What about "scholarships and training programmes" during "Burnham's and Hoyte's era"?

British awards

Of course, there is the constitutional Ethnic Relations Commission. And, indeed, if these commentators are serious about their allegations of African discrimination and marginalisation, then we would implore them to compile a class action complaint to the Ethnic Relations Commission.

Our series on marginalisation focused on the distribution of ethnic participation in the Public Service. The fact of the matter is that we have only identified the occupational status of ethnics; but have not determined whether ethnics at senior levels are mere tokens in the execution of their jobs, as some commentators’ allusions imply.

And perhaps, given the frequency of this allusion, we would, indeed, entreat these commentators to embark on a scientific study of the scope of tokenism among well-placed Africans in the public sector. And so these commentators should really do some field work to find out whether or not this is the case. Look, it may be interesting to hear how well-placed Africans see their jobs.

We have said for the umpteenth time that the series is about social marginalisation; and so we did not examine other types of marginalisation. It’s amazing that some commentators would say that it does not matter whether or not it is social marginalisation; because for them ‘marginalisation is marginalisation’.

But this concept ‘marginalisation is marginalisation’ is too general; and in fact, it is more a theoretical rather than an operational definition. This concept has to graduate to an acceptable level of specificity for measurement purposes. It is inappropriate to measure generalities; we measure concepts that are operationally defined.

"Our series on marginalisation focused on the distribution of ethnic participation in the Public Service. The fact of the matter is that we have only identified the occupational status of ethnics; but have not determined whether ethnics at senior levels are mere tokens in the execution of their jobs, as some commentators' allusions imply. And perhaps, given the frequency of this allusion, we would, indeed, entreat these commentators to embark on a scientific study of the scope of tokenism among well-placed Africans in the public sector."

Marginalisation has to be operationally defined and that is why we use the concept of social marginalisation. The concept ‘marginalisation is marginalisation’ probably is a theoretical definition per se, and is explained in terms of other concepts, thereby producing some generality; whereas operational definitions really detail the procedures used in measurements; and so an operational definition of ‘marginalisation is marginalisation’ should be adequately precise, so that other people using the procedures on the same population will obtain the same results.

Look, so far we have presented the distribution of ethnic participation; we found that Africans occupy a substantial number of senior positions in the Public Service; and that there is an evolving ethnic mix in the high-status positions; it’s not surprising that these commentators had little to say about this growing ethnic mix. We provided data on budgetary allocations; we then presented statistics on the ethnic distribution of house lots; and here again, both Indians and Africans occupy fairly equal proportions.

In this week’s issue, we present the ethnic distribution of the Top students’ results at the National Grade Nine Assessment, CSEC, CAPE, and GCE levels; we also present some data on scholarships.

Table 1: Results of the Top 25 National Grade Nine Assessment - 2007

Source: Ministry of Education – Examinations Division

Table 1 shows that in 2007, 64% of Indians and 32% of Africans comprised the top 25 students at the National Grade Nine Assessment prior to high school entry.

Table 2 indicates that in 2007, 60% of Indians and 30% of Africans were among the top 183 students at the CSEC.

Table 2: Results of the Top 183 Students at the CSEC - 2007

Source: Public Service Ministry Training Division
Over the period 2000 through 2007, 46% of Indians and 42% of Africans obtained the Government of India scholarships for training programmes in India. And so it is clear that there is a representative ethnic distribution of scholarships to India; but more importantly, these scholarships are awarded on merit.