So, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) has invented a thing called an “African” degree.
If you have this unheard of continental schooling, it makes you’re only half as good as a Dutch person less educated than you.
Everybody who’s read this has asked the same question: what evaluation or peer-reviewed analysis gave rise to this generalisation over how the 52 countries on the African continent have Bachelor's degrees that are generally “the equivalent of 2 years of academic education” in the Netherlands?
One of the first things you’ll learn about racism is that it makes assumptions.
Assumptions are why Chauvin murdered Floyd. That his life was less worthy, and therefore his death wouldn’t matter. The University of Amsterdam isn’t killing anybody yet, but they have and will surely kill careers, aspirations & livelihoods.
Still as deadly, just less blood.
Maybe UvA’s sweeping assumption explains why it has taken me 5 years of 500 applications & interviews, to be rejected over & over again by Dutch recruiters.
These diversity interviews are for show, and the job often goes to a wide-eyed intern who just left school, who is white.
When curious peers back in Nigeria ask me about Dutch society, I always reply that I’ve never met one single Dutch person who impressed me intellectually.
I’ve been in private companies, government ministries, large hospitals, even served on a board, and I never once saw a Dutch person demonstrate an intelligence or education that made me question mine.
Few Dutch people aspire to university education.
It is not needed for most jobs. On the contrary in Nigeria, without at least a masters degree, your employment is limited.
As a group, Nigerians in the US & UK have more university degrees than the local population, because university education is a cultural rite of passage back home.
This does not mean that every Nigerian has a university degree, but for those who do, it’s very competitive.
Education as culture is why Nigerians like WTO president Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka or multi doctorally awarded novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, all graduated with first degrees from different Nigerian universities.
Of these universities, there are 170 in Nigeria, not counting in the other 51 countries in Africa. The Netherlands has 13 universities.
I’ve always said that the root of racism is a lack of education.
Whiteness, as a toxic ideology, thrives on the idea that it is superior. That misinformation starts from school systems, and is reinforced by media and culture.
By the time a Dutch child is 5 years old, they’ve imbibed a cultural paradigm of a rich white man who owns a big white horse, surrounded by black servants walking happily on the ground.
Because the Dutch are polite racists, they call these Zwarte Petes not servants, but helpers: insinuating that the black mind has such limited emotional range that it responds to life, whether good or bad, with a big, thick red-lipped smile.
The 5 year old children who are mentally abused by this yearly street-based carnival will grow up to become CEOs and cabinet members, who reinforce what they’ve been taught.
Some of them will become university staff, who publish stupid notices like the one from UvA.
You’d think the backlash would humble the UvA, but under the mind-bending & magical aura of racism, white people generally tend to lack both insight & conscience.
So I imagine the University of Amsterdam will explain this offense away as part of their standard operating procedure, in a because-I-said-so kind of way.
Not much teachability or education there, or is there?
By Dr. Ayo Adene
Reference:
https://abs.uva.nl/content/masters/business-administration/application-and-admission/students-with-international-prior-education/african-students.html?cb
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