If I had any doubt from the tone in which her commentary began, this is when I knew she was white: “My father was the youngest of 10 children, and was born in 1901. College was the exception in his small southern MO town—far from the rule. It took him 7 years to finish college at the Univ of MO. He would go to school for a year, and then teach for a year (possible in those days).”
To hell with her pops. What does his experience have to do with mine? What do you think my Black relatives of that era were facing at the time? There were countless other commenters with thoughts along similar lines, but they’re all equally useless to me. I love when white people lecture me on oppression. I love when they pretend we live in a society that if you work hard, you will be rewarded. To be fair, some nonwhites do this, too, and yeah, they can join them in the tarpit with the others who speak on circumstances they know nothing about. Most of us who deal with this debt will concede our mistake, but that does not negate how in many ways, we were pushed to that decision.
Still, that lack of empathy and refusal for mercy is why not everyone could fully embrace what remains something to be celebrated. Smith’s act of generosity came at a time when the U.S. government is stepping up its efforts to collect on student loan debt even as it does nothing to combat its origins (and how those factors hurt Black college students and graduates the most).
Smith’s gesture was momentous, but it was a move others were making, though with far less capital to work with. Only a few months before Smith’s grand gift, churches like Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, also made headlines for paying off the student loan debt of select parishioners. As I later learned from talking to folks who, unlike my heathen ass, still regularly attend church, that’s become a bit of thing depending on how much tithing is collected.
I’m not jealous of Jesus’s generosity; you are.
Though I was new to the story of churchgoers pitching in, I was familiar with the general notion of people turning to the charity of others to deal with their loans. Over time, I’ve seen many folks try to pay off their debt by way of crowdfunding. So have others in media, and rather distastefully, created content around people desperate to not be taken down by Navient or their other preferred oppressive lender of choice.
In 2018, I saw a Forbes article entitled “5 Crowdfunding Sites That Will Destroy Your Student Loan Debt.” In it, those struggling with student loans who want to virtually shake a cup for money are provided advice on how to best meet their goals. Oh, and what advice it is. You get a doozy of tips such as “come up with a positive, creative name for your campaign” and “consider sending an e-journal to show supporters you’re accountable.”
Other gems are to basically offer labor in exchange for charity. As in, “you can also offer a reward based on your major, such as artwork from art students or free tax preparation from accounting students.” I don’t know what the digital equivalent of toilet paper is called, but I would advise every person on Cardi B’s internet to use that article as such. If you’re going to instruct people how to beg, at least be good at it. Instead of advising me to launch a GoFundMe entitled “Help Arceneaux Pay Off His Loans So He Won’t Have to Sell Ass” with a rewards plan that includes me ghostwriting donors’ lengthy emails, memoirs, and iOS press releases for Instagram and Twitter.
That piece reminded me of all of the other stupid student loan debt removal themed ones I’ve read. The ones that talk about how some twenty-seven-year-old from Oklahoma paid off her six-figure student loan debt by staying at home and eating beans from a dented can bought at the nearest general store for five years straight. There are others creating loan-related content for consumption, but at least they seem, uh, less dense about it.
In 2018, TruTV launched Paid Off, a Family Feud–like game show where contestants competed for the chance to have their student loans paid off. In the initial promotion of the show, host Michael Torpey noted that he only paid off his student debt after booking a Hanes commercial. At the beginning of each episode, contestants introduce themselves by sharing their debt tales and their major. As for the game itself, they get asked questions such as “What’s the most romantic date you can have for under $10?” When a contestant gets eliminated, Torpey sends them to the audience to use the show’s red “direct to Congress telephone.” On the premiere episode, the first person eliminated used the phone and said, “Hello, Congress, your boy Nico here.” No contestant exits without $1,000, but as with any game show, their winnings are taxed.
The call to Congress bit registers as somewhat trivializing, but then again, Congress trivializes far worse the matter of 40 million Americans struggling with more than $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. Kudos all the same to Torpey. While this is a gig for him, he uses it to discuss the issue with the severity it deserves even if his job is tackling it in the context of a game show centered on a crisis.
In an interview with MarketWatch, Torpey said of the problem: “It filters back into some of the equality issues and some of the opportunity issues that are in our country.” In his opinion, who is not at fault for our nation’s student loan problems are the students and families who are struggling under their debt burdens. “It’s bullshit to blame an eighteen-year-old for taking out money to get an education. It’s also unfair to look at a family who took out money to support their child’s education and say, ‘Look, you’re stuck now.’ ”
I wish those who believe otherwise would change their minds, or if nothing else, would light their phones and computers on fire instead of lecturing strangers about why falling victim to an imbalanced system is solely a testament to whatever they supposedly lack personally rather than to the system itself. Of course, none of these things address the crux of the problem. I can cheer the nice rich Black man helping out other Black men because I dream of what freedom from student loan debt looks like and am sincerely thrilled for anyone who can escape the pitfalls I’ve faced faster and without personal suffering. Yet I know charitable acts made by capitalism’s sole deity, the benevolent billionaire, are not broadly replicable. Something more advantageous must be done.
