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Page 2 The Skanner March 7, 2018 ® Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Election 2018: Another Stop on the Chisholm Trail? Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher F Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2017 MERIT AWARD WINNER The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2018 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n y ac it Updated daily. d ay ! • L i ke u s o n • to Opinion ifty years ago, Shirley Chisholm campaigned successfully to become the first Black woman in the U.S. Congress. Four years later, she became the first woman of color and the first African American to win delegate votes at a major par- ty presidential convention. Throughout her presidential campaign, she attracted vot- ers to the “Chisholm Trail” with her motto and reputa- tion of being “unbought and unbossed.” But Chisholm’s trailblazing didn’t end with her presi- dential defeat. She served in Congress for another decade and left a legacy with lasting effects to this day. The 2018 elections will mark another stop on the Chisholm Trail, where Black women are poised to build on Chisholm’s legacy of leadership, deter- mination, and desire to dis- rupt the status quo. Amidst reports of the “surge” of wom- en running in 2018 are Black women candidates at every level, including some with the potential to make history. Per- haps most notably, 2018 could see the election of the first Black woman governor in the United States. The potential to harness and expand Black women’s political power is not limited to candidates this year. Black women voted at the highest rates of any race and gender Kelly Dittmar Glynda Carr Assistant Professor, Political Science Co-Founder, Higher Heights for America group in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, and again in the 2017 special U.S. Senate election in Ala- bama. If that race is any guide, Black women voters appear mobilized to turn out in high numbers again in 2018. But before we can mea- sure progress for Black “ Black women voters appear mobilized to turn out in high numbers women in election 2018, we need to take stock of Black women’s current political power. That’s why the Cen- ter for American Women and Politics (CAWP) and the Higher Heights Leader- ship Fund teamed up again to release “The Chisholm Effect: Black Women in American Politics 2018.” The report outlines the sta- tus of Black women in Amer- ican politics today. Despite being 7.3 percent of the U.S. population, Black women are less than 5 percent of office- holders elected to statewide executive offices, Congress, and state legislatures. Black women are 5 of the mayors in the nation’s top 100 most pop- ulous cities. Since Chisholm served as the sole Black woman in Congress, 38 Black women have served in Congress from 16 states, including 2 Black women sen- ators. Over the same half-cen- tury, 12 Black women have been elected to statewide ex- ecutive office. These numbers are small when considered within the a 50-year context, but the pace of advancement in recent years marks momen- tum to build upon. Ten of the 12 Black women who have served in statewide elected executive office have held office in the past two de- cades. In 1990, just one Black woman served in Congress; 18 years later, that number is up to 19. In just the last 5 years, 8 Black women have been elect- ed mayor in the 100 most pop- ulous cities in the U.S. And just this year, Sheila Oliver became the first Democratic Black woman lieutenant gov- ernor nationwide. This momentum will only continue — and increase — with work. Black women are doing the work every day to engage their communities in the political process, to make their own voices heard, and to take their seats at the tables of governance. Organizations like Higher Heights are work- ing to amplify those voices and hold political leaders ac- countable for inclusion. And, with Higher Heights, CAWP is continuing to conduct re- search and programs that both identify and tackle bar- riers to Black women’s politi- cal progress. But the work doesn’t stop with us. Recognizing the im- perative of Black women’s political inclusion is a respon- sibility we all share. When Chisholm was campaigning amidst war, social unrest, and crises of leadership, she ar- gued, “At present, our coun- try needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than any- where else.” Those words ring true as our country confronts chal- lenges at home and abroad. In this moment, the opportuni- ties for meeting this demand while increasing Black wom- en’s political power, especial- ly in elected office, are great. And we’ve got some guidance on how to do it in 2018: follow the Chisholm Trail. The Student Loan Debt Crisis is a Civil Rights Issue F rom attacks on voting rights to police killings of unarmed civilians and growing inequities in earnings and wealth, the civil rights gains of the past six de- cades are facing threat after threat. But one front in the fight for full equality—mean- ingful access to higher educa- tion — is particularly urgent. With 65 percent of jobs soon requiring more than a high school diploma, the need is greater than ever, especially for African Americans and other communities of color. More than 50 years ago, Congress passed the Higher Education Act (HEA), intend- ing to open the doors to high- er education by providing students with financial assis- tance and low-interest loans. Conventional wisdom has tra- ditionally held two things: 1) Higher education is the great equalizer; 2) It is okay to take out debt for the tickets to up- ward mobility: a college edu- cation and a home mortgage. These life decisions—and the struggles and sacrifices that made them possible—helped to build and grow the Black middle class. Now, aspirations for ad- vancement are colliding with the discriminatory legacy of the financial crisis. Our coun- try’s student loan bill has sky- rocketed. Student debt is now Wade Henderson Center for Responsible Lending the second-largest source of household debt after housing. Forty-four million Ameri- cans have $1.4 trillion in stu- dent loan debt. One reason: Since the 1990s, the average “ The increased risk of de- faulting on student loans is the direct result of in- equities in financial re- sources tuition and fees at our univer- sities have jumped an average of 157–237 percent depending on the type of institution. As with the Great Recession, people of color, poor people, and predatory institutions are at the center of this socio- economic catastrophe. They must also be at the center of the solutions. We must face up to the fact that students of color are more likely to borrow for their edu- cation and, unfortunately, to default on these loans. Even Black college graduates de- fault on their loans at almost four times the rate of their White counterparts and are more likely to default than even White dropouts. This increased risk of de- faulting on student loans is the direct result of inequities in financial resources, as well as discrimination in hiring, salaries and, all too often, so- cial capital. In 2013, the medi- an White family had 13 times more wealth than the medi- an black family and 10 times more wealth than the median Latino family. African Amer- ican students tend to take out more debt than their White counterparts, and both Blacks and Latinos are more likely to default than Whites. Since Blacks with bachelor’s de- grees earn only 79 percent and Latinos only 83 percent of what their White counter- parts earn, African American and Hispanic students have a harder time repaying their loans. Further contributing to the crisis, Blacks and Lati- nos comprise 41 percent of the students at the high-cost, low-quality, for-profit col- leges. These institutions fre- quently fail to prepare stu- dents for high-salary jobs, instead saddling them with exorbitant debts that they can’t repay. How then can we address these challenges? Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants to ease regulations on the loan servicers and for-profit col- leges that have gotten us into this mess. U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) of the House Ed- ucation and Workforce Com- mittee would take this effort even further. Her proposal for reauthorizing the HEA, the “PROSPER Act,” would en- sure that students will have to borrow more to get a post- secondary education with the very real likelihood that they will never pay off the debt. This would all but guarantee that predatory, for-profit pro- grams would continue to rise exponentially right alongside our national student debt bill. Efforts to make student aid more costly for students rather than hold institutions accountable for what they do with the aid reflects either a catastrophic misunderstand- ing of the root causes of this issue or something more dis- turbing: the blatant effort to recreate the system we had before the HEA was enacted. In this system, traditional college was by and large only accessible to the wealthy, who were usually White. nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
