The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.
Editors note: Black students are more likely than their peers to borrow money for college, struggle with repayment and default on student loans. With the debt problem for black students in particular reaching urgent levels, The Education Trust and The Hechinger Report have partnered on a series of op-eds to amplify the voices of people studying solutions to the black student debt crisis.
Here are some examples of why, after more than a decade of research into their involvement with slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, a handful of universities are beginning to consider reparations:
The first slave recorded in Massachusetts was owned by Harvards school master.
The first nine presidents of Princeton University owned slaves.
The personal physician of Dartmouth Colleges president boiled the body of a Black man named Cato to furnish a skeleton for anatomical study, and his skin was turned to leather at the campus tannery and fashioned into a medical instrument case.
One can still stroll upon sidewalks and past buildings built with bricks made by enslaved laborers at the University of Virginia.
It is well past time that colleges and universities begin to heal wounds, both old and new, and the black student loan-debt crisis may be one of the most efficient uses of their reparatory funds.
African Americans heavily rely upon higher education as the gateway to upward mobility. The combination of the wealth gap, rising tuition costs and reliance upon student loans, however, is now saddling black students with disproportionate amounts of debt.
Meanwhile, the black student loan-debt crisis needs urgent remedies.
For many, attempting to climb the economic ladder means trading one form of economic distress for another. For colleges interested in giving financial weight to their declarations of forgiveness and justice, reparations should not be restricted to direct descendants of those enslaved by universities because universities profited from countless slaves owned by others as well.
Like other institutions, dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have uncovered an overabundance of records documenting their culpability in slavery, Americas gravest sin.
Reparations offer a solution because simply providing preferential admissions to the direct descendants of the enslaved workers who built and maintained these institutions ignores the historical context in which universities benefited from chattel slavery. Universities benefited from what I refer to as an Atlantic plantation complex, where they profited from an intercontinental trade centered around slaves, the products they produced and the bequests bestowed by their owners who dotted that complex.
Many of the nations oldest and most prestigious colleges are coming to grips with the fact that enslavement generated the capital that led to their creation.
To fully grasp the extent of institutions liabilities, though, we must look beyond slavery because universities participation in racial injustice extended well beyond abolition.
Related: To pay for college, more students are offering a piece of their future to investors
For instance, universities in the Jim Crow era both in the North and the South excluded black students while taking in their tax dollars. College students and staff undoubtedly were participants in lynch law. The esteemed faculty of these institutions pumped out the bunk scientific racism that buttressed Jim Crow, cemented Social Darwinism and unleashed the scourge of eugenics. The consumption of, and participation in, blackface minstrelsy on and around campuses was almost a rite of passage for decades, and it lives on today through social media and frat parties.
Neither the abolition of slavery nor the end of segregation nor the election of President Barack Obama has stopped these institutions from engaging in, or tolerating, acts of racial aggression. Despite continued resistance by student activists, universities across the nation too often seem unable or unwilling to doggedly police acts of psychological or physical violence against minority students.
While colleges obviously have little control over the private actions of their students, they could do more to rein in university police officers who engage in racially biased behavior similar to that of non-university police forces. Officers working for some universities disproportionately stop and arrest black people, both students and non-students alike. Some university police officers are not averse to deploying unnecessary violent force against people of color, as demonstrated by filmed encounters involving police from Yale University, Barnard College, the University of Chicagoand Rice University. Worst of all, however, are the actions of Portland State and University of Cincinnati police officers, who have used lethal force against non-student black men.
The all-too-frequent interactions between university police forces and non-student African Americans are one symptom of the continued practice of urban campuses devouring working-class minority neighborhoods. With the help of university police and municipal tax breaks, colleges continue to gentrify these spaces in their attempts to attract and comfort wealthier (white) students, and in the process displace black residents through rising rents.
Universities should devote their reparation funds toward making higher education more affordable for black students.
Programs must consider past and future students alike.
For black former students, universities could refinance outstanding loan balances at zero percent interest. For future students, a combination of grants and reduced tuition would help to reduce the racial wealth gap and could eliminate the black-white student loan-debt gap as it stands approximately $4,000-$7,000.
