Jessicah Pierre: What the college-admissions scandal says about America
Felicity Huffman in happier days
From OtherWords.org
Earlier this year, a number of wealthy parents, celebrities, and college prep coaches were accused of offering large bribes to elite universities in order to get their children into schools they didn’t qualify for.
Federal prosecutors charged at least 50 people in the criminal investigation named “Operation Varsity Blues.”
Among those charged was actress Felicity Huffman, who was recently sentenced to 14 days in prison after pleading guilty to fraud. In Huffman’s case, she’d paid $15,000 to have someone cheat on an SAT exam for her daughter as part of the effort to get her admitted into the University of Southern California.
Many parents want a better education for their child — and higher education, after all, has long been considered a path to the American dream. But Huffman’s case shows an obvious bias in the system toward people who achieved it long ago.
Her light sentence is being compared to the five years given to Tanya McDowell, a homeless Bridgeport, Conn., mom who was arrested and charged after enrolling her young son in a school in a neighboring public school district that posted better test scores.
For many low-income families, the promise of education providing a pathway out of poverty is slipping further out of reach. Many are mired in underfunded public schools with few resources to provide a quality education.
It’s no surprise that many of these communities are also home to people of color. A new report released earlier this year found that nonwhite school districts get $23 billion less than white districts, despite serving about the same number of students.
As someone who grew up in a low-income household and attended public schools, I’m a product of that system. Each morning, my high school welcomed me with metal detectors and police officers.
I was one of the very few lucky students that beat the odds, graduated, and made it through college. Most don’t.
These disparities force parents from low-income backgrounds and communities of color to take risks — like using the addresses of friends or family members to get their kids into better school systems. “I would still do it all over again,” said McDowell after serving her time. “My son exceeded all of my expectations” in the better district, she said.
On the other hand, for parents like Huffman — who have access to a plethora of economic and social resources already — bribing colleges and universities to secure a slot for her children isn’t a means of survival. It’s an abuse of power and privilege.
Varsity Blues has been deemed the largest college admissions scandal in U.S. history. For sure, it highlights how the inherited advantages of our country’s wealthiest people have shaped our education system. Even more than that, though, it’s part of the bigger scandal that so many more have so much less.
As wealth continues to concentrate at the top, the extremely wealthy are using it shut out students who are already hundreds of steps behind on the road to success — all to give the already affluent another boost along the way.
Jessicah Pierre is the inequality media specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Jessicah Pierre: 'Baby bonds': A revolutionary way to close the racial wealth divide
— Photo by RealtOn12
Via OtherWords.org
The gap between America’s ultra-wealthy and the rest of us is growing dramatically as wealth continues to concentrate at the top at the expense of the rest of us. One major symptom of this economic rift is the racial wealth divide, which is greater today than it was nearly four decades ago.
The median Black family today owns $3,600 — just 2 percent of the $147,000 of wealth the median white family owns. At the extreme top, the Forbes 400 richest Americans own more wealth than all Black households, plus a quarter of Latinx households, combined.
When analyzing the racial wealth divide, it’s important to note that this is a systemic issue — a result of policies, not individual behavior.
Darrick Hamilton, the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State, emphasizes that the key ingredient of how successful you’ll be in America isn’t how hard you work individually — it’s how wealthy your family is.
For instance, the racial wealth gap continues to grow despite rising rates of Black employment and education. These other things simply can’t make up for enormous, systemic disparities in family wealth.
Hamilton’s proposed solution? “Baby bonds.”
Baby bonds are federally managed accounts set up at birth for children and endowed by the government with assets that will grow over time. Neither the child nor their parents would be able to access these funds until the child reaches adulthood, at which point they could use the money to get an education, purchase a home, or start a business.
Baby bonds could play an essential role in balancing the historical injustices that created the racial wealth divide.
One recent study shows a baby bond program has the potential to reduce the current black-white wealth divide more than tenfold. Another shows that had a baby bond program been initiated 40 years ago, the Latinx-white wealth divide would be closed by now — and the black-white wealth divide would have shrunk by 82 percent.
Baby bonds are an essential, universal, race-conscious program to provide everyone with an opportunity to start life off secure, irrespective of their race and the financial position in which they’re born.
And they’re just one of 10 bold solutions offered in a new Institute for Policy Studies report on closing the racial wealth divide, which counts Hamilton among its coauthors.
“Large scale policy change,” it concludes, “is the most promising path to addressing the racial wealth divide and many asset poor whites as well.” The report also recommends solutions ranging from Medicare for All and higher taxes on the wealthy to setting up a congressional committee to study reparations.
Just like all other issues of inequality in America, the racial wealth divide is a structural problem that requires structural solutions. In order to create economic prosperity for every American, we must start with taking bold action to close the racial wealth divide once and for all.
Jessicah Pierre is the inequality media specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies.