PHILADELPHIA – Lystra Small-Clouden does not want this story to be about her race.
The 63-year-old mother of four from Horsham wants it to be about for-profit colleges that leave students buried in debt. About how she started an online Ph.D. program in 2010 after seeing an ad that she could finish in three years. About how it took five years, about how she graduated with $180,000 in debt that’s doubled since then, about how she’s depleted her savings.
Small-Clouden is Black, and her story isn’t just about race.
But she knows the story of the American student debt crisis in many ways is — and it’s a story a growing number of debtors and activists are telling as Washington weighs what to do next about student loan debt.
“It’s not that these faces are faces of irresponsible people,” said Small-Clouden, who has connected with other borrowers through The Debt Collective, a national debtor’s union. “These are faces of people that are in pain and cannot see the way to pay back this debt.”
Amid a pandemic that’s left millions in financial disarray and an antiracist movement that’s brought inequity to the forefront, some borrowers and politicians alike are pressing Washington to cancel student debt, saying it’s a racial justice imperative.