After 99 years, Texas Tech opened a Black Cultural Center on campus to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. / Melanie Escalante
By Melanie Escalante, The Hub@TTU
With Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan being blocked by a Texas judge who deemed the plan as unlawful, Texas Tech academics and potential recipients spoke on how the financial assistance can advance racial equity in communities of color.
The plan called for the cancellation of federal student loans up to $10,000 and Pell Grants up to $20,000 for those who qualify, according to a White House statement.
While an appeal is the next step in this case, the move is a setback for those who are depending on the funds for some financial relief.
Latrail Watson, a College of Media and Communication student from Brooklyn, New York, spoke about the significance of student loan forgiveness as he said he did not expect to go to college because most people in his community who attended college were not seeing any luck.
Watson said attending college was not in his plans as he was more focused on achieving a steady income and a place to lay his head–his plans changed when he received his scholarship to attend Texas Tech.
“Looking towards an education or higher education isn’t something that we can normally see because there’s people struggling already, and you can’t further your education if you’re going to be stopped before it can even start,” Watson said.
Watson said that the wealth gap makes it hard for people to want to better themselves. Growing up homeless most of his childhood, he said they worked hard to escape poverty. Success came at a price, as he said it was difficult to see his people within his community go without.
For Watson, Biden’s plan for student loan forgiveness would eliminate the student debt he has accrued.
Alexander Wiseman, professor of education leadership and policy in the College of Education, said there is institutionalized racism throughout U.S. education systems.
“We also know that Black student loan holders have higher interest rates. They also borrow at different rates and at different times from their white peers,” Wiseman said. “We know that Black and African American students, in particular, owe on average $25,000 more in student loans debt than white college graduates.”
With higher education being one of the most guaranteed ways to earn more money to acquire higher job status and accrue non-salary benefits, Wiseman said it is essential for marginalized communities regarding access to social and economic mobility.
Alexander Wiseman, Ph.D./Photo College of Education website
According to Wiseman, Caucasian families typically have more wealth and, therefore, more persistent and sustainable financial wealth than Black or other racial communities.
Watson shared his thoughts on his experiences in his community, where most people of color live in poverty or come from working-class families without sufficient funds to go to college.
According to Watson, if the people in his community do go to college, they end up with large amounts of debt.
“The people in Brooklyn or the African American kids that I know in Brooklyn, they’re not looking towards college. A lot of them are just looking for a way to help their mothers and fathers provide for their younger siblings,” Watson said.
Wiseman said that despite college sustaining higher levels of income over the life course of graduates, trying to build wealth by attending college becomes difficult when Black students are paying back student loans at much higher rates and for more extended periods than their white peers.
“If we see this kind of debt cancellation continue, over time I think that would be really meaningful,” Wiseman said. “If it’s canceled for maybe this generation but then it’s back in place for the next generation or when the next presidential administration takes over, then you’re not going to have any consistency in terms of that.”
Ellie Mae Fisher, president and founder of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at Texas Tech, said what the Biden Administration planned has the potential to do great things, but they would like to see the cancellation of $50,000 and more.
“It takes Black borrowers longer to pay off these student loans, and then, of course, they’re gaining more interest on it,” Fisher said. “Their student loans are higher, and so for that specific community, the $10,000 quite frankly isn’t going to be the substantive change that we would see in white counterparts.”
TTUs Black Cultural Center offers a specialized library to students as well as areas to study./Melanie Escalante
Contributing to the high-interest rates and the ability to pay back loans, Fisher said Black Americans have had disproportionate access to equitable funds from employment. Regardless of going to school for the same time and having the same qualifications, she said Black Americans, specifically Black women, are being paid less for the same jobs that white Americans have.
“If Congress and the Biden Administration want to provide real relief, they need to understand that the relief needs to be equitable, right? We have to understand this idea of equality versus equity and right now. I think we’re seeing that he wants to make real equality, but it’s not super equitable,” Fisher said.
According to the Marin Health and Human Services website, equality is when individuals or groups have the same number of resources or amount of support for something, whereas equity is acknowledging that some individuals or groups have different circumstances that require more support to reach an equal outcome.
Fisher said the way in which education is made accessible to people shows a disproportionate effect. As Watson mentioned, Fisher said crippling student debt is causing people to shy away from participating in higher education programs and pushing them out.
