UPDATE: Portions of this and the earlier essay were taken out because one of the subjects needs them removed. TOLA, May 21, 2013.
New “over-achieving” Nigerians
The essay on why immigrant kids perform well in America (2): the Nigerian example back in June got some views this weekend, and my, what revelations and good news! I’ve decided to share the following as they may lie buried under the COMMENTS without many getting to read them:
I am half Nigerian and half African American, and so probably have a deep understanding of the rift between Nigerians and African Americans. I think many Nigerians perceive it as you describe, but African Americans perceive it subtly differently. African Americans perceive Africans (including Nigerians) as viewing themselves as different. There is a “we came here with nothing and we work hard, unlike you.” African Americans feel that Africans look at their situation, ascribe it all to slavery, and feel that they know what is holding African Americans back simply by looking, but not by doing any research into the situation. It is this attitude that African Americans object to, it’s not considered an arrogance, but it makes African Americans feel as though Africans think they are better than African Americans.
As far as your statement that nobody would tell a Nigerian kid they would not amount to anything, I know several examples of where that is false, having heard several Nigerian fathers tell that to their underachieving children to try to motivate them. It unfortunately backfired each time.
As far as why Nigerians and other immigrants perform so well, if you consider the immigrants who perform well, it is largely African and Asian immigrants from places like India and China, where there is ubiquitous poverty and education is highly regarded and seen as a way out of poverty. In the US, slavery is not what is keeping African Americans back, it is the aftermath of slavery, the products of segregation and the aftereffects of that. After World War 2, the first mortgages were allowed. But they were allowed only for whites. This resulted in whites being allowed to own homes, while blacks were not. What resulted was that whites took over suburbia while blacks were confined to urban areas, where inner cities developed. Fast forward to the 60s where this law was ended. Although it was legally ended, the practice continued until 2000, when it was finally enforced and blacks finally began getting mortgages at the same rate as whites. This matters because in the US, houses are borrowing power.
A family that bought a house at the end of WW2 was able to send their kids to college using that house. They could then give their children this house, and those kids could use that borrowing power to get a bigger house, more money for college, and so on and so on. What resulted was a widening rift in wealth that was tied directly into houses. For many African Americans without this access to that kind of wealth, college was only accessible if you could earn a scholarship, and these were limited. For the ones who got scholarships, they went on to succeed. For the ones who did not, some went into debt to go to school, while others found jobs. And there is where the problem begins. While the African comes here with nothing, but with the idea that education is a way out, the African American often starts with a huge debt that they are trying to pay, and sports is seen as a way out of that debt, not education. If they have to pay for that education, that is more debt that they can not afford. A scholarship for education will not help pay the debt and will not guarantee a high paying job afterwards, but a sports scholarship will. This is all very well documented by the PBS documentary “Race: the power of an Illusion” You can check it out on their website.
So to say that African Americans do not succeed because of slavery is to misunderstand the situation, and to again do what African Americans object to: set Africans as different because they did not experience slavery. No living African American has experienced slavery – it is a part of the shared history, but not a personal experience. Africans and African Americans both succeed at what they perceive as a way out of poverty: Africans see education as a way out, and excel at that like no other. African Americans see sports as a way out, and excel at that like no other. As example, you listed the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods. I would add to that all the basketball, track, football and olympic athletes that are disproportionately African American.
Thus, both Africans and African Americans are more alike than different: what they set out to succeed at, they do, whether it be sports or education.
Anonymous
In one of my replies to ANONYMOUS, I pointed out that the INSTITUTIONAL put-downs – subtle and direct – were my references about “… not amounting to anything” and not the ones by parents. For my full replies, please check out submissions made some days ago on “Why immigrant kids perform …. the Nigerian example”.
