I appreciate it man, well said. The only issue is I think this guy would probably argue that educational institutions spring up from thriving civilizations. And these civilizations are the result of an intelligent collective that produce new technologies and inventions which make for better tools for agriculture and utilizing natural resources. If you harness your natural resources well, you improve your wealth through commerce. 

So I think central to his thesis is that if Blacks were equally intelligent as other people, they would have had thriving civilizations and therefore by now would have established educational institutitons on par with the Western world. I think he would also point out that Africa is the craddle of the world, they have had more time on earth than anyone who migrated to other continents of the world.

Lol, that's the problem, I can't puncture his central thesis because I can't find a civilization that was once thriving and made advances in the aforementioned areas. 

Challenge him to a IQ test

Stupid comes in all races.

The only racist in here is you, bud, otherwise this thread would have never even been created.

What a dreadful conjecture. Kindly withdraw your accusation Sir. 

Also, racist people are often incredibly stubborn. He likely won't admit defeat, even if he can't argue your point at all.

Subspecies, but yeah, human "races" aren't different enough to classify them as subspecies (in a biological sense because the genetic variability within one "race" is bigger than the genetic variability between different "races").

I've written my thesis on Roman perception of "black" people. I came to the conclusion that Romans viewed ancient Egyptians as black. Other black groups included the Garamantians (had a wealthy kingdom centered around Fezzan), the Mauri and even the Carthaginians. There's enough literary and artistic evidence to back up my claims.

Roman perceptions were both negative and positive. There were no uniform views about black people in the ancient world.

Succesful black Romans include C. Julius Serenus (a wealthy Roman, as proven by a mosaic in his funerary monument), Lusius Quietus (a succesful Roman general who could've become Emperor had Hadrianus not killed him) and Terentius Afer (one of the greatest Roman playwrighters).

My thesis is in Dutch, otherwise I could've just given you the document. To claim ancient Egyptians were white is racist. 

It takes a single exceptional idea to transform a civilisation. Each civilisation has these at different times, but it's not a reflection on the intelligence of those within those civilisations, because it takes just one exceptional person to have that idea.

When it comes to "black" nations, what is notable is that they live in resource-sparse environments. The same can be said of those in the middle east. What was different between the two was that the middle east was a trading path between Europe and China, both of which are resource-rich. The result is that the "tribal" systems in the middle east coalesced through the influence of traders, and thus some of our greatest ideas in science actually originated in that area. African nations didn't have this benefit.

Add to this the effect of certain religious influences - the romans, the greeks, the buddhists, the jews, the christians, the muslims... these religions, by nature, emphasised the coming together of people and the exchange of knowledge. On the other hand, due to the effects of resource-sparsity, african tribes remained in a more tribal style of religion, which tended to be local.

In essence, the assertion that blacks are less intelligent is based on a complete lack of understanding of the difference between correlation and causation, not to mention a lack of understanding of the bell curve.

Most African nations (not countries) are relatively new compared to other nations in different continents.
After independence from colonialists from 1950-70's, most African countries had set backs due to internal conflicts between 2 local ideologies or external factors.

I want to focus now on external factors because most of Western African countries were corrupted by ex-colonialists. The ex-colonialists took advantage of the weak state of those countries during the transition to autonomy, to exploit their resources and consequently void them of any way to fund the development of those nations.

Also, for political reason, US destabilized most of them from Senegal down to South Africa. In ex-Zaire (now RD Congo), Patrice Lumumba, a brilliant mind native from ex-Zaire was trying to nationalize everything in his country as a democratically elected president. However, that would mean that Belgium and US wouldn't have control of their natural resources and the latter feared that USSR would instill communism in the country's political scenario. So, CIA funded rebels lead by the brutal Mobutu Seko, which lead the capture and execution of Patrice and would forever sent the country into a deep state of turmoil.

Almost the same thing happened in my country, Cape Verde Islands. When we were fighting the Portuguese for our independence, Amilcar Cabral (also a brilliant engineer, tactician and diplomat), asked Nixon for help us due to US relations with Portugal (Nato). Instead of helping Cape Verde, Nixon bid $5 billion to Portugal to transfer their sovereignty to US, whom could have used Cape Verde as a military platform (Navy) in Africa and Atlantic Ocean. Obviously Portugal refused and Nixon left us without response as Portuguese dictator Salazar was also fighting communism in Africa.

With these stories said, it takes a long time to structure a country and make it work as a nation. Especially when all the brains leave the country to study or find a better life.