Nigerian exceptionalism in the US

Houston Chronicle:

For Woodlands resident David Olowokere, one of Nigeria's sons, having a master's degree in engineering just wasn't enough for his people back home. So he got a doctorate.

His wife, Shalewa Olowokere, a civil engineer, didn't stop at a bachelor's, either. She went for her master's.

The same obsession with education runs in the Udeh household in Sugar Land. Foluke Udeh and her husband, Nduka, both have master's degrees. Anything less, she reckons, would have amounted to failure.

"If you see an average Nigerian family, everybody has a college degree these days," said Udeh, 32, a physical therapist at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. "But a post-graduate degree, that's like pride for the family."

Nigerian immigrants have the highest levels of education in this city and the nation, surpassing whites and Asians, according to Census data bolstered by an analysis of 13 annual Houston-area surveys conducted by Rice University.

Although they make up a tiny portion of the U.S. population, a whopping 17 percent of all Nigerians in this country held master's degrees while 4 percent had a doctorate, according to the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, 37 percent had bachelor's degrees.

To put those numbers in perspective, 8 percent of the white population in the U.S. had master's degrees, according to the Census survey. And 1 percent held doctorates. About 19 percent of white residents had bachelor's degrees. Asians come closer to the Nigerians with 12 percent holding master's degrees and 3 percent having doctorates.

The Nigerian numbers are "strikingly high," said Roderick Harrison, demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank that specializes in researching black issues. "There is no doubt that these are highly educated professionals who are probably working in the petrochemical, medical and business sectors in Houston."

...

All this talk of education creates high expectations for children of Nigerian immigrants. The eldest child of David Olowokere, chairman of the engineering technologies department at Texas Southern University, for example, is already working on her master's degree in public health in Atlanta; the middle child is pursuing a bachelor's in pre-medicine. His youngest, a son, attends The Woodlands High School. He already has aspirations to go into engineering, just like his parents, Olowokere beams.

"The goal is for them to do as good as us — if not better," he said.

Oluyinka Olutoye put it another way.

"The typical saying in a Nigerian household is that the best inheritance that a parent can give you is not jewelry or cash or material things, it is a good education," he said. "It is expected."

What this story indicates is that success in this country is not dictated by race but by ambition and a desire to achieve success. Immigrants, by their very nature are ambitious risk takers and certainly the Nigerians who come to America have proven if you have those qualities you can achieve great things that were not as possible in the corrupt society from which they came.

Rev. Wright should consider that when he starts ranting about what is holding blacks back in this country. He is part of the problem. He has been giving them an excuse to fail rather than a reason to succeed.