"Black student debtors "are 16 percent more likely to be in default or seriously delinquent than white student debtors; Latino borrowers are 8 percent more likely."
In collaboration with grassroots and faith-based partners working in communities of color, Demos is challenging Florida’s racially discriminatory attack on voting rights in the wake of unprecedented turnout by voters of color in the 2020 presidential election.
Although the path forward is still uncertain, one thing is clear: There is momentum around voting rights, and Americans across the country are ready for our elected officials to do everything they can to make it easier — not harder — to vote.
"Central to the work of racial justice is ensuring that Black and brown, our most marginalized communities, our most marginalized residents of this country, have access to the ballot."
“The government has not asked questions of the banks for this latest bailout—protecting the priorities of banks and shareholders. But for the rest of us, not so much.”
“In their genesis, they’re about preventing Black people in the South from voting. So especially in our pursuit of a multiracial, inclusive democracy, these laws can’t exist.”
“Voting rights is the foundational issue in American politics and American society. Simply put, if we don’t all have an equal say, how can we expect to have an equal chance?”
“It’s a lot of debt out there. But that debt and the burden of that debt is not necessarily being felt equally. It’s extremely difficult for borrowers of color in particular."
"State officials are rightly wary of the goals of the commission because it does seem that the whole purpose for setting it up is to justify a preordained conclusion that somehow millions of votes were cast illegally in the last election," says Brenda Wright, vice president for policy and legal strategies at Demos, a progressive think tank. "That's the verdict, and now they want to hold a trial." [...]
“We think of education funding, particularly at the state level, as a spending issue, but it’s myopic,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “There are all kinds of second order effects to investing in education — homeownership or wealth building is certainly one of them. If you don’t spend the money on students now and that means that they’re less likely to go to college or they’re more likely to take on debt, that is going to impact their future economic activity.” [...]
Black students are far more likely to take on debt for a degree than white students, and young black households have more student debt despite fewer educational opportunities and a more uncertain payoff in the job market.
Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, lenders preying on communities of color would continue to pull in windfall gains, while widening the racial wealth gap and undermining the precarious financial stability of vulnerable households.