Black and white more than skin deep

I read with interest the medical professions moral dilemma; they now have to differentiate population types in their research, since the differences are so significant. For example, the femur connection to the pelvis in the African black has different dimensions to whites, which means they have far less pelvic fractures in old age. Also, differences in blood make-up make them more prone to certain diseases, and immune to others. So the differences aren’t only skin deep, as everyone keeps drumming into our heads. This was obvious actually. Which brings us to another obvious difference, the ways of thinking. It’s a fact that Africans never had maths or science prior to colonisation, and therefore not surprising they in general aren’t very good at it. However, they are very good at other subjects such as history, where they excel due to remarkably good memories. If we think about it, subjects like maths and sience rely on pattern recognition. Other things that rely on pattern recognition are things like conceptualising your position in a organisation, and how the organisation fits together and operates. A white person had an interesting story he related to me. He was training a group of blacks, and had a gearbox stripped in pieces on the floor, and a diagram on how to put it together. None of them could assemble it. He therefore demonstrated in front of them, and assembled it, referring frequently to the diagram, since without it he couldn’t do the job. Then he stripped it again, and lo and behold, every trainee could now assemble the gearbox correctly. On further investigation, he discovered that none of them were using the diagram as he needed to. All had memorised the process he had demonstrated. As a white, this was amazing and totally un-understandable. No wonder blacks and whites have such a problem understanding each other.