Abstract

If there is life elsewhere in the universe and its level of development is as backward as its terrestrial counterpart, they will probably have sociologists and political scientists constructing and deconstructing social reality. If and when they finally make contact with earth, these pundits will have great difficulty making sense of American race relations, no matter how many studies the Federation will commission to make sense out of the subject. The earth's most developed country, whose success is largely due to its heterogeneity, pragmatism and common sense, does not seem able to deal with differences in skin pigmentation, to the point that its best intellectuals systematically make fools of themselves in explaining it