Culture is what keeps a society together so that it can procreate and survive from one generation to another. It includes a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that members use to deal with their world and with one another and that are transmitted through learning. Does America have a specific culture? Or, is there no distinct culture because the U.S. is a melting pot of many different cultural groups? According to Thomas Sowell, a well-known black American economist, cultural capital, or the habits and beliefs that migrants bring to a new country, is more important in determining the migrants' future than the new homeland's economy, culture, or political system. That is, differences in cultural capital account for differences in economic and social outcomes for separate groups of people. Sowell's argument is that the relative success and failure of ethnic and racial groups is a result of the strong and weak points and degree of development of their own cultures. This is instead of the consequence of external forces such as racial discrimination.
             This is a similar argument that is made by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond sees cultural distinctions based on ecological differences between the continents. As an example (and reason for the book's title) is the conflict between the Spanish conquistador Pizarro and the Inca Atahuallpa at Cajamarca in 1532. Surprisingly, this led to Pizarro's victory, although he was at a huge disadvantage based on the number of soldiers. The reason for this win was germs, technology (guns and steel weapons, ships), domestic animals (horses), and writing. In writing this book, Diamond was trying to answer, he says, one of the major questions of history: That is, why history developed differently on the various continents over the past 13 thousand years. Unfortunately, a common answer to this, by racists, was that some people are superior to ot...