I don’t know what will come of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and her bevy of plans, but one in particular modeled on Smith’s act on a systemic scale made me think about what could be.
In her plan, released in April 2019, she called for the wiping away of up to $50,000 in student debt for people with annual incomes of less than $100,000, estimated to be 42 million Americans. For borrowers with higher incomes who find themselves nonetheless keeping their heads above water and making a wave when they can, the debt forgiveness would decline by $1 for every $3 in income over $100,000. Don’t ask this child left behind in math to do math, but it sounds like the equivalent of a good Memorial Day sale at Macy’s for their student loan debt. Moreover, she called for the government to cover tuition at all two- and four-year public colleges and the expansion of Pell Grants for low-income students by $100 billion. She also pushed for the creation of a $50 billion fund for historically Black colleges and universities.
HBCUs have been especially impacted by the student debt crisis. HBCUs have smaller endowments—no shade, as much as many of us would like to regularly give back to our alma maters, the rent and our debts are so high so we do our best when we can. And the private colleges—like Morehouse College—cost more, which means those students take out bigger loans than their non-private HBCU counterparts. But no matter the school, Black students take on 85 percent more debt than their white counterparts and, by virtue of American racism, find themselves paid less than them after they leave college. This is all happening as Black college graduation rates have hit an all-time high.
Robert Smith might be the Black community’s best Bobby since Whitney Houston’s ex-husband dropped the Don’t Be Cruel album, but he alone can’t fix this. Nor can crowdsourcing from other debt-ridden Americans. Nor can a game show. Not on the level needed to make a monumental shift in the lives of millions. Only
equitable taxation of Smith and others with similar enormous wealth can.
That’s how Elizabeth Warren proposes to pay for the $1.25 trillion cost of her plan. She calls it an Ultra-Millionaire Tax, a 2 percent annual tax on 75,000 families with $50 million or more in wealth. “The time for half-measures is over,” Warren wrote in her piece on Medium where she unveiled the plan. “My broad cancellation plan is a real solution to our student debt crisis. It helps millions of families and removes a weight that’s holding back our economy.”
A few months after she revealed the plan as part of her presidential campaign, Warren, still a senator from the state that gave us New Edition, opted to introduce that same plan as a bill with South Carolina congressman James E. Clyburn. “It’s time to decide: Are we going to be a country that only helps the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful, or are we going to be a country that invests in its future?” Warren said in a statement.
After that, another Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, went further by announcing a proposal that, unlike Warren’s, was not subject to income eligibility levels to determine how much relief the average person would receive. Instead, his legislation would cancel $1.6 trillion of student loan undergraduate and graduate debt with no eligibility limitations. It would be paid for with a new tax on Wall Street speculation.
At the press conference where he first introduced the legislation, Sanders said, “This proposal completely eliminates student debt in this country and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation, the millennial generation, to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing—and that is going out and getting a higher education.”
He went on to add, “The bottom line is we shouldn’t be punishing people for getting to higher education. It is time to hit the reset button.”
During the 2016 election, some of the most racist emails I received were from Bernie Sanders supporters. Many didn’t like my argument that the “Bernie or Bust” position taken during that election was rooted in privilege and only preached as gospel by those more inclined to survive a Trump presidency, given they wouldn’t have to live like any of the marginalized people that would be punished the harshest under such a reign. I actually gave Bernie a lil’ money in the first few months of that campaign. I was into his Statler and Waldorf in the form of one socialist man at the beginning until he started to sound too colorblind and crotchety. Then I wanted that donation back so I could put it to use in the form of a catfish sandwich.
But thanks to him, too, using his position to bring greater awareness to the student loan crisis, I will never ask for that refund again.
The people who hated Robert Smith’s gift also hated the proposals pushed by both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Like the parrots they are, detractors dismissed the plans as “bailout.” I know corporations are considered people now, but the people who would be assisted by this are human beings suffering, not Ford trucks who need to learn how to be Ford tough. This is equitable taxation that happens to alleviate those drowning in debt as a means to counter the fleecing put forth by financial institutions. Considering all of the rich people and their precious corporations that have been bailed out for effectively scamming Black people with subprime mortgages in addition to other unethical measures that have impacted so many, why not help the generations that have faltered under the broken promise of the American Dream? Why is it so difficult to be decent and considerate?
