In 2003, after 58 whites, 23 blacks and 19 Hispanics took tests to determine who would qualify as captains and lieutenants, no blacks and two Hispanics ended up eligible for promotion.

WSJ: The Supreme Court Says No To Quotas

He was intensely private, yet made himself accessible to poor blacks to whom no one else would listen.

ECONOMIST: Obituary: Lord Scarman | The

Fielding an inexperienced side, the Springboks were no match for the All Blacks' professional sevens players and took a dismissive thumping.

BBC: All Blacks storm Dubai

Apartheid is no longer the law, but blacks and whites still live largely separate and unequal lives.

ECONOMIST: Race in South Africa

But when the same test was presented simply as an abstract laboratory tool, with no relevance to ability, the scores of blacks and whites were virtually identical.

FORBES: Turning Gender-War-Swords into Ploughshares

Laporte made a raft of changes with half an hour to go as Frederic Michalak - the hero against All Blacks - came on for Beauxis at No. 10.

CNN: Wilkinson kicks England into final

He noted that for ear infections, Native Americans have a high rate, whites have a moderate rate and blacks have the lowest rates, but "no one has come up with a gene that explains that, " he said.

CNN: Men, convertible drivers at higher risk for hearing loss

And, no, there is not an obvious racial dimension either: many blacks are still doing badly, but Latinos, who will account for one in five Americans by 2030, seem to be being assimilated just fine.

ECONOMIST: America's great sorting out

Yet, except in areas like that, bordering the Sahara, where blacks were traditionally enslaved by lighter-skinned desert peoples, slavery and the slave trade left no social stratification, and they figure little in popular consciousness today.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: Slavery