Nope... they’re more interested in pretending that the children of University educated West African civil servants doing better than the children of yorkshire coal miners (and English-Jamaican plumbers for that matter) proves that the ‘white working class’ r being left behind... https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1316385116206366723

It might be more honest to ask how/why so many University educated middle class West Africans ended up artificially working class in the first place and check if we find a similar pattern with similarly qualified migrants from NZ, AUZ or Germany for example...

Either way the intellectual acrobatics involved in Black kids on FSM are twice as likely to end up @ University, but also Black children - undifferentiated by social class, personal attainment etc - are bad is impressive.

For Black English children whose great grandparents came from
the Caribbean it has been argued that ‘Caribbean culture’ explains the academic failures (unlike similarly poor white kids they have not been ‘left behind’)...

We can test this ‘hypothesis’ quite easily of course... if Caribbean culture is anti education (lol btw) we would reasonably expect middle class Caribbean’s, in the actual Caribbean, to be have abysmal academic outcomes wouldn’t we?

Except that the University of the West Indies is in the top 5% of all Universities in the world. For context there are were just two Universities in India that ranked higher (if my memory serves me correctly) at last ranking, despite there being 500x more people in India that JA

The University of the west Indies also outranks many much much better funded UK Universities, despite the fact that much of the Caribbean’s best and brightest go off to study in America...

Once we also start looking at high school data for the top 30-50 schools in Jamaica, Trinidad etc this ‘thesis’ looks frankly pathetic

In fact you’d think apologists for UK colonialism would be bending over themselves backwards 2 point out that the English-Caribbean has first world life expectancy, peaceful democratic transitions, high press freedom, better human rights than almost all of Africa, Asia/Latin Am

And that democratic institutions are even more deeply imbedded than some nations in Europe... but nah, apparently not.

When we add to this that literally millions of the ‘white working class’ are also descendants of post war (pre EU) migrants the attempt to confer indigeneity via identity is of course massive identity politics, coming from people that claim to be against identity politics...

Unsurprising though given that this particular brand/strain of identity politics had much state support...

You might think the poorest and ‘blackest’ of all the black children in Britain doing comparatively well in school and being likely to attend University (in spite of clear evidence of discrimination: see Bristol and Warwick studies) might be a source of admiration/inspiration

Especially given the influence that Black popular culture has over virtually all of the poorer children in this country, but apparently not so much.

Equally those who also claim the violence is also a result of Caribbean ‘culture’ rather than politics/material history don’t even attempt to explain why Antigua, Grenada and Barbados have nothing like Jamaican/Trini murder rates but Brazil, Mexico and Colombia do...

But the need to make serious, evidence based, coherent arguments is clearly not a priority for some...

If, among the poorer sections of the major ethnic groups in Britain the two groups that are most culturally English/British whether black or white are doing almost equally badly, whereas the groups that have retained their ‘immigrant’ cultures are doing comparatively better....

What does this tell us if anything about ‘culture’? (or rather acculturation to the norms and expectations of the British class system as i’d prefer to put it)

I’d be interested to see the academic outcomes of Black students in Holland for example. I’m willing to bet that academic gaps between rich and poor and different ethnic groups in Holland are much much smaller than Britain...

Also we should not overstate the case. Yes British Ghanaians/Nigerians are doing relatively ok in schools and that’s good, BUT compared to their own middle class cousins back in Nigeria and Ghana or to their literal cousins that migrated to the US they not doing that well at all

Ghanaian scientists put a satellite into space a couple years ago even when the average wage in Ghana is about £2k per year. What Ghana’s scientists might be achieving when the country becomes even vaguely prosperous and has a larger talent pool to draw from, who knows.

There are entire neighbourhoods of upper middle class specifically Jamaican, Nigerian and Ghanaian immigrants in the US, no such phenomena has yet occurred in Britain even though we are talking - often - about literal cousins in the same families.

If British Ghanaians and Nigerians are not doing anywhere near as well in school as their own middle class cousins ‘back home’ who are living in far more politically challenging circumstances... their relative success is not in fact actually that impressive.

It perhaps speaks to just how low our general academic expectations are for poorer children in Britain and just how little being seen as smart is culturally rewarded/aspirational...

In closing, without adjusting for levels of parental education in country of origin ethic statists about educational outcomes can be used extremely dishonestly (or at best in ways that are impressively mediocre)

If we were to subdivide particular ethic groups between those whose parents have degrees and those whose don’t we’d likely find much the same ‘in group’ gaps in attainment, i’m willing to bet...

Equally if we were to find that a large majority of British Ghanaians, Nigerians, Zimbabweans and Ugandans have University educated parents, we’d not be acting surprised that some of them are doing ok, we might be asking if they’re actually doing poorly relative to their parents

Either way some level of control factors are your friend (if you’re actually interested in empiricism that is). Have a good day everybody