C'mon, get with the program....we all know that Africans and other racial groups(indigenous Indians, primarily) were held back under brutal white oppression who built cities and infrastructure on the backs of these groups.
I think there are a lot of contributing factors as to why certain groups achieved in what they did, whereas in others they did not. Some opinions are popular and freely discussed, whereas others may be condemened. Culture, religion, and geographic location definately played a part. Political corruption, various diseases, and, yes, I'm going to say it: general all-around IQ. Mathematically, it is impossible for all racial groups to collectively have equivalent IQs and progress. Even if you took a random group of Africans, Europeans, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics, raised them equally on basis of household and education, and repeated this several times for each group, you would not get equal results....instead, one group would probably do better in other areas on a somewhat consistent basis. People don't think about this as they probably tend to believe that it puts more emphasis on group thinking rather than the individual, and would put single out the particular individual and judge him on the group of which he is categorized in.
Camel, I must disagree with your assessment of China and India. Yes, they are becoming quite impressive industry-wise. A lot of intelligent people are coming out of there and contributing to society. However, they did not DEVELOP what they have....much of their technology is copied and modeled after Western and Russian types. They are also suffering from mass overpopulation, pollution(2/3 of China's rivers are deemed as being nearly unuseable due to pollution), and frequent human rights abuses. The US and Europe, even while heavily industrialized, maintained a sustainable populace, living standards that eclipses by far than any previously enjoyed in history(Unions, Civil Rights, etc..), and oft strict pollution controls. China and India can only grow so much and are actually partially sustained by the high prices that Americans and Europeans are willing to pay for cheaply made goods.
Lastly, I do not believe ancient African and other tribal civilizations were by any means stupid. Quite the opposite, they were quite clever and worked well with what they had. Some made great advancements, just not in the way of shipbuilding or military acquisitions. Remember, it was the Arabic peoples that devised much of our modern mathematics and languages of which they came, and it is those same Arabic peoples that started to rapidly decline with the fanatical embrace of Islam(hello Deicide!). Unfortunately, in the warped multicultural sense that our Western institutions seem to possess, they would have us admire the weavings and patterns on an old Native American blanket on an equal level as to the most modern, advanced skyscraper dotting the city line.
