The Student Loan Crisis Is a Racial Inequality Issue

Spoiler alert: Having intergenerational wealth helps a lot

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., hold a press conference in the Dirksen Senate Office Buidling to introduce the Student Loan Debt Relief Act to cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans on Tuesday, July 23, 2019. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

This week, President-elect Joe Biden affirmed his support during a press conference for erasing some student loan debt “immediately.” Biden repeated his support for the HEROES Act, which calls for the federal government to pay off up to $10,000 in private, nonfederal student loans for “economically distressed” borrowers as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While Senate Democrats are pushing for more debt relief, with Elizabeth Warren advocating for the next president to forgive up to $50,000 of debt per borrower, a crucial aspect of the effects of student loan debt is being overlooked: its role in reinforcing the racial wealth gap.

“Student loan debt has a tight relationship with racial inequality and particularly the racial wealth gap,” Suzanne Kahn, director of education, jobs, and worker power and the Great Democracy Initiative at the Roosevelt Institute and co-author of a paper that exposes how student loan debt reinforces the racial wealth gap, told ZORA. “Because Black and Brown students typically have less family wealth to draw on when they start school, they take out larger loans; when Black and Brown students graduate, they face racial discrimination in wages and job placement that make it more difficult to pay off their…