As an Indian, I have often been told by racists that the fact that there are so few successful non-white countries is proof that they're inferior. So, why are the vast majority of white countries successful?

Honestly it depends on the time period you look at.

For the record: I don't think anyone is inferior to me whatever their colour or religion.

During the Muslim golden age the regions we would now call North Africa and Persia were flourishing, both of these regions are non white. They made beautiful are and poetry and invented things like advanced algebra (previously Greece had some basic algebra), in fact algebra comes from the Arabic word "al-jabr" which means restoration of broken pieces.

During this time Europe was largely uncivilised and their technology was so inferior to Muslims that it took the Islamic empire just 4 years to conquer all of Iberia. Yes, they conquered 600,000 km2 of land in 4 years.

The Muslims during this time we're making huge gains in terms of technology, science art and the like. They were more tolerant and kind than European rulers and allowed people to preach their religion, many Muslim historians write of conquering North Africa and how it took them slightly more than 2 decades to conquer these massive territories due to the Byzantine oppression. Several Berber villages would beg the Muslims to conquer them and would in return convert readily to their religion.

Another great example I can give you is India. India, the home of the number zero and great mathematicians like aryabatta who has notable achievements like: Explanation of lunar eclipse and solar eclipse, rotation of Earth on its axis, reflection of light by moon, sinusoidal functions, solution of single variable quadratic equation, value of π correct to 4 decimal places, circumference of Earth to 99.8% accuracy, calculation of the length of sidereal year.

In fact I think you should be quick to remind people that the number system they use is the Arabic number system.

Some other great example I can give you are negative numbers, this is a concept Europe actually discovered (or rather accepted) long after the rest of the world was using it. Europe accepted it in the 16th century while the concept was popular in China 1500 years prior (first appearing in ~200 BC during the Han era).

Though the fact that Europeans dominated since, art etc. After the 16th century is indisputable to has little to do with colour.

/r/NoStupidQuestions Thread