“In the end, of course, does it really matter what he looked like? Not in the least.”
Well it kind of does if the author is making the argument that St. Augustine is an example of a non-caucasian who was key to the development of Western civilization. If he actually was of Roman descent (Hippo being a Roman colony after all), then that argument doesn’t make any sense.
For whatever reason, the Anglo Saxons were the ones to embrace the Protestant movement, which was really nothing but a return to many of the things Ambrose and Augustine themselves taught (sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia). So it's not a matter of whether or not Augustine was darker than I am (I'd bet he was). It's that in the past couple of centuries it was the Anglo majority nations that endorsed Christianity at both a personal level and a cultural level.
It wasn't the Egyptian Empire that abolished slavery and got nations within their influence to do the same. Nor was it Assyrian Empire. Nor the Persian Empire. Nor the Greek Empire. Nor the Roman Empire. Nor the Mayan Empire. Nor the Incan Empire. Nor the Ottoman Empire. Imagine how cool the world would have been the past 500 years or so if any one of those influential empires had respected their fellow man enough to free their minority populations. But they didn't. Throughout history some nations have had the will to do it, but no power to make it happen. Some nations have had the power to do it, but not the will. The Anglo majority countries actually made it happen because they alone had both the will and the ability.
And it's not because of the whiteness of our skin. It is 100% because we made it part of our culture to love God and love our fellow man. Other white cultures didn't go there (Exhibit A is the Soviet Union, Exhibit B are the white Muslim nations in the caucus region.) What made us like that is our zeal for the Lord.
And that's what the left is trying to stop every time they criticize "western values" and such. They know that a population without the Lord is a population that's easier to control.