The system is rigged against POC students. Nevertheless, we persevere
The following essay was written by Christopher Punongbayan, a lawyer and Executive Director at California ChangeLawyers, and Neri Lozano, a paralegal at Inner City Law Center and soon-to-be law student.
The college cheating scandal this month has shown what many of us have known for a long time: our higher education system favors the rich and powerful.
At the same time that federal prosecutors indicted over 30 wealthy people in the largest higher education scam in history, the Trump Administration released their latest budget proposal that slashes over $7 billion in funding for the Department of Education. And one of the most sinister aspects of this budget is the complete gutting of the (very popular) Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007. The program allows non-profit and government employees to have their Federal student loans forgiven after ten years. The people most affected will be communities of color.
Black and Latinx students graduate from college in debt more often than their white classmates. According to Student Loan Hero, a student loan tool website, an estimated 86.8% of Black and 65% of Latinx students borrow money to go to a 4-year university, while white students borrow money at about 60% of the time. Even more troubling, statistics indicate that students of color have more trouble paying back their student loans. According to According to Demos, a public policy organization, Black and Latinx students default on those student loans at 50% and 36% respectively, compared to 20% of their white counterparts. One of the main reasons is because of lower average incomes for graduates of color, which makes repayment more challenging. Education is the best path towards upwards mobility in our society, and yet Black and Latinx students are being financially strapped for years to come
Nevertheless, we persevere. More often than not, people of color who made it to college had to figure out applications, financial aid forms, housing, and tuition all on our own. Much higher percentages of Black and Latinx students grow up in poverty; without the extra support wealthy or even middle class parents can provide. Yet, we continue to overcome those challenges to pay for college.
The system won’t make itself more just or racially equitable. Together, we must once more bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice. That’s why we need to preserve hard-fought wins like the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. We also need to go inside institutions to transform them so that they are beacons of equal opportunity. As more of us — children of immigrant, children of the incarcerated, raised in single parent households — enter positions of power and influence, we can transform higher education, transform the government, and break the cycle of inequity for ourselves and our communities.
