[jbooth]

Oh great, you're one of those bold truth tellers who can proudly espouse racism while the rest of us are too PC to recognize the obvious.

Right?

Go read some history. Specifically, all of it regarding the middle east and africa up until the present day. Heck, you can even just look at a map for a few minutes and marvel at how straight the lines are. Maybe you'll reach some more enlightened conclusions about the way things are.

[Daniel_Newby]

How much would I have to pay for you to take a job waiting tables in each of (1) Frankfurt, (2) Johannesburg, (3) Harlem, (4) Omaha, and (5) Mecca? While living openly in your native persona.

I bet the answers don't have a lot to do with local rents and food prices. And for Johannesburg and Mecca tend towards infinity.

The way things are is that some people are uncivilized and appear unable to become civilized. This is not racism, just the data as they are. Which is why, in the context of this discussion, Afghanistan need not necessarily turn into the Congo because it did not start out as the Congo, and why the Chinese influence is not so ominous.

[jbooth]

I don't think anyone's going to pay me the salary I expect to wait tables.

I'd much rather live in Harlem than Omaha or Frankfurt. Culture and metropolitanism are far more important to me than the amount of pigment in my immediate neighborhood, and it's very safe these days.

Your definitions of civilized are an opinion. The citizens of Mecca think you're uncivilized for a number of reasons, and I think you're uncivilized for others.

Anyways, I'm just thankful that most people don't think like you do -- I certainly wouldn't want to be lumped into the same category as you for the crime of (presumably) sharing a pigment level. People might conclude it's the natural state of white people to be deliberately ignorant about everything except their own little suburban town in rural America.

[Daniel_Newby]

It has nothing to do with pigment levels, bigotry, racism, or any other ism. There are cultures who will stone you to death for wearing the wrong clothing, or tear you limb from limb on the spur of the moment for practicing witchcraft. They merely remain violent and barbaric when they get oil or diamonds or whatever; the natural resources do not make them that way. (The claim was that the natural resources were what changed Saudi Arabia and the Congo into violent cesspools.)