Twelve years after starting college, white men have paid off 44% of their student loan balances on average, while black men saw their balances grow by 11%, according to an analysis from Demos.
Twelve years after starting college, the white female borrower has paid off 72% of her loan balance. Over the same time period, the typical Black female borrower's balance has grown by 13%.
“The potential for executive action to jumpstart the transition that we need — to reorient our democracy for democratic engagement and redress historic inequities — is huge.”
The Disparate Impact standard is critical to continued and enhanced opportunity to access fair credit, housing, and homeownership. Demos strongly opposes efforts to undermine this longstanding enforcement tool.
To fairly evaluate any higher education reform proposal, we must understand the ways that these dual burdens—less wealth and more debt—lead to worse outcomes for Black students than white students.
"I think Greta has been able to speak truth to power in a way that has resonated with a lot of young people who are frustrated, who have lived their whole lives seeing inaction on climate change."
If we want to pass climate policies that could actually help reverse the climate crisis, then we also need to fix our democratic system that gives too much power to wealthy donors and big polluters.
As part of an effort to reshape rules around debt and lending to reduce racial wealth inequality, we propose establishing a public credit registry to gradually replace the current for-profit credit reporting system.