“Realistically, that’s just not something that should happen and especially at large institutions,” Fisher said. “I welcome institutions to be more transparent about their financial aid process; I welcome them to be transparent about their scholarships. I know that institutions such as Texas Tech have more scholarships than what they know to do with, so why don’t they tell us?”
Wiseman said he feels very protective of his students. Not only does he want to be an educator, but he also wants to ensure students have the best experience. Unfortunately, he has had students who have withdrawn from their programs for financial reasons.
“They’ve been very upfront about it, and there are certain things that we can do,” Wiseman said. “I mean, sometimes there are scholarships, and they’re usually small proportionally, but sometimes they’re enough to help, but not everybody might be eligible, not everybody applies all the time — there’s a little feeling of helplessness there.”
Just as scholarships changed Watson’s direction, Wiseman said scholarships are beneficial as he thinks there is some deterrence for Black and other families who might want to send their kids to college when they know they will have to go into debt.
When looking at the return on the investment, he said this is viewed as explicitly or implicitly. There’s a certain amount of money and cost to go to college, and if there is no way to estimate how long it will take to repay that or get out of debt, people may be less likely to send their student to college.
Fisher said the NAACP commends the Biden Administration for their efforts, but they want the president to understand how much this impacts people and ensure that vulnerable groups, not just Black Americans but communities like veterans, seniors, and communities of color, get that much-needed relief that was promised.
“I think we have to recognize and hold our representatives accountable to the promises that they made,” Fisher said. “It’s inexcusable that the Biden Administration ran pretty heavily on this promise of wiping out student debt, and I believe for a long time this idea of, ‘we must wipe out student debt,’ — just understanding that student debt impacts different communities differently.”
Keeping with the idea of equity, Fisher said doing something meaningful would include wiping out debt for all borrowers, not just borrowers who applied for specific loans in specific states and met certain criteria.
Watson, the third-year creative media industries student, said many people from communities of color might not seek information like that presented by the White House regarding loan forgiveness. He said he believes this content needs to be brought to the attention of the communities affected.
Watson said the message needs to get out.
“I’m not going to want to sit down and hear someone speak on an issue of the African American community who isn’t African American because we don’t share the same struggles,” Watson said. “For the most part, I’d rather have someone from my city or someone that I’m kind of connected with like we have kind of the same upbringing or something relatively close that connects us. If you don’t have that connection, you’re not going to get your point across.”
Fisher said the NAACP wants to give their peers the tools and resources they need to return to their community and fight for themselves.
“Overall, this crisis is affecting people in such a personal way that sometimes people don’t have the ability to fight for something just because it’s right — they’re fighting for something because this is why they need to make that next payment, or they need to get into this house, and so it’s really a personal thing,” Fisher said.
Ellie Mae Fisher, President and Founder of NAACP at Texas Tech/Photo LinkedIn
The NAACP, Fisher said, wants people to know how to qualify for student loan forgiveness to be best prepared for their own situations.
“There’s no reason why people whose lives are being crushed by this debt don’t understand or can’t at least be shown a way out of it,” Fisher said.
The NAACP asks for a reduction of the timeline for forgiveness, as Fisher said it should not take people their entire lives to pay off their loans. Currently, the loan forgiveness programs for federal employees, non-profit workers, and veterans are 10 years, and those within the NAACP would prefer to see three.
“We also want to see new forgiveness programs with a little more recognition to things like COVID-19,” Fisher said. “Especially for front-line and essential workers who have been impacted by this. There is absolutely no reason that somebody who worked through this pandemic should have student loans.”
Texas Tech has a complement of different types of higher education institutions that offer access, vocation, and areas of study that should be useful for all who want to be involved, she said.
Fisher said a lot of times, when looking at specialized industries like veterinarian school, medical school, or law school, one can see a particular population sitting in those graduation pictures.
“A lot of times, if you take a deeper look, it’s quite frankly because those are the people who can afford to be there, and right now, it just doesn’t seem like we should be operating on a pay-to-play system,” Fisher said.
For more information on student loan forgiveness from the NAACP, visit their website at
https://naacp.org/resources/student-loan-forgiveness-toolkit.
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