Black and Latino Americans hopeful about student debt forgiveness
President Biden’s announcement last month that he’s considering forgiving a portion of student loans is resonating with many Black and Latino voters who have found themselves struggling with their student loan debt, as the nation continues to recover from the long COVID pandemic and high inflation.
About 90% of Black Americans and 72% of Latinos take student loans to attend college, compared to 66% of White students, according to a report from the Student Borrower Protection Center.
“This is impacting them in terms of how they can move forward,” said Vanessa Sansone, a higher education professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Sansone says these loans are seen by students as their pathway to success, but in the long run, they become a burden when they’re trying to make some progress in their financial lives.
“They’re not able to move forward… maybe they want to move, maybe they want to take out a mortgage, and those are things that are holding them back,” Sansone said of the toll student loan debt is having on these minorities.
When the pandemic began, former President Trump signed an executive order to temporarily halt student loan payments and set their interest rates to 0% as part […]
