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.
