This graph is making the rounds again on other social media sites. It begs the question "Why do men pay off their student loans, but women can't/won't?"
It's not Black history month, but you already know the answer!
Black women are forced to borrow more for their education. Then Black women are paid less when they graduate, even for the same degree.
A disproportionate amount of the $1.7 Trillion of loan debt (not a typo. Trillion. With a "T.") is held by Black women that did everything right)
If a Black woman from a not rich family gets straight As, 5 As in her AP classes, and scores a 1580 out of 1600 on her SAT, and gets student loans to go to UCLA to study computer science, should she take it? (-$100K of debt).
Should she then get the Masters at SDSU? (-$50K).
Where did she go wrong?
Should she not have gone to grad school for that Masters in computer science?
Or should she not have gone to UCLA for the bachelors in computer science?
Maybe she should have gone to med school or law school instead? Oh wait, that's more expensive.š¤
Ah I've got it!
She should not have been born poor! Then she wouldn't have to borrow so much!
And she should not have been born Black! Then she'd get paid fairly relative to other women!
And she should not have been born a woman! Then she'd get paid fairly compared to men!
We haven't even talked about the career impacts of child care or end-of-life care for older parents yet.
We haven't even talked about slower rates of promotion, lower probability of making partner or getting tenure, or gendered performance reviews or professor evaluations yet.
Most American college students borrow under $26K for college.
But 73% of Black students borrow at least $57K. Because their families have less net worth. Because of racism.
And Black women borrow more than Black men.
And much of the "gender pay gap" is the "race pay gap" again. The pay gap between Black and brown women and white women is bigger than the pay gap between white women and white men.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109906587205614822
Reducing racism reduces the gender pay gap. Racism ruins everything!
So yeah, if a white man borrows $25K, he's more likely to have paid off 30% of it 10 years later than a Black woman who borrowed $60K.
Trying to understand the chart without understanding racism and sexism, is impossible.
Attached: 1 image Happy #BlackHistoryMonth ! I haven't made it to Black History yet. I'm still on white US history. Q: Enough about racism for a second. Take a break! I'm worried about gender issues in the US too. For example, why is the gender pay gap in the US so large? It's one of the worst in the OECD! A: You know why. Racism! In the US, the pay gap between white men and white women, is smaller than the pay gap between white women and Black and Latinx women. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm 1/N #BlackMastodon
And yes, this is another reason why I contributed to the Name, Image, and Likeness work that lets college athletes earn money in college. I don't care about college sports. I don't care if your team wins or loses.
I care about Black kids being kept in artificial poverty.
Going to college as a kid from a wealthy family, is not the same as going to college as a child who had to sign up for $100,000 in student loans. Loan kid continues losing.
(Separate convo: college should not be so expensive)
@mekkaokereke I'm less than convinced that those are separate conversations? Student loans effectively subsidize "expensive colleges", which isn't quite the same thing as subsidizing "colleges"
Edit: by which I mean expensive colleges get more from the program, because it reduces price sensitivity of their consumer base.
@kilpatds @mekkaokereke No, student loans subsidize inexpensive college too. I got my BA from City College of New York with a scholarship that gave me $2000 per semester, but had to take out over $10,000 a year in loans in order to
* buy a printer $$
* upgrade my computer $
* pay for internet $$
* pay my landlord $$$$$
Without that I could not have finished the degree as a full time student, after years of taking classes part time to get myself halfway.
@kilpatds @mekkaokereke Ah, I see the angle you're coming at, now.
Nothing about the necessity of the loans for students, just how much money the school can make.
@LinuxAndYarn @kilpatds @mekkaokereke the thing that bugs me the most is that my payments donāt even support the school, they support the bank. I wouldnāt mind paying some interest to the schools, but the never ending payments that go to make the banks owners even more absurdly rich, thatās just one more amplifier of inequality
If the DOE really wants to encourage education with their loan policy, the policy would be that no student ever pays interest on any student loan
@mekkaokereke Iām starting to think where she āwent wrongā was going to college in the U.S.
Even as a white guy, Iām making enough to be paying down my student loans and a mortgage, but I wouldnātāve been able to make a down payment without a surprise windfall, and thereās no way I could support a family without higher pay or less debt. I hate knowing Iāve got it so much better than so many now, but so much less than a generation ago, and nowhere near enough to make anything better
@ShadSterling @mekkaokereke The issue is the US system for sure. I do not have any student debt and a BS (ha!) degree. I was able to pay mine off (I had to pay for housing and food).
Educating the population is good for everyone (but the 1%) of the country. People need to stop whining about the idea of someone āgetting a free rideā when making a few times more or getting a little when they make several times less.
The same people are ok with those that have 100,000 times as muchā¦
@mekkaokereke I imagine being born rich would solve a bunch of problems!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/09/its-better-be-born-rich-than-talented/
@mekkaokereke do colleges still give heavy academic scholarships to students like these? 20 years ago, I had white women friends that got full-ride (tuition, housing, books) to Missouri's in-state engineering school.
I realize that people of color correctly don't feel welcome in Missouri, so I'm not saying that is a solution to your hypothetical even if these types of scholarships still exist.
This is why I don't take any white guy seriously when they wade into these kinds of threads with "well I paid off mine."
Completely tangential to your point, which stands completely, the graph is misleading, and so i think your alt text (thank you!) is too.
The bottom of the graph starts with 70% of the initially borrowed principal remaining. That's what 'Men' have reached from 2009 to now. 'Women' have only now gotten below owing more than the initial principal, to about 97%.
(If the graph were presented fairly, with 0% (all paid off) as the baseline, the lines would be much closer together.)
Yes, women are more likely to major in humanities. But women are also more likely to major in natural sciences too.šš
Women are more likely to get a degree in general! Because women are more likely to finish college. Women have earned more bachelors degrees than men for the past 20 years.
Men are more likely to major in low pay Religion, History, and Philosophy. Then they use those degrees to start podcasts and complain about women not majoring in practical things like natural sciences
There's a painful joke about this: Men tend to get high paying jobs like software engineer, doctor, or lawyer, whereas women tend to get lower paying jobs, like woman software engineer, woman doctor, or woman lawyer. That's not much of a joke.
Yes, there's a huge problem with what our society chooses to value and prioritize. We devalue work we see as gendered. But even within a given field of study or career, racism and sexism create significant gaps in compensation.
@mekkaokereke why not disaggregate the chart by race?
Edit: My point is that the op ignores the denominator -- that is, that black women comprise ~10.9-14.7% of female college students (depending on degree attained -- see http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72 ). The difference in repayment between men and women is not solely or predominantly due to black women's debt.. Absent a lot of context, the graph doesn't tell us much at all.
@mekkaokereke I always knew that there was a racial component to all this, but it's good to see proof.
All these white men running around saying "I paid off my loans, why should my taxes go to pay off someone else's?" didn't make sense. How does it actually affect them?
It's always about white supremacy.
t harvey
mekka okereke 
Douglas Kilpatrick
Rachel Rawlings
ShadSterling
Grassroots Joe
Gen X-Wing
š„„ Tucker Carlson's Nuts š„„
āØpencilearsāØ
Enema Cowboy
Kroos
Martha Howell
acm
John Cutting
(moved)Galbinus Caeli šÆ
Heath Borders
msgbi
birdpoof
CU
Why Not Zoidberg? š¦
benjamin melanƧon
Betwixt & Between
Rebecca
Legion495
Alexander Karn
Jurann
Zeke
Justinmwhitaker
Debbie Belair
Just Boby