Page 2 The Skanner March 7, 2018
®
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Election 2018: Another Stop on the Chisholm Trail?
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Executive Editor
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News Editor
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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