Posted on 10/21/2003 8:58:35 AM PDT by presidio9
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:44:28 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Um, the arabs kept the candle lit on civilization for 1000 years while we got caught up in repressive fundamentalism (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). While there is no denying that different races tend to excel in different physical and intellectual areas, the idea that race has played the most important role in the defelopment of civilization ignores that fact that civilization is not a finite achievement. It is an ongoing story. White Europe has taken a lead role in civilizing the world because it has been able to build on successive cultural achievements, and because of geographical luck. If Spain had waited 100 years to send a Columbus, the New World might very easily have been discoved by an Asian empire, and today's world would be a very different place.
Hey guess what? Charlez Theron has a lot more claim to the term "African American" than Jesse Jackson does. The one thing that people need to understand is that culture is a lot morerelevant than genetics. When it come to advancing civilization the fact that you are an American is a lot more important than the fact that you are an American of African, or Asian, or South American, or European descent.
My husband was full-blooded Czech, and he was born here, as were his parents, and his grandparents on both sides imigrated with their parents as children. There are no racial lines crossed in his family until this most recent generation (Those born after 1995). 95% of the grandchildren of his parents are pure-blooded Czech, the rest are 50%. The last of the full-blooded turn of the (20th) Century immigrants from Central Europe are dying out, and very few of their descendants will be full-blooded. In one way, it's sad to see, but as Americans first, perhaps the melting-pot idea is the best.
I don't know...I'm just a British mutt (Scots, Irish, English, and Welsh).
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