May 17, 2012 at 10:45 pm
If it wasn’t for African Americans fighting and dying for Civil Rights no African would even be allowed to come to this country. I swear. SMDH
May 17, 2012 at 10:33 pm
You speak as if all Black people in America are failing. If Africans, specifically Nigerians, are such overachievers then why do they migrate here? Why isn’t Nigeria in a better state than it is now? Why is it still divided between the North and South with religious violence rampant? I swear, Nigeria GDP grows and its GDP per capita decreases. You all are so quick to divide yourselves from others. Nigerians, Igbo, Tutsi, Mandinka and so on and so on. That tribalism is in you all’s blood. There are approximately 36 million Blacks in the U.S., 23% in poverty, Nigeria’s poverty rate is 71%. We are minorities, historically oppressed in a country that didn’t even consider us human beings. You all have your own country and are inundated in oil, what’s your excuse. You all always have to try to compare your selves to us. Go back to your damn country. We out number you all here, it is only a few hundred thousands of you all while there are millions of us.
May 18, 2012 at 11:21 am
Dear Mr. Brown,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I agree with you on the migration of Nigerians arising from the fact that our own country does not work due to corruption and other sundry reasons. I must also point out that I’ve written here and a former newspaper column I had for many years the betrayal by Nigeria of peoples of African descent in the Diaspora through the failure of the country to live up to the level where it ought to be now so that our brothers and sisters elsewhere would have, at least, have points of reference for a working nation ruled by black people.
Having said that and having lived in the States for many years, including Florida during the turbulent civil rights period, I must state that Nigeria and other African countries did play a silent unwitting role in achieving civil rights.
The “fight”/competition between the United States and the then Soviet Union for the hearts and minds of young Africans from the late 50s, 60s & 70s cannot be discounted from gains in the U.S. by our brothers and sisters there. America wanted to appear as caring by Africa and could not achieve that by holding those who are part of us – though long removed – as they used to hold African-Americans.
Now, as for Nigeria failing the black race which I’ve raised in many essays, it was the PROMISE THAT INDEPENDENCE of first, Ghana, then Nigeria, etcetera held that spurred America to compete with the Soviet Union which had come out boldly and built a Patrice Lumumba University to which hundreds of Africans flocked including many from Nigeria to study subjects like Engineering, Medicine … subjects that the British colonial masters did not plan for the sole university in Nigeria.
That PROMISE, as the world now knows, is in tatters, but Mr. Brown, if you read my own commentaries that are replies to a couple of readers who expressed the understandable same points you’ve raised here, you would agree that even the feelings you express are part of those planted on both sides which were designed to continually divide us.
I believe, as I told one of those readers with whom I even had personal correspondences, that native-born African-Americans have a lot to gain by not being antagonistic to Africans, especially Nigerians who take the opportunities that abound in America despite the racism that still persist. It swells the positive black statistics as the Spanish-Americans’ tally is swollen by illegals who are forever coming in and who become legalized at one point or another.
Regards, Mr. Brown, and think of these points.
TOLA.
May 20, 2012 at 9:58 pm
FROM MY MAILBOX: info@emotanafricana.com
Submitted on 2012/05/20 at 7:55 pm
Mr. Brown,
Nigeria really contributed to the civil rights of blacks not only with respect to those of the USA but also to those of South Africa and Rhodesia. I can remember that at the Univ. Of Ibadan we had students from these countries where the rights of people of African decent were trampled. The name of James Meredith comes to mind. I was in Tedder Hall then in the Sixties when James was in Melamby Hall. These students were brought to Nigeria to allow them to experience what schooling in a free society felt like.
Ajipeya Afunleyin
May 20, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Thanks, Mr. Ajipeya.
These are very useful info to add to the little I’ve submitted.
I think we can all understand Mr. Brown and appreciate where he’s coming from but Africans in Africa and peoples of African descent everywhere all need each other. Happily, many African-Americans that I know do not think this way or, they’ve gone beyond that stage of thinking. Once Mr. Brown can get over the anger he feels that a Nigerian, perhaps, deprives him of what would have been his due in the States, it would be easy for him to see us and other Africns as brothers and sisters.
Regards,
TOLA