgroup.

Anybody who would assert that blacks are less intelligent must necessarily be asserting that the genes controlling skin colour also control intelligence. And such an assertion is a very difficult one to provide evidence for, and quite easily to justify dismissing - skin and brain are practically unrelated. If the two are not necessarily connected, then even if the vast majority of black people are less intelligent, this would be put down to a coincidence of genetics, one that need not apply to all black people.

Okay guys, I went ahead and responded because you brought up so many good points such as the Mali Empire, that race is an arbitrary social construct, and many others.

Well, I'm basically paraphrasing but this is what he had to say in return. 

He claims race is a valid scientific category even though it's inexact. That's because social sciences are considered inexact, they don't yield certainty like the hard sciences. He then proclaimed that if people have lived in isolated environments sharing a similar gene pool under similar environments, how can the end result not be distinct categorical races based on genetics? The recent comingling of people due to globalism is a recent phenomenon which undoubtedly would polute the concept itself. 

He also went on to say that Black people have had the same opportunities as other people on other continents to harness their natural resources and to make up thriving societies with advances in culture, education, engineering etc. He claims Africa has always been, and still is, rich in natural resources and not at all a barren wasteland which could naturally impede a civilization. He claims Europeans civilizations have flourished in harsh cold environments and so have those cultures in the Middle East. He cites to Hanging Gardens in Babylon as one of the ancient world's biggest engineering feat. Apparently, the Hanging Gardens were a lush tropical paradise created in the middle of a desert by advanced engineering in hydraulics. More specifically, these gardens were created on a elevation which required water in masses to be transported upwards in what appeared to be a man-made mountain. This type of hydraulics was uncommon at the time and evidence of an intelligent civilization. 

There is no evidence of any such similar accomplishment stemming from a pure African civilization. 

Further, he went on to distinguish between intelligence as a psychometric construct and what he calls the manifest evident theory of intelligence. That intelligence can be better measured by external accomplishments in an individual or a society. He claims Africans have displayed no such collective intelligence. 

In response to the Mali Empire and others he claims this is due to external influence. Namely the advent of Muslim missionaries from the Middle East. This seems to be accurate given the time period of the cited civilizations range from 800 CE to roughly 1600 CE. And further, he claims these civilizations paled in comparisons to of Alexander the Great who conquered most of the known world, The Roman Empire, Napoleon's Empire, Ancient Greece, The Babylonians, The British Empire, The Mongolians and others. 

Lastly, he went on to say that if Blacks were truly intelligent, they would have been able to repel foreign invaders like how the Arabs eventually repelled the Christian Crusaders, How the Europeans repelled the Umayyadat conquest at the Battle of Toulouse in 721, How Russian Tsar Alexander I defeated Napoleon's Grande Arme by using scorched earth tactics and much more. He claims Africa is the most conquered and war-torn continent in the world. By the time of Western colonialism, African civilizations were so agrarian they lacked any organizational power to repel invaders. They were seen as primitive tribals, valued for their raw physical strenght and thus exploited for manual labor

That's what he said in a nutshell. I don't know if it's worth continuing. Have we missed anything? Is there any merit to his arguments? I don't think I'm smart enough to continue the debate without your input. 

There are lots of white British people.

Next you will tell me that there are no Jews & Japanese.

"He claims race is a valid scientific category even though it's inexact"

that is extremely vague and means absolutely nothing really... race with regards to what?

of course the concept of races is understood with regards to their being 3 main groups of humans: mongoloid, caucasoid and negroid... this is known and i don't think anyone has said otherwise

"He also went on to say that Black people have had the same opportunities as other people on other continents to harness their natural resources and to make up thriving societies with advances in culture, education, engineering etc."

well all i can say to this is that your friend is being willfully ignorant of what has been going on for the past few centuries, so... there's little point debating on that

the fact remains that europeans have placed africa under seige for the past few centuries as they have done all over the world: in america they slaughtered the indians and built a new civilisation on their land, the same happened in the caribbean islands and several other areas...

i suppose that africa was too large for them to eradicate the africans entirely but again the effects are there to see...

if someone wants to deny that the europeans have been perpetuating these things worldwide... well...

now as i said previously if someone wants to claim that because of their weapons development that the europeans were justified in their actions then do so but to claim that the actions did not take place is just being willfully retarded imo

"There is no evidence of any such similar accomplishment stemming from a pure African civilization. "

Again willful ignorance as i stated previously egypt and sumeria have various examples of technology and knowledge that in some respects appear to outstrip that of today and they are african civilisations

honestly i don't know much of ancient civilisation outside of these cultures ( even with regards to these 2 ) but i do have another example and that would be the ruins found by michael tellinger which i think were called adam's calender

"In response to the Mali Empire and others he claims this is due to external influence. Namely the advent of Muslim missionaries from the Middle East. This seems to be accurate given the time period of the cited civilizations range from 800 CE to roughly 1600 CE. And further, he claims these civilizations paled in comparisons to of Alexander the Great who conquered most of the known world, The Roman Empire, Napoleon's Empire, Ancient Greece, The Babylonians, The British Empire, The Mongolians and others. "

lol the amusing irony here is that the founders of these civlisations for example pythagoras in many cases are said to have derived a lot of their knowledge from... egypt among other ancient civilisations...

and obviously this means that his example of external influence also applies here as well if we aren't being one sided

and this obviously leads to the conclusion ( well at least to sensible people ) that everything on this planet does not happen in a vacuum that instead that everything is at some level is connected but whatever if your friend wants to believe that civilisation started a couple 1000 years back with europeans well... again... there's little point dealing with someone like that...

"He claims Africa is the most conquered and war-torn continent in the world. "

the amusing thing here is that he contradicts himself

"He also went on to say that Black people have had the same opportunities as other people on other continents to harness their natural resources and to make up thriving societies with advances in culture, education, engineering etc."

they've had the same opportunities to harness resources yet have been "conquered" and "war torn"? what?

now as i said above that may be a valid point that they did not have weapons development on the same level and so were more vulnerable

and its not like this has stopped... i suppose he also thinks that americas policy of dropping bombs from drones on innocent people is justified since america has more advanced weaponry... but this is why you'll have the relatives of those same people blowing themselves up to exact at least some measure of revenge which i suppose he'll then say is unjustified... funny how this works really... but i digress

"They were seen as primitive tribals"

That reasoning applied to just about every other grouping of indiginous people worldwide not just africa as i previously stated those of america, the caribbean etc... europeans considered themselves to be better by default and so felt it was their right to rule the world

now i'll just state that imo weapons development does not make a group of people "better" than another imo it just speaks to the kind of philosophy that group has