Source: Lew Rockwell | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
In a recent CNN television appearance, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett made this statement: “You know what? There was an article that just came out that said that actually the most educated demographic in this country right now is black women.” The article to which she alluded appears to be this eponymous ThoughtCo piece by Nikki Katz, “Black Women Are the Most Educated Demographic in America.” That article cites a 2014 HBCU Buzz article, “Black Women are Ranked the Most Educated Group by Race & Gender,” which provides a link to a BlackandMarriedWithKids.com video that throws some college enrollment statistics up on the screen. Not surprisingly, the comments section of the video is turned off, and the link in the description box to the source of the stats returns a 404: Page Not Found error message.
In my search to find relevant information, I came across this “degrees conferred by race/ethnicity and sex” table published by the National Center for Education Statistics with data from 2021-22; degrees conferred is probably a better statistic to work with than college enrollment because enrollment figures can be affected by dropout rate. Now if all groups earn a particular degree at the same rate, the percentage of each group earning that degree would correspond to the percentage each group makes up of the general population. The methodology employed here will be to see whether a particular group’s percentage of a particular degree earned approaches, equals, or exceeds the percentage that group makes up of the general population. Population percentage estimates for the major groups for this time frame are approximately 58.4 for non-Hispanic whites, 18.7 for Hispanics, 13.6 for blacks, and 7.1 for Asians.
Here are the percentage breakdowns for the various degrees: Associate: Black females are right on the money at 13.6, but they are surpassed by Hispanic males at 25.5, Hispanic females at 27.4, and Asian males at 7.4. Bachelor’s: Black females are at 11.5, surpassed by Asian males at 9.7, Asian females at 8.3, Hispanic females at 17.9, and white males at 61.0. Master’s: Black females are at 14.0, surpassed by Asian males at 9.5, Asian females at 7.4, white males at 62.9, and white females at 60.9. Doctoral: Black females are at 8.0, surpassed by Asian males at 12.9, Asian females at 12.5, white males at 65.2, and white females at 61.6.
Although black females do better than black males in every degree category, there is not a single degree category in which black females do better than every other group in that same category. Based on that fact, black females simply cannot be the most educated demographic in the country.
