Black women are being crushed by the student debt crisis — and demanding action

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‘I can’t imagine the day when I’m not paying.’ Black women are being crushed by the student debt crisis — and demanding action

First Published: Nov. 3, 2021 at 10:10 a.m. ET
By Jillian Berman

Black women face a unique combination of barriers when it comes to paying off their student loans. ‘It feels like we have set up a terrible bargain with people and just blame them.’


Kendra Brooks arrived at John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Philadelphia’s Center City, the downtown corridor bustling with shops and office towers, with a single goal in mind.

“I needed to make more money,” Brooks, a Black single mom of four, said of her mindset.

Brooks walked into an office building that housed a Philadelphia branch of Eastern University and did exactly what she was supposed to do, at least according to policymakers, educators and the data. She got more education by enrolling in an MBA program. It was 2007, and Brooks wanted to cash in on a deal fundamental to our nation’s understanding of itself: If you go to school, study hard and graduate, your life will be financially stable, your children’s lives even better.

But the MBA wasn’t enough to get Brooks the raise she wanted at the nonprofit organization where she worked for 17 years, coordinating programs for children with disabilities. Without the extra money she was counting on, Brooks found managing her roughly $80,000 in student debt, along with paying for housing and providing for her kids, impossible. Brooks fell severely behind on her payments and became victim to one of the harsh consequences of defaulting on a federal student loan — the government started seizing her wages to repay her debt. As the Great Recession raged, Brooks lost her job amid government funding cuts.

“I had exhausted my savings, I lost my house, lost everything,” Brooks said.

More than a decade later, Brooks is current on her student loans, but the specific challenges student debt poses to Black women persist. Over the past few years, there has been a growing recognition among policymakers, scholars and educators that student debt, a tool originally conceived to increase economic mobility, is instead exacerbating the racial wealth gap. It’s a dynamic that underpins many of the arguments in favor of canceling student debt.

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