"Theodore Cross

Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, The

03-31-1994

Black Africans Now the Most Highly Educated Group in British Society.

New census data from Britain makes life very difficult for the advocates of scientific racism.

RECENTLY, POLITICIANS, SCHOLARS, and social commentators in the United Kingdom were started to receive the results of a new census report on the academic standing of various ethnic groups in Britain.

Black Africans in the United Kingdom are now the most highly educated members of British society. According to British Census, over 26 percent of adult black Africans in the United Kingdom hold academic qualifications higher than "A" or college levels compared with only 13.4 percent for white adults in the U.K. In short, blacks in the U.K. with African origins are outperforming British whites by a ratio of two to one.

Probably the most striking fact to turn up in the census is that in college qualifications... "
http://static.highbeam.com/j/journalofblacksinhighereducationthe/march311994/blackafricansnowthemosthighlyeducatedgroupinbritis/index.html

And an update:

All minority ethnic groups in Scotland are at least as or more likely to have degrees (or equivalent) than White Scottish people. Those most likely to have degrees from ethnic minority groups are Africans, people from ‘Other’ ethnic groups and Indians.

Pakistanis are also the most likely to have no qualifications (43%) followed by Chinese people (38%) and White Scottish people (35%). In contrast, only 15% of African people aged 16-74 years have no qualifications.

People aged 35-54 years:
The group with the highest proportion of people educated to degree level or above is African (61%).

People aged 55-74 years:
The group with the highest proportion of people educated to degree level is the African group (47%)

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/social/aescr-07.asp

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Originally posted by trexmaster:
That may be true as of NOW, but we do have proof that Africans are not necessarily less intelligent by nature.

Besides, when much of Europe was still in a stage of tribalism, copper-hued Africans built the pyramids.

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This unfortunately parallels--but to a lesser extent--what occurred during less technological times when African "muscle power" was forcefully employed by Western Europe to create the surpluses needed for economic growth and technological change in the West.

Obviously Africa would be better off if all those African engineers, chemists, medical doctors, football players worked in Africa than in Europe. And increasingly African athletes are accepting the money bait to switch nationalities so that their host nations gain some new international prominence. Kenya and Nigeria have been most affected by this.

Putting aside talk about the validity of IQ scores, it is obvious that African nations are forced or openly tricked to play an economics game in which the West--through the IMF, WB, WTO, etc.--has set rules that reward African labour skills in Africa among the world's least remunerated.

Intelligence could be defined as follows:

But one should bear in mind that "intelligence" is always contextual: the individual--human or animal--is faced with a problem and seeks to solve it based on prior and stored environmental inputs. Think of the brain or central nervous system as the hard-drive of a computer. There must be programmed inputs before the computer can solve the tasks put to it.

I say contextual because each situation requires a specific intelligence. Thus the intelligence of a lion would be different from that of a porpoise or human. But in all cases there must be stored knowledge inputs that serve as a templates for problem solutions.

The problem with the nativist argument is that it maximally discounts the plasticity of the human brain and the
role that environmental inputs play in the development of cognitive skills.

The 3 musketeers are much more than your ad hominems claim. I am sure they would handle your personal references on their behalf if and when they feel like it--with extreme verbal skill.

African Economic Development

There have been thousands of books and articles written on this subject but the solution is obvious.

1)At the individual level the individual needs access to capital for an education--i.e acquisition of a skill.

Banks and the State(with tax money) could solve the problem, but they don't.

Banks in Africa cater mainly to expatriate Lebanese, Indian and European businessmen, rarely to Africans.

Governments are indebted to the IMF. the WB and other non-African credit agencies so there's little cash for infrastructural needs

Solution 1: Those African countries that bulge with OPEC and petroleum proceeds daily--Nigeria, Libya, Angola, Gabon, Sudan, etc.--daily could bank their proceeds with the African Development Bank(based in Ivory Coast) which could then be parceled out to local Co-operative banks to finance skill training and capital to put that skill into practice. Someone trained to be a computer repairman should be able to get bank capital to set up his own shop. Multiply that principle millions of time and you have a solution in motion.

Solution 2:

Intracontinental trade could be improved by removing the colonial boundaries that hinder travel, trade and employment.

Solution 3:

South Africa produces and and has the infrastructure to produce most consumer items for Africa. It can serve as the development hub for all of Southern Africa with the Rand as a "hard" reserve currency. The same Common Market principles could be established for West, East, and North Africa.

Brazil and China produce all that Africa could need in terms of hi-tech goods--at a much cheaper cost. So trading links with Europe and America should be de-emphasised. And Brazil is quite close to West Africa--so trading links would be easy to establish.

Instead there are very few flights to Brazil from West Africa and most go through Europe. That nonsense could be easily solved with political will.

Solution 4:

African governments should learn to be as dishonest, opportunistic, hypocritical and racist as their European counterparts in dealing with the IMF, WB, WTO, and the G8 Club.

African governments should seek to establish a single continental currency that is convertible at par with the currencies of the Euro-zone. I just don't see why New Zealand's currency is convertible at almost par with the dollar given that that tiny country produces nothing but wool, wool and more wool.

In this regard African governments might want want to seek coaching from those 419 boys from Nigeria.

So I imagine that Shakespeare's parents read to him too. Or that Senghor's parents read to him. Or Immanuel Kant's parents read heavy philosophy to him from the day he saw light in Konigsberg.

Solution: just have good schools with good teachers and less stupid television.

My perpective is that you can bridge the old with the new. In the case with many regions in Africa you can incorporate older traditions in with newer ones that will build up the countries. For instance, many Westerners through neglect of study in the area of Africa don't realize that Africans had a complex systems of checks and balances that often kept tyranical leaders in check. Also benefical is using little things like herbal medicine to prevent and help the symptons of AIDS.

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ausar wrote:
I agree that romantization of history will not benfit anybody. It won't benefit modern Egyptians nor will it benefit anybody African or non-African or otherwise. This is often the type of romantization I am often guilty of an Egyptian trying to fall back upon 5,000 years of history for the modern era.

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The more I learn about AE, the more I think the AE way of looking at the world has a lot to contribute to modern thinking, among african people in particular. And its art has power unlike I've thus far discovered in other ancient artwork.

Lots of other people would agree with the above. I don't think that's romanticization.

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On the "IQ" tip: Ho-boy, if you think Rasol is lacking in the brains department, then that puts *you* on the level of a spider monkey. I've learned more truth from just a few of his posts that I've learned from *any* of yours.

But my main point: I don't think black people should dignify debates about our own brain-power.

Just know that people who are adamant about insulting the collective intelligence of black folk are waging war of a sort. It's a war on the psyche. Mounting an appropriate response to that is important, but engaging them in debate about it is pretty much the weakest response.

It would be nice if their saying we're stupid -- e.g. GULLIBLE -- made it that much harder for them to pit us against one another. That's an "iq" test in itself!

Thank you, and have a safe drive home.

P.s.: I'm pretty sure Ho-boy's not being real with us half the time. It's becoming more clear he doesn't believe the stuff he writes. It's all good though, he's serving his purpose...