Recent human history. It's hardly the most distinctive feature of human history before "civilization," or even of the first 9,000 years or so of that phase.

Some groups have accumulated enormous wealth and power, while others have been oppressed or exterminated. Why has this distributional pattern emerged the way it has? Why, for instance, has power become so concentrated in the hands of Eurasian descendants, while those of Africa, the Americas, and Aboriginal Australia have been subjugated or exterminated?

Here begins a confusion between technological progress and economic inequality, which grows more confusing as the essay proceeds.

As you show by finally getting around to Jared Diamond after the essay is 90% over, these are basically straw- and half-straw-men. Serious effort to think about your problem in the contemporary world uses neither 19th century scientific racism nor 20th century post-colonialism as its starting point. Diamond not only presents one form of answer to the precise question he taught you how to frame, he also presents a thorough if informal introduction to the other strands of contemporary thought bearing on it. Rather than treating the matter as though David Hume were a current contributor, you should take the opportunity to see where the discussion went after Diamond, and why. Charles Murray is not the answer.

The next draft should begin where this one ended, with Diamond's answer to Diamond's question, and your assessment of the state of the inquiry now, not as of the death of David Hume, or for that matter Frantz Fanon.