[ConsistentLibertarian]

It's an error in salience. There are probably unrelated statistical differences between people to whom fennel tastes bitter and people to whom it does not. But that clustering of characteristics doesn't jump out at us the way skin pigmentation does. We'd have a hard time even thinking there's a non-random connection even after we convinced ourselves through carefull observation that the satistical differences were real. But when we see statistical differences between people with different skin pigmentation, for some reason, it stirkes people immediately as salient and it's hard for many people even to think it's an accidental connection with no deep explanatory or causal significance.

[wardaddy]

I certainly don't view it as an accident. Different races have evolved around the planet at varying speeds relative to what we call civilizations. I'm not saying anyone is better or worse but simply different generally based on race and there are of course differences within each race and their repsective sub-groups. Take American Indians and Sub-Saharan Negroes: Neither had the wheel nor a phonetic written alphabet until introduced by an exploring race. Both of those tools are considered defining benchmarks of civilization. Did neither of these groups possess these because of racial discrepancy or because of environmental factors?....that I do not know the answer for. Why for instance are the Mandarins and the Japanese fairly highly evolved and yet Montangards or other isolated highland Asian tribes are not? In that case, it could be because of environmental factors. Why were the Romans and Greeks fairly evolved as well yet the continuing waves of Teutonic tribes spilling over from the steppes would have been considered less evolved?

No doubt determining what differences are racial and what are cultural or simply purely geographic in origin is tough but to ignore simple race as a factor is wishful "what if" thinking.