#271: The Promise

With student debt at $1.6 trillion and growing, it’s no wonder that students are skipping loans and looking for better solutions to pay for college. Unfortunately, income share agreements, where you pay no tuition now in exchange for a percentage of your post-grad salary later, have emerged as the newest predatory lending scheme. Didn’t graduate? Too bad: You have to pay up anyway. What’s worse is that, to fund your education, colleges seek out investors that gamble on you and your future earning potential. Critics call this the New Indentured Servitude, and you know what? They’re right. (29 min)

+ Check out my annotations on a print version of the article. They don’t call me The Highlighter for nothing! 😀

Language matters. In an interview 25 years ago, white professor John Dilulio coined the term “superpredator” to describe a new threat: “a young, juvenile criminal, who is so impulsive, so remorseless, that he can kill, rape, maim without giving it a second thought.” The new threat didn’t exist; crime plummeted in the 1990s. Still, both conservative and liberal media spread the term, connecting crime with Blackness, deepening already prevalent racist beliefs and furthering racist policies. In 2001, Prof. Dilulio apologized for “any unintended consequences” his false theory had caused. (10 min)

+ Do you remember when Hillary Clinton used the term?

Five years ago, Caitlyn Jenner came out as her authentic self and demanded recognition as a woman. That same month, Rachel Dolezal announced that she self-identified as Black despite having no Black ancestry. In this piece, Robin Dembroff and Dee Payton argue that even though both gender and race classifications are malleable, being Black carries “intergenerationally inherited inequalities” and is “a matter of how your community and ancestors have been treated by other people, institutions, and governments.” Transracial identification (most recently, Jessica Krug) therefore undermines our ability to reckon with historical injustice. (21 min)

+ In case you want more: Ijeoma Oluo excoriates Ms. Dolezal in this classic Highlighter article from 2017.