Great piece and so much truth. A college education does not guarantee equal footing or getting out of poverty. In fact, today because black students must incur so much student loan debt — it guarantees most of them will never get out of poverty. Poverty today simply looks different. Kids are going to college and coming home to live with their parents or piled up with roommates because they can’t afford to live on their own independently and pay back student loans. Some black college grads like my son can’t get upper level management jobs because White employers/managers tend to hire their own when it comes to giving promotions and decent pay increases, regardless of highly qualified minority candidates applying for the same job. Implicit bias in hiring processes play a role in our upward mobility.
At the end of the day, higher ed (which includes student loans for most of us) does not guarantee Black young people a way out of poverty. In fact, it makes life harder for the majority of them. It’s almost not worth it. Four-five years of student loan debt with a lifetime to payments and stress trying to pay it back. Because employment opportunities are not guaranteed, I’d advise kids to attend community college where the costs to attend (COA) is less expensive, and they can stay at home to save money. It’s better to go to college and start out in life with little to no debt than to go and borrow and spend your entire life paying it back. We need to have these talks with young people and not be ashamed to have a Plan B or C for our children’s futures. The playing field is not fair or equal. We need to stop chasing other people’s fairy tales.
