Student Debt and the Disregard for the Black Middle Class
By ignoring racial wealth disparities in solutions to the student debt crisis, Joe Biden is abdicating his commitment to address discrimination.
Even when Black Americans graduate from top colleges and get higher-paying jobs, their differences in wealth make it much harder to pay off student debt.
Photographer: Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images North America“The American Dream is to succeed, but how can we fulfill that dream when debt is many people’s only option for a degree?” That’s the question one woman posed to President Joe Biden during a Feb. 16 town hall. She asked Biden how he would go beyond his campaign promise of canceling $10,000 of student loan debt per person. “We need at least a $50,000 minimum,” she said.
“I will not make that happen,” Biden replied sharply. His concern, he said, is that those policies would “forgive billions of dollars of debt for people” who have gone to private colleges rather than pay for other initiatives, such as early childhood education.