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Aren't you committing an error in attributing the achievements of a select group (African immigrants/descendants, mostly Nigerian, living in Western countries)
by SisypheanTask 10y ago
Aren't you committing an error in attributing the achievements of a select group (African immigrants/descendants, mostly Nigerian, living in Western countries) to a broader category (all black people)? This is just a step above saying: "Neil DeGrasse Tyson is intelligent, therefore Black Americans are intelligent".
Does it not stand to reason that the immigrants from Nigeria who come here are likely to be more talented and ambitious than the average Nigerian? Nigeria has over 200 million people, is it any surprise that a selection of their best would produce offspring who are on average more intelligent and successful than the wider swathe of American-born blacks?
I don't have a dog in this fight or a particular strong opinion either way, but your cherry-picked anecdotes fly in the face of statistical distributions that hold much more weight.
- a_w 10y agoPretty much all the articles I linked above address the same argument you are raising, they have data that says otherwise. Also interesting that I have yet to encounter the same argument when comparing the achievements of African Americans and Asians. I have honestly never heard of anyone saying that there are 1.4 billion Chinese and roughly the same number of Indians, so it could be argued that those who come here are more talented and ambitious than the average Chinese or Indian, so it would be unfair to compare that group and African Americans.