Human Development in Africa

All humans emerged in Africa about 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. Humans began migrating out of Africa about 70,000 years ago. As humans spread across the globe, populations bumped into one another and mixed their genes. Skin color, hair texture and blood type are influenced by separate genes and inherited independently one from the other. 85% of all genetic variants can be found within any local population.

Visual characteristics, like different skin colors, appear to have evolved recently after humans left Africa. Traits like intelligence, musical ability, physicality is much older, and more common to all populations. Today the net worth of the average Black family is about 1/8 of the average white family. Houses in predominantly white areas sell for much more than those in Black, Hispanic or integrated neighborhoods so power, wealth, and advantages/disadvantages from it are passed down from generation to generation.

Wealth isn't from being self-made but it's the starting point for the next generation. When the "family wealth gap" between African Americans and whites is taken into account, there is no difference in test scores, graduation rates and welfare usage. The lack of opportunities, not racial differences, are responsible for continuing inequality. Italians, Hebrews, Greeks were considered by many to be separate races. It was said their "whiteness" had to be won. The 1790 Naturalization Act had limited naturalized citizenship to "free, white persons” New arrivals petitioned the courts to be legally designated white in order to gain citizenship.

In 1922, Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant appealed the rejection of his citizenship application. He argued that his skin was physically white and that race shouldn't matter for citizenship. The Supreme Court decided that the Japanese were not legally white based on science, which classified them as Mongoloid rather than Caucasian. In the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the court contradicted itself by concluding that Asian Indians were not legally white, even though science classified them as Caucasian. The justices declared that whiteness should be based not on science, but on "the common understanding of the white man." Italians, Jews and other European ethnics fared better, especially after World War II, when segregated suburbs were built with the help of new federal policies and funding. Real estate agents and federal government regulations controlled and directed government guaranteed loans to white homeowners and kept non-whites out, allowing those once previously considered "not quite white" to blend together and reap the advantages of whiteness, including the accumulation of equity and wealth as their homes increased in value.

Those of color were denied the same opportunities for asset accumulation and upward mobility. In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization issued a statement saying that all humans belong to the same species and that biological races is not real. "Colorblind" policies that ignores race causes these inequities.