Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle July 13, 2022
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Opinion
21st Century Citizenship: Four Civic Skills
We Need To Keep Our Democracy
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
Jerry Foster
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A
Patricia Irvin
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Reporter
Aurora Hernandez
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Monica J. Foster
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Photographer
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s primaries roll out
around the country,
we’re tracking voter
turnout. Raised on
Schoolhouse Rock’s cartoon
civics lessons, I know that be-
ing a good American means
voting.
Those
1970’s
cartoons
weren’t wrong. Voting is the
most fundamental act of dem-
ocratic citizenship. That’s
why it has been fiercely con-
tested throughout our histo-
ry.
But now we’re in the 21st
century, deluged by informa-
tion, increasingly divided,
with few models of biparti-
sanship.
Democracy now requires
much more than voting. What
should a 21st century School-
house Rocks teach?
Finding information
Most fundamentally, we
need to be skilled seekers of
information. In this era of
deepfakes, bots, and frag-
menting media platforms,
the ability to access and eval-
uate information is key. Al-
gorithms push us ever more
deeply into one point of view.
To address multifaceted 21st
century issues, we need de-
liberately to seek a variety of
information, including back-
stories about controversial
Melinda
Burrell
Guest
Columnist
events, from differing sourc-
es to construct the whole pic-
ture.
Understanding
our own biases
We must process informa-
tion skillfully, getting around
our inherent neurobiological
“
Democracy
now requires
much more
than voting
biases. For example, we natu-
rally lap up information that
confirms what we already
think but ignore information
that challenges our world
view. We also are wired for
double standards: we attri-
bute another person’s bad
behavior to their personal-
ity (“she’s late because she’s
disrespectful”) while giving
ourselves a pass for the same
behavior (“I’m late because
traffic was bad”). Understand-
ing these natural biases lets
us challenge ourselves to ex-
plore issues more fully.
Having conversations – not
arguments – across divides
Understanding biases pro-
motes a third democratic skill:
truly talking with one anoth-
er. Research, including my
own, shows that liberals and
conservatives alike often ex-
perience cross-divide conver-
sations as an assault on their
values. Yet most people also
believe these conversations
are important and would like
to have them to feel connected
and informed.
Constructive conversations
require listening and asking
good questions. Political sci-
entist Andrew Dobson de-
scribes listening as our “dem-
ocratic deficit.” We rarely
listen closely to the other side.
This undermines our abili-
ty to create policy which is
seen as a legitimate outcome
of democratic debate. Nor do
we ask enough genuinely cu-
rious questions to learn why
others think what they do to
help find common ground. As
Steve Benjamin, former head
of the National Conference of
Mayors, noted, “We all suffer
from some degree of experi-
ential blindness and need to
become experts at learning
about others’ perspectives.”
Having complicated
relationships
Perhaps the most important
– and most difficult -- 21st cen-
tury citizenship skill is main-
taining relationships with
people who think differently.
For a democracy to function,
we need not only a robust
marketplace of ideas, but also
the ability to work together
for policy that meets wide-
spread needs. A conserva-
tive interviewee in my study
remarked, “Everybody is so
comfortable being polarized
– they are not happy unless
they’re mad.”
It’s challenging to hold con-
flicting feelings about people,
appreciating their good quali-
ties while disagreeing on pol-
itics. But perhaps we make it
harder than it is.
Research shows we overesti-
mate both how much the oth-
er party dislikes us as well as
how much they disagree with
us about policy. Asking genu-
inely curious questions and
remembering what we appre-
ciate just might help us find
that we have more in common
than we think. Our 21st centu-
ry democracy needs us to de-
velop these skills.
Melinda Burrell, PhD, @Me-
lindaCBurrell, syndicated by
PeaceVoice, was a humanitar-
ian aid worker and now trains
on the neuroscience of com-
munication and conflict. She
is on the board of the National
Association for Community
Mediation.
Black Women’s Double Student Debt Whammy: Twice as
Likely to Owe More Than $50K, Have Decreased Savings
I
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and Events at
n mid-June the Federal
Reserve, nation’s central
bank, raised interest rates
in hopes of curbing rising
inflation and deterring a full-
blown recession. Chief among
its responsibilities, the Fed’s
duty is to develop “appropri-
ate monetary policy”.
For much of Black America,
many would welcome money
itself – funds to provide stable
day-to-day living, the ability
to get rid of debt without wor-
rying whether families will
have enough money to last the
month’s expenses, and even a
bit more left over to face what
the future may hold.
Student debt remains a
stubborn obstacle that pre-
vents Black Americans from
securing financial stability
in the short-term and finan-
cial wealth in the long-term.
According to The Institute
on Assets and Social Policy,
after 20 years in repayment,
the typical Black borrower
still owes 95 percent of their
cumulative borrowing total,
while similarly situated white
borrowers have reduced their
debt by 94 percent —with
nearly half of white borrow-
ers holding no student debt at
all.
After more than two years
of the COVID-19 pandemic
complicating family finances,
the ability of many working
Charlene
Crowell
Center for
Responsible
Lending
Americans to maintain eco-
nomic stability is nearing a
breaking point. Further, due
to historic racial wealth in-
equities, these and other im-
“
The abili-
ty of many
working
Americans to
maintain eco-
nomic stabil-
ity is nearing
a breaking
point
pacts are felt hardest by Black
America in general and Black
women in particular.
New research from the Cen-
ter for Responsible Lending
(CRL) analyzes how women’s
finances have changed over
the past two years. The study,
entitled Resilient But Deep-
er in Debt: Women of Color
Faced Greater Hardships
Through COVID-19, shows
how these women’s lives dra-
matically changed as a result
of the pandemic and deepen-
ing student debt.
The report states that Black
women faced a “double wham-
my of increased debt and de-
creased savings.”
CRL analyzed publicly
available data and addition-
ally commissioned four focus
groups of ethnically diverse
women with varied educa-
tional levels who lost their job
or were furloughed during
the pandemic.
For context, it is relevant to
note that:
• Between December 2019
and March 2022, 1.2 million
women left the labor force;
• Between February 2020
and April 2020, almost 22
million jobs were lost; and
• In 2021, Black and Latina
women were twice as likely
as white men to report be-
ing behind on rent or mort-
gage payments.
Overall, findings indicate
the widespread disruption in
employment due to the pan-
demic has had a profound
impact on women, their fami-
lies, and their finances, states
the report. “While a typical
white male borrower pays
off almost half of his balance
within 12 years of starting col-
lege, the balance of a typical
Black female borrower grows
by 13 percent.”
Further, about two-thirds
of the $1.7 trillion federal
student debt burden is borne
by women. Black women are
twice as likely to owe more
than $50,000 in undergrad-
uate student debt compared
to white men. Both Black and
Latina borrowers typically
have higher loan balances
than white women. Hence,
student loan repayment chal-
lenges for women of color are
higher and strain the ability
to cover daily living expenses
for their families, particular-
ly due to rising costs of food
and housing.
“Because of persisting pay
disparities, and little or no
generational wealth, women
of color have fewer opportu-
nities to pursue a debt-free
education or to withstand an
economic or personal crisis,”
added Sunny Glottman, a CRL
researcher.
Research found that 60 per-
cent of Black women and 40
percent of Latina participants
owed more than $50,000 in
student debt. By compari-
son, only 29 percent of white
participants owed more than
$50,000 in student loan debt.
Read the rest of this commentary at
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