Racial Capitalism and the Black Student Loan Debt Crisis

Abstract

Background/Context Student loans reflect a larger shift in U.S. society in which people are forced to go into debt for basic needs. Student loan debt in the United States has been recognized as a political economic crisis that disproportionately devastates Black people. Scholars have statistically reported on racialized and gendered stratification in student loan outcomes and several name the racial wealth gap as the main contributing factor to the Black student debt crisis. Yet minimal attention has been dedicated to examining, let alone theorizing, the logics and systemic forces that racialize debt in higher education. Purpose Drawing on a theory of racial capitalism, this article fills analytic and theoretical gaps in the study of the Black student debt crisis by detailing how the crisis has been arranged as well as how it functions to constrain, dispossess, and exploit Black people. Research Design This article offers a corrective history, systematic analysis, and theoretical explanation of the Black student debt crisis. Findings/Results The paper draws on racial capitalism to account for how student loans as a policy has relied on anti-Black racial logics and systemic forces. The authors address how Black educational desires are co-opted, the government configures inclusion according to predatory terms, and the student loan industry forms a debt trap that exploits repayment struggles. While the majority of Black people who enroll in higher education never secure the promise of college as always “worth it,” the arrangement continues to be worthwhile for student loan profiteers. Student loans are perfect for racial capitalism because they answer demands for social access and inclusion (which are already reduced to mean credentialism) and reproduce both the disposability and dispossession of Black people's everyday lives. Conclusions/Recommendations The authors call for the full cancellation of student loan debt. This call forms part of a larger mobilization to abolish the racist logics, processes, and policies that make the Black student debt crisis and Black precarity possible in the first place.

Indebted Adulthood in Queer Times

“…However, this is not the full picture. Overwhelmingly, Black student borrowers, especially Black women, comprise the most indebted (Addo, Houle and Simon, 2016; Miller, 2017; Mustaffa and Davis, 2021; Mustaffa and Dawson, 2021). Black women hold 47 per cent more student debt than white men, and 27 per cent more than white women, more than any other racial group (Mustaffa and Dawson, 2021).…”

“…Overwhelmingly, Black student borrowers, especially Black women, comprise the most indebted (Addo, Houle and Simon, 2016; Miller, 2017; Mustaffa and Davis, 2021; Mustaffa and Dawson, 2021). Black women hold 47 per cent more student debt than white men, and 27 per cent more than white women, more than any other racial group (Mustaffa and Dawson, 2021). Black women also demonstrate the most difficulty paying off their student loans, and student debt often poses a barrier to meeting basic expenses such as rent or groceries (Addo, Houle and Simon, 2016; Miller, 2017).…”

“…The proliferation of student debt is a product of neoliberal, racial capitalism, and its profit resides in its financialisation. As numerous scholars observe, the increase in total household debt, including student debt, is the result of neoliberal austerity measures that have characterised the last four decades (Martin, 2002; Harvey, 2003; Allon, 2014; Joseph, 2014; Federici, 2016; McMillan Cottom, 2017; Atkins, 2018; Mustaffa and Davis, 2021; Mustaffa and Dawson, 2021). Individuals are now personally responsible for bearing the financial burden of a variety of previously subsidised, state- and/or employer-provided services, such as healthcare, retirement and education.…”

“…The student debt crisis is one example of the racialised nature of the financialised economy. As a system that both produces and relies on racial difference in order to exploit profit, racial capitalism is invested in Black debt and dispossession (Robinson, 2000; Gilmore, 2007; Melamed, 2015; Seamster, 2019; Mustaffa and Davis, 2021; Mustaffa and Dawson, 2021). Student loans are one manifestation of this very system.…”

“…Student loans are one manifestation of this very system. As Mustaffa and Dawson (2021, p. 1) assert: ‘Student loans are perfect for racial capitalism because they answer demands for social access and inclusion … and reproduce both the disposability and dispossession of Black people’s everyday lives’. Situated within a much longer history of racialised debt, student loans extend many of the promises of neoliberal capitalism (i.e.…”