The Whiteness of Wealth & Black Student Loan Debt

Authors

• Renee Nicole Allen, St. John's University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

Publication Date

2025

Volume

25.1

First Page

25

Abstract

On June 30, 2023, to the dismay of many anxious borrowers, the Supreme Court held that the Secretary of Education did not have the authority to cancel roughly $430 billion in federal student loan balances, thus blocking President Biden’s plan for student loan forgiveness. Despite authority delegated to the Secretary to waive or modify provisions of the Education Act to ensure low-to-middle income borrowers were not placed in a worse financial position because of the COVID-19 national emergency, the Court rejected the forgiveness plan and borrowers resumed payments in October 2023. Anti-Black racism in federal law and policy have contributed to racial wealth inequality of Black people generally, and Black student loan debt holders specifically, myself included. Though the proposed forgiveness plan would have benefitted all demographics, it would have been a first step in eliminating racial disparities in student loan debt.

This article examines the racial wealth inequalities created through law and policies that disproportionately disadvantage Black federal student loan debt holders. First, this article examines Biden v. Nebraska, the 2023 Supreme Court decision that barred President Biden’s student loan debt cancellation plan holding that the Secretary of Education was not authorized to cancel student loan debt under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. Next, this article explores the Whiteness of wealth by examining the racial wealth disparities created by slavery and perpetuated by laws and policies that benefit White people and disadvantage Black people, especially Black student loan borrowers. This exploration suggests that the federal government, by ignoring the ways law and policy have created and perpetuated inequality, demonstrates complicit bias in ways that create and preserve the economic and educational interests of White people. It concludes with a radical solution for racial wealth inequality: reparations.

Comments

Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/rrgc/vol25/iss1/3/