US Rep. Steve King (R-IA) thinks that white people have contributed more to civilization than any other race. And he said it on national cable news.

This is not an exaggeration. In an interview with MSNBC host Chris Hayes, King said as much point blank:

So a sitting member of Congress is literally saying that white people are superior than people of other races on national television. (Then again, maybe this shouldn’t be surprising — given that King has a Confederate flag in his office.)

To help King out, here are just a few contributions that people of other races have made to civilization:

• The "cradles of civilization" were in areas populated by brown people.
• The Phoenician alphabet is the basis for the modern alphabet of many languages.
• Egyptians helped bring paper and ink pens to Western civilizations — just two of the many contributions attributable to them.
• Middle Eastern scholars like Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī and Omar Khayyam invented crucial elements of algebra before they spread to Europe.
• The Chinese invented gunpowder and potentially the compass, among many other inventions.
• Indian people made many contributions to technologies we now take for granted, from farming to math.
• America was built on the slave labor of black Americans.
• There were many famous black inventors throughout US history.
• Jesus was possibly brown.

This list is by no means comprehensive. But these are some fairly big contributions to modern civilization. So not only is King’s statement racist, it’s also ignorant.