The inescapable fact is that Black Africa has neither created nor even been able to sustain a high civilization. One of the most respected historians of the 20th century, Arnold Toynbee, listed what he calls 33 historic civilizations. Most are European, some are Asian but none are Black.

Poor Black historical performance correlates with the evidence of marked differences in intelligence between Blacks and Whites. In America, school children are taught relentlessly about the great achievements of Black Americans. With a straight face, teachers recount the most important Black contributions to the modern world, and then give examples such as the traffic light and the paper bag.

The very fact that these things are listed as great Black achievements betrays their paucity. No Black is to be found in Michael Hart's The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History.¹ Perhaps even more telling is that not even one Black achievement is found in Issac Asimov's listing of 1,500 great attainments in his Chronicle of Science and Discovery.² Far from being a racist, Asimov publicly expressed a belief in racial equality and was a self-described liberal.

Can the invention of the traffic light or the paper bag remotely compare to the development of the Pythagorean Theorem, the invention of the first airplane or the first steam engine, the engineering of the Pyramids, the architecture of the Parthenon or the Roman aqueducts, the invention of the printing press, the development of the smallpox vaccine, the creation of genetic engineering, the invention of the transistor, or the mathematics and genius that took men to the moon? Such comparisons surely do not demonstrate racial equality. Instead, they suggest a disparity that goes far beyond the differences in intelligence indicated by mere IQ tests. It must be remembered that almost all of the great achievements of mankind were the products of the most intelligent four or five percent of the population. As The Bell Curve ³ and every other IQ study have shown, if one group has an average IQ about 15 percent lower than another, it does not mean that the lower group will have 15 percent fewer geniuses than the smarter group. The percentage of geniuses will differ by a rate of more than 44 to 1 in favor of the more intelligent group. Some researchers say it is closer to 100 to 1, depending on how high the genius IQ level is set.

The standard response of racial egalitarians to the fact that Blacks' account for only a small percentage of great achievements is that Black societies were not advanced enough or because their societies were "oppressed." Of course, such an argument is only begging the question, for what could have caused this lack of advancement or habitual "oppression" over thousands of years? If the capabilities for what we call civilization are the same among the races, why did Blacks not develop even one? In all of Black Africa beneath the Sahara, they never developed any writing and never used the wheel! There is today only one vibrant nation, the Republic of South Africa, a nation now heading rapidly to the same fate of the rest of Black Africa with the ongoing removal of White leadership and skills.

Whites dominated investment, government, education, medicine, training and communication in Africa for 200 years. But in the 40 years since the departure of Europeans, almost every Black African nation has steadily declined in its income, education, health care, sanitation, civil rights and other societal levels. The disintegration in some nations such as the Sudan and Zaire has been slowed only by the fact that once they have fallen to such low levels, there is simply little room for further decline. In their utter despair, the struggling remnants in many African nations have actually invited Europeans back, and the increased Western investment and aid should improve, even if only marginally, the current appalling conditions.