Subscribe via E-Mail

Get all of our news delivered fresh to your inbox every morning! Just tell us your name and where to send it using the form below.

PS – We hate spam too. We don’t sell or share our list with anyone, and we never send commercial email.




luxe
Friday, January 29th, 2016  |  USD: Buy 531.29 / Sell 543.92
20 years

Costa Rica’s black population hindered by less education and professional employment

Email this page

Costa Rica black culture

October 30th, 2013 (InsideCostaRica.com) The average schooling of Costa Rica’s black population over 25 years of age is 8.3 years, a number that falls to just 5.9 years in rural areas, while only 5.5% of black men have professional-level work, according to recently released data by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

 

The report is based on data from the last national census of population and housing, in 2011, which showed that the white population had roughly one year of additional schooling – 9.3 years in urban areas and 6.5 years in rural areas.

 

According to the report, 7.8% of Costa Ricans self-identified as being of African descent.

 

The data showed that the gap in higher education is significant between the country’s black and non-black populations.  Only 8.6% of the black population said they have studied at a university, compared to 17.6% of the population as a whole.

 

The UNDP Resident Coordinator for Costa Rica, Yoriko Yasukawa, said the study shows the need for universal quality education.

 

“The [black population] in all of Latin America continues to have lower rates of employment, literacy, years of schooling, fewer university graduates, and fewer leadership positions in government and medium and large enterprises,” said Silvia Garcia, regional project coordinator for the report.

costa rica news

ATTENTION: If you are seeing this message,


Advertisement


Get our news delivered fresh to your inbox every morning.

Click here to subscribe to our email list. We hate spam too and never send commercial email.

Like us on Facebook and receive our news in your timeline

  • Aitor Xaranga

    However…without the African ancestry in our population, we would not have any National Soccer Team to brag about!

  • Ken Morris

    As usual, the report-writers substitute political correctness for thoughtful analysis.

    There is anti-black prejudice in CR, but the main explanation for the poorer relative success rates for blacks is regional. Limón, where CR blacks disproportionately live, is an economic backwater, with the ports, banana plantations, and tourism the main industries. Meanwhile, the government keeps giving economic development handouts to the mostly white Central Valley.

    The result is that in order to have better economic opportunities, most residents of Limón have to move. Some of course do, but those who can’t or don’t want to get left behind.

    And it’s silly to suggest that improved public education is the solution. When there are no jobs commensurate with a good education, people sensibly lack to motivation to stay in school. Trying to improve education without developing an economy in which education pays has the linkage exactly backwards.

    To cry racism and propose education as the cure may make people feel all sanctimonious, but it doesn’t accurately diagnose the problem or provide a solution.

    Of course, it may be that racism lurks behind the government’s abandonment of economic development in Limón, even as poorer blacks fuel racist attitudes by seeming to confirm them. Nobody knows what the causal sequence is exactly. However, it’s irrelevant to the solution, which has to be economic development in Limón.

    • Jim Freeman

      What did you just say? Again I say Ken you are just about the smartest person making comments on most every thing! Where did you learn so much and what country is your country of residence?

    • A Dull Roar

      So, Ken, did you miss the stories that they are doubling the size of the port in Moin? And, that the Chinese are funding a half-billion dollar expansion of Hwy 32 between San José and Limón? Yeah, good time to move and miss that economic boom.

      Yes, many Ticos are very prejudiced against black people here, and Nicaraguans, and Panamanians, … It wasn’t until after the revolution in ’48 that residents of Limón were even allowed to travel further than Turrialba!

      So, take your “political correctness” slam elsewhere. A term, by they way, invented by a conservative. Oh, and of course “most” development funding is going to happen in the Valle Central which holds half the country’s population, so that’s a big stinky red herring too.

      • Ken Morris

        So expand a port and a highway and the economic opportunities will flow like milk and honey? I’m not sure I’d stay in school if my brightest future involved becoming a dockworker or truck driver.

        Heck, maybe the banana plantations ought to be expanded too.

        Mostly, I’m confused by our apparent disagreement. I’m not sure who coined the term “political correctness” and would guess it was a conservative, but I thought conservatives generally favored economic development. What am I missing here?

        (Although, if you don’t believe that conservatives favor political correctness too, try calling an evangelical a fundamentalist.)

    • expatin paradise

      Good points. Additionally, if blacks do leave Limon, they are socially shunned by light-skinned Ticos who seem to observe an unwritten caste system based on skin color. According to many central-valley Ticos, even the darker-skinned people of Guanacaste are an inferior breed of people. I’ve heard people of Guanacaste referred to some as being the equivalent of “Nicas”, and we all know the attitude toward Nicas. If people from Limon did leave the area, I would not be surprised if they began identifying themselves as Hispanic, rather than as being of African descent, so these statistics may not be entirely accurate.

      As for education, even public schools are far from free and are probably not affordable for families of meager means, especially if they have many children. Of course, the big universities in the central valley are a very long bus commute from Limon province but convenient to the majority of the population in the country. I know many people in the central valley who take university courses because it is so convenient to do so, but I am unaware of any public universities in Limon. Perhaps Costa Rica should consider something like a system of community colleges for such remote areas if there is no such program.

      I’d be interested in seeing how other remote areas, such as Guanacaste and the Southern zone, compare to the central valley on these same points.

      • Blamminski

        There is a public university in Limon. They offer degrees in Ho’s, burglary, importation and gram measurements.The cops are their instructors.

      • Ken Morris

        And good points yourself.

        I don’t have much of a sense of Guanacaste, but a very little investigation into Puntarenas persuaded me that it’s in about the same pickle as Limón, although the economic mix is different. I believe the main industries in Puntarenas are tourism, fishing, and manufacturing, none of which provide many opportunities for educated Ticos. Thus those with or who want educations move elsewhere, although the most common solution suggested for Puntarenas is improved education.

        I was perhaps unclear in my earlier posts by not saying that by “political correctness” I mean the belief that education is the solution. I’m pretty sure that education is NOT the solution for depressed regions, and to believe it is has the causal chain backwards. Economic development of the type that requires good educations goes hand in hand with or actually precedes education. Although at lower rates than the Central Valley, some people from Limón and Puntarenas do get good educations. The problem is that those who do move to the Central Valley not only to go to school but also to work afterwards. The result is a “brain drain” from the poorer regions that helps keep them poor.

        I lack the prerequisite minority credentials to opine about racism (unless being a gringo counts) but my sense is that racial discrimination against people from Limón is not now their main obstacle. I drink in a Central Valley Tico bar, which is managed by an enormously competent university student from Limón and I was just last night watching the ballgame with a customer who grew up in Limón. There doesn’t seem to be the same degree of prejudice against these people that there is against Nicas, who I notice never patronize the bar and only work there in the kitchen.

        The pattern though seems to be that the ambitious and competent people from Limón move to the Central Valley. This doesn’t mean that there are no ambitious and competent people left in Limón (or that everyone in the Central Valley is ambitious and competent) but there is I think a pattern. My inference is that the pattern is mostly explained by the different economic opportunities available in the different regions.

      • Pablo Bolaños-Villegas

        The UCR does have branches in Limon, Turrialba, Grecia, Guanacaste, Puntarenas, and Golfito, The one in Limon even has labs for molecular biology applied to medicine.

  • BaldheadedFoo

    another useless study pointing out the obvious. is there a daily quota that the media must fulfill on black discrimination stories? we never hear anything about native americans or the indigenous population. does the media not care about them at all?

Popular Content