God, I sound like a senatorial candidate. I’m not running for Senate until I’m in my sixties, for the record. I have too much to create and backlogged thotting to make up for. Plus, I want to make sure Mitch McConnell is good and dead by the time I try to shimmy in.
I went on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign site to see how much of my lingering debt would be covered by her plan. I immediately thought of all I could do and how much help I could provide if that were removed from my life. However, given the structure of my private loan debt, chances are the main set of loans that have controlled much of me will have been majorly paid off by the time her plan would be passed and enacted—not including whatever miracles, group prayers, protests, calls, emails, and additional noise are needed to push members of Congress to do the right thing.
I don’t feel jealousy over the potential of others having their debts paid off even after I pay off mine. Thankfully, I don’t live my life by the mantra “it’s all about me-me-me, forget about you-you-you.” That’s some Republican shit.
All I want is for people to not ever have to feel as low as I’ve felt dealing with this debt. There are so many of us suffering, quietly, or in my case, not so quietly anymore.
I’d rather people be relieved of the stresses that come with their loans. I want folks to have the freedom to imagine a different experience. To invest in themselves. To help take care of their families. To be able to buy a house and afford the home owner’s association costs. To take breaks, vacations, and not tackle work that is beneath them because the thought is outweighed by the reality that falling too far behind on payments will bury their futures. To feel a specific kind of freedom that can only arrive with that problem off their backs. No one should have to turn to a billionaire or game show host to attain this. If anything, treat people drowning in student loan debt like those who created the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. In this case, it might actually benefit those who need help most.
Of those running for president in 2020, the two millennial candidates, Eric Swalwell (who would eventually be the first candidate to drop out of the race) and Pete Buttigieg, each revealed that they had more than $100,000 in student loan debt (for Buttigieg, most of that debt stems from his husband’s student loans). Unless some plan to forgive those debts happens, one day soon there will be for the first time a president who, while in office, will be paying back their student loans from the White House. I wonder, will the bill collectors bug them there? I lean yes.
There is a difference of opinion over whether everyone deserves debt forgiveness. Critics of Sanders’s plan argue it would benefit the wealthy more than it will the working class. The top 25 percent of households in the income distribution hold almost half of all student loan debt, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank. By contrast, the bottom 25 percent hold only about 12 percent. Have a cage match to settle the dispute, but make it quick so debts can be canceled.
This crisis will only worsen with time if major changes aren’t enacted. If it’s not President Warren or President Sanders ushering the shift in, someone ought to repurpose one of their plans. I don’t care. Get it done. Help people. Fix this broken system. Alleviate a looming catastrophe that will impact everyone else. Help us honestly afford avocado toast.
GET US ALL OUT OF THE GHETTO, WHEW CHILE!
I DON’T WANT TO DIE POOR
“You know what you need to do?”
My uncle Terry was here and had apparently gone into career counseling since I last saw him.
“You need to stop writing that bullshit on the internet and go write movies like that . . . what’s the dumb nigga’s name?”
“What nigga, Uncle Terry?”
There are so many dumb niggas out here.
“You know the one. Had all those movies in the eighties. That dumb nigga!”
I was considering texting my friend Amber that ought to be working for the deep state because if you told her “That Dumb Nigga,” she would manage to locate the last thing he ordered from Shake Shack if you gave her enough time. I instead waited and allowed my uncle to gather his thoughts for what was now the big reveal.
“Spike Lee! That nigga. You need to go do shit like that.”
I thought everyone loved School Daze, but apparently not. But if you are reading this, Tisha Campbell, you did what needed to be done on “Be Alone Tonight.”
To be fair to Uncle Terry, this was not bad professional advice. I would love to know how he suddenly had a keener sense about my line of work. Maybe he was wa
tching the Breakfast Club interviews or something. I doubt he was reading any of “that bullshit on the internet” that I write. But again, he had a point—no shade to Spike Lee, whose work I have enjoyed and who I wouldn’t call a “dumb nigga,” though I might politely decline to discuss Chi-Raq.
I cannot keep up with the insatiable need for content the internet requires. Well, I can, but I don’t think it’s healthy to continue for that much longer. I care less and less about most of what manages to rile up the too easily wound up. Most of these publications do not know how to make money, so it doesn’t matter what you’re writing anyway because the site might not make it for much longer.
So many of them are about to go under, and as someone who had to live through one media bubble bursting, I’m already seeing familiar signs of another one looming. The rush to sell a title before it’s too late. The urgent move to consolidate resources without either entity fixing the fundamental problem (realizing you cannot give away free content on the internet for twenty-plus years and expect internet users to automatically start paying for content online). And this country elected a kleptocratic aspiring fascist as president that’s bolstered by a political party solely invested in the fleecing of the country’s resources on behalf of its astronomically wealthy donors.
Count me out.
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