The universities with the largest endowments often the same institutions with the longest legacies of racial exploitation should form partnerships with HBCUs to strengthen their financial footing and establish programs aimed at eliminating hiring and wage discrimination in the workplace.
Related:Debt without degree: The human cost of college debt that becomes purgatory
Institutions should not rely upon financial reserves alone to fund these initiatives. Universities should consider adopting a system similar to the one devised and approved by Georgetown student-activists and slave descendants: adding a small fee to students annual bills to defray a portion of the reparatory spending. Such measures would go a lot further in uplifting black students and achieving social justice than more spending on studies and conferences.
Removing racist imagery and changing the names of buildings are welcome gestures, but they do little to even the balance. Someone must take the lead in addressing the black student loan-debt crisis head on, and universities should use their financial and social capital to attempt to make amends through reparations.
This story about reparations and student loans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with The Education Trust. Sign up here for Hechingers newsletter.
Luke Frederick is a doctoral student at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the policing and incarceration of free blacks and enslaved workers in antebellum America, and research director for the Ohio Student Association.
Join us today.
Read more from the original source:
OPINION: The crisis in student loan debt offers a chance for reparations - The Hechinger Report
- Why are Jamaicans forced to live in poverty? - Jamaica Gleaner - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- The ultimate price - The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Cornyn, Cruz lead another GOP delegation on border tour of RGV - Brownsville Herald - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Landworkers' Alliance Report: Debt, Migration, and Exploitation - Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Searching for wholeness in a nation fractured by capitalism and ... - Kansas Reflector - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Explainer: The State of Poverty and Slavery in Ecuador - JURIST - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- That AI You're Using Was Trained By Slave Labor, Basically - Futurism - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Bibb Announces Ten Winners of $5000 Restaurant Grants to ... - Cleveland Scene - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Sugarcane Burning Is a Plague on These Black Floridians Mother ... - Mother Jones - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- 18 of the Most Haunted Places in Alabama - AZ Animals - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Immigration Health Surcharge: equality impact assessment 2023 ... - GOV.UK - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Books The common cause - Morning Star Online - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- Search warrants executed in alleged human trafficking and slavery ... - ACT Policing News - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- Modern slavery and human trafficking: identifying and reporting ... - GOV.UK - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- Report: Government needs better policies to help narrow economic equity gap - Yahoo News - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- New Zealand criminal investigation into systemic migrant worker ... - WSWS - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- What back to school means in the era of PragerU - Reckon - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- The Jacksonville Shooting and the Far Right - Left Voice - September 3rd, 2023 [September 3rd, 2023]
- Build support for today's union struggles The Militant - The Militant - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Work requirements wont affect the debt ceiling but they will stir up ... - The Boston Globe - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Ten Percent of North Koreans Forced To Work as Slaves: New Report - The New York Sun - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Anti-Slavery Commissioner visits the Coffs Coast - News Of The Area - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Former Server Says Customers Should Tip If They Ask Questions - The Daily Dot - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- New exhibition looks at the UK's role in indenture labour - ianVisits - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- UNITED WE STAND: THE FIERCE URGENCY OF NOW - Savannah Tribune - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- No, MLK Was Not a Christian Nationalist - Word and Way - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Fact check: Tipping began amid slavery, then helped keep former Black ... - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Slavery - Wikipedia - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Social class - Wikipedia - December 23rd, 2022 [December 23rd, 2022]
- Author Ibram X. Kendi speaks in Portland on legacy of slavery and the tipped wage - Press Herald - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- As a Nation, We are Doomed to Fail if the 'Original Sin' of the Past is not Reconciled in the Present - CT Examiner - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Lincolnshire car wash owners handed 10-year slavery order - Lincolnshire Live - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- "Under The Banner of King Death" puts pirates in their place in the history of workers' rights - Boing Boing - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Forrest Hylton | To the Lighthouse LRB 18 October 2022 - London Review of Books - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Aussie Brands Among Most Improved in 2022's Ethical Fashion Report But There's Still a Long Way To Go - Broadsheet - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- DC voter guide: 2022 election what you need to know - WTOP - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Exploring the Fault Lines in Mental Health