Every powerful nation or nations on this globe has earned shame. Plenty of it. The only reason y’all harp on Europeans is, they had more chances than anyone else and were probably hungrier than others with equal shame possibilities. Don’t harp at me; go harp at John Azumah Adembillah, the Uighurs of Xinjiang, Ibn Warraq and the growing number of people who seek to reform Islam or have left Islam behind. Hell, go harp to Brother Eldridge about all the ‘slander’ he wrote against the oh-so-kind Algerians who gave him sanctuary. Go rant to the Tlaxcalans who were fed up enough with the Aztecs taking captives for sacrifice that they made alliance with Cortez — and the Spanish remembered that!
Whatever Western Civilization’s faults, and it’s got ’em aplenty, two things can be said in its favor: first, it is, and has been, more open to new ideas and new technologies than any other culture I can see. Second, it still has the most vigorous tradition of self-criticism of any culture I know about. If you can enlighten me on (an)other culture(s) which are more so, do so by all means. The second is courtesy of both Athens and Jerusalem.
Arab/Muslim culture was the first and greatest slaver of Africans (have you googled up the Zanj Uprising? Do so. And read Mr. Adembillah’s book) and it’s probably still going on under the law’s radar. And they share the general ‘Western’ hypocrisy about skin color.They were also the world’s leaders in science and technology until some fool of a ruler proclaimed, ‘The doors of ijtihad are now closed’ some eight centuries ago. None of this has to do with genes, although the noxious habit of marrying first cousins probably led to a decrease in the strength of their DNA. You needn’t take MY poor word on this for a jot or tittle of what I write; google it all for yourself. Have fun doing so. And no, I’ve no desire for anyone to feel like waste, not even you; I feel like that too often myself and not because of anything in my DNA.