9 startling facts that show just how hard the student-debt crisis is hurting Black Americans - 9个惊人的事实表明，学生债务危机对美国黑人的伤害有多大

In the wake of George Floyd's death, the Black Lives Matter protests have shined a spotlight on America's long history of inequality and systemic racism.

乔治·弗洛伊德去世后，“黑人的命也是命”抗议活动将美国长期的不平等历史和系统性的种族主义推向了聚光灯下。

Education is one area where Black Americans are hurting the most as the result of institutionalized racism — especially with student loans.

由于制度化的种族主义，特别是助学贷款，教育是美国黑人受害最深的一个领域。

Black students are not only more likely to need to take on debt for school, but graduates are also nearly five times as likely to default on their loans than their white peers.

黑人学生不仅更有可能需要为学校承担债务，而且毕业生拖欠贷款的可能性也是白人同龄人的近5倍。

The racial gap between Black and white student borrowers prompted senators who ran for a presidential bid in 2019 to address the issue during their campaigns: Elizabeth Warren's initiative would have wiped all student debt for 75% of US borrowers, and Bernie Sanders called to eliminate all such debt.

黑人和白人学生借款人之间的种族差距促使参加2019年总统竞选的参议员在竞选期间解决这个问题。伊丽莎白·沃伦的倡议将消除75%美国借款人的所有学生债务，伯尼·桑德斯则呼吁消除所有此类债务。

Here are nine mind-blowing statistics about the student-debt crisis's impact on black borrowers as compared to white students. (The majority of data sources compared Black- and white-borrower debt, which is why other racial groups were not mentioned directly.)

以下是关于学生债务危机对黑人借款人的影响与白人学生相比的九个令人震惊的数据。(大多数数据来源比较了黑人和白人借款人的债务，这就是为什么没有直接提到其他种族群体的原因)。

1. 86.6% of black students borrow federal loans to attend four-year colleges, compared to 59.9% of white students.

Of the black students who graduated in 2003, one in two defaulted on their student loans sometime within the following 12 years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics as analyzed by Student Loan Hero.

In comparison, the rates of default for white student was at 21.5%, and 36.1% for Latino students.

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2. Even well-off black students carry more student-loan debt.

Beth Akers, fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families, told Martha C. White of NBC News that black students don't benefit as much from their parents' wealth as white students do.

Well-off black families have a lower average net worth than white families, and they hold their wealth differently — mostly in homeownership as opposed to financial assets like stocks that are easy to access, White reported.

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3. An average black graduate has $7,400 more in student debt than his or her white peer.

Black students with bachelor's degrees owe $7,400 more student debt on average upon graduation than white grads, according to Brookings.

The gap widens over time: after four years, black grads hold almost twice as much in student debt as their white counterparts at $53,000.

Brookings analyzed restricted-use data from the Department of Education's Baccalaureate and Beyond surveys, as well as Department of Education and Census Bureau data.

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4. Black student-loan borrowers default on their loans at five times the rate of white graduates.

Though just six out of every 100 BA holders default on their loans, black borrowers are much more likely to default: 21% of them default on their loans compared to just 4% of white grads, according to Brookings. Furthermore, black graduates with a bachelor's degree are even slightly more likely to default — or don't make a payment for 270 consecutive days — than white college dropouts.

Brookings does not attribute the racial disparity to just lower levels of parent education or family income. Instead, they point to higher for-profit graduate-school enrollment and lower earnings post-grad.

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5. Graduates of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) take on 32% more debt than their peers at other colleges.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data found that not only do alumni at HBCUs take on 32% more debt than graduates at other public or nonprofit four-year schools, the majority of graduates haven't paid any debt in the first few years out of school.

While HBCUs make up just 5% of four-year American colleges, they make up “50% of the 100 schools with the lowest three-year student-loan repayment rates,” the Journal found. The discrepancy could be because black families already have less wealth compared to other racial groups.

HBCUs are typically more affordable than other institutions, according to Student Loan Hero. Spelman College, the most expensive HBCU as of January 2019, costs $28,181 in tuition, several thousand dollars less than the national average of $32,410 for private four-year colleges.

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6. Eliminating student-loan debt would narrow the racial wealth gap for young families.

The Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank based in New York, found that white households headed by people between the ages of 25 and 40 have 12 times the amount of wealth on average than black households.

By eliminating student debt — as presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have proposed to do in some capacity — the ratio shrinks to just five times the amount of wealth.

Even after canceling debt, however, the racial wealth gap will remain high: the median wealth in young white households would total $52,700, compared to $10,010 for their black peers.

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7. White borrowers pay down their education debt at a rate of 10% a year, compared with 4% for black borrowers.

That's according to a study by Jason Houle and Fenaba Addo in SAGE journals. They found that racial inequalities in student debt contribute to the black-white wealth gap in early adulthood, which increases over time.

After adjusting for family background and postsecondary characteristics, black youth reported 85.8% more debt than their white peers when starting their careers, according to the authors. This disparity grows by 6.7% annually, they said.

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8. Black graduates earn less money out of college, making it harder to pay off their loans.

Black college graduates ages 21 to 24 earn $3.34 less per hour than their white peers, reported Jillian Berman for MarketWatch, citing an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That contributes to a $7,000 annual difference.

The data found the workers held similar qualifications and experience levels.

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9. Black students are more likely to borrow more to go to graduate school.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, released a report in January that found black students are more likely to borrow more money to attend graduate school than their white peers. As a result, the median debt for black graduate students is 50% higher than for their white peers.

Black graduate students' federal loans are, on average, $25,000 higher than white graduate school grads, the report found.

“The current system has had particularly pernicious effects on Black and Latinx students, as well as women, who are seeking a better life for themselves and their families,” Ben Miller, vice president for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, wrote in the report. “It is time for the federal government to make sure that the tens of billions of dollars in graduate student loans it provides each year really are making lives better.”

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