Discourse: An Interview with Psychologist Justin Karter - Mad in America - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Iran: 'Society has risen to overthrow the Islamic Republic' - Green Left - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Slavery by any name is wrong: the push to end forced labor in prisons - The Guardian US - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Abortion, Marijuana, Slavery: 11 Themes to 2022 Ballot Measures - The Epoch Times - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Visions of Progress tells tales of two Charlottesvilles, Black and white - Bristol Herald Courier - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Miss Malini's job advert puts spotlight back on 'exploitative bosses' and a 'pittance' as salary - Moneycontrol - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- As Hurricane Ian Threatens Florida's Southwest Coast, What's Happening On The Ground - KPCC - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Truths about student debt, college costs, and corporate freeloading on the backs of students. - Daily Kos - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The Kohinoor, Cullinan and the enduring demand for reparations across the colonial world - The Indian Express - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Divine Politik: The rise of robots should be the downfall of capitalism The Daily Free Press - Daily Free Press - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Stop romanticizing the lives of 1950s housewives - Halifax Examiner - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Domestic workers, long excluded from labor protections, call for codified rights - The 19th* - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Pierre Poilievre Claims He's a Friend of the 'Working Class'. He's Spent Years Attacking Canadian Workers. - PressProgress - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Stockard on the Stump: Governor declares he didn't violate the Little Hatch Act Tennessee Lookout - Tennessee Lookout - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- How Central American immigrants played a vital role in the U.S. labor - Fast Company - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- The unity imperative: Lessons for building the anti-fascist alliance - People's World - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- How FrontLine Farming Is Using Land to Grow Food and Heal Generational Trauma - 5280 | The Denver Magazine - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Queen Elizabeth II Reigned For 70 Years: Here Are The 10 Longest-Reigning Kings And Queens Of The UK - Forbes - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Ballot initiatives to watch in 2022 midterms, from abortion to slavery - USA TODAY - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- 10 Songs That Deal with Labor Rights and Hating Your Job - MetalSucks - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Conflict and modern slavery: the investment perspective - Schroders - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The Santa Cruz County boom town that went BOOM - The Mercury News - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- This Labor Day, buy produce grown only on farms that respect workers rights - The Hill - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The unity imperative: Lessons for building the anti-fascist alliance - Communist Party USA - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Agency visits US to share efforts to end fisher abuse - - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- High income tax in PNG is a disincentive - POST-COURIER - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- For women of color in care work, racial and economic inequities abound, report shows - The Boston Globe - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Opinion | Behind the Rise in Union SupportAnd the Challenge Ahead - Common Dreams - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Slavery and Trafficking Risk Order imposed on Lincolnshire car wash owners - Forecourt Trader - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Opinion | The Tide Is Turning: US Congress Finally Considers a National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - Common Dreams - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Edited Transcript of ADH.AX earnings conference call or presentation 22-Aug-22 1:30am GMT - Yahoo Finance - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Conservatives Explain Why They Are Preparing For A Civil War - The Onion - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- 10 Black Millionaires Who Got Busted By The IRS For Failure To Pay Taxes - Moguldom - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- 34 Great Records You May Have Missed: Spring/Summer 2022 - Pitchfork - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Amazon Hit by Strikes Across the Globe - Novara Media - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- The Past, Present, and Future of Work - YES! Magazine - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- National Trust members: get ready to choke on your carrot cake - The Guardian - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Lost Yet Connected in Time: Brown, Peltier, Melaku-Bello, Abu-Jamal, and Assange - LA Progressive - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Mondelz commits to living wage for cocoa farmers and invests in education programmes for children - ConfectioneryNews.com - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Opinion | The Supreme Court Has Too Much Power and Liberals Are to Blame - POLITICO - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Breaking the stranglehold of speculative property ownership | interest.co.nz - Interest.co.nz - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Why fashion should act now to legislate living wages in the supply chain - Drapers - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Georgia's six-week abortion ban goes Into effect, an attack on... - Liberation - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- 10 years on, what is the true legacy of the London 2012 Olympics? - Metro.co.uk - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]