Recently, the right-wing magazine The Federalist published a warning to parents in the form of a conspiratorial, unhinged and poorly supported op-ed titled, “If The Left Ends Parent Rights, You Might Need A License To Raise Your Own Child.” In the piece, author Stella Morabito built on the hysteria around critical race theory to forewarn readers of an alleged concerted push by the so-called radical left to license parenting.

“[L]icensing of parents might still sound fringy, but it’s an old social engineering dream that dies hard,” wrote Morabito. “Unless there is aggressive and sustained pushback, you can count on the idea invading the mainstream. So parents can’t let down their guard.”

Yes. The idea is more than fringy, but the call-to-action is no joke.

To be clear, there is no attempt to create a license to parent a child. There never has been. Just as Covid vaccines don’t end up magnetizing people, and what actually constitutes critical race theory has never been taught in primary and secondary schools, there is no agenda to create a parenting permit — an idea that would be as anathema to the left as to the right.

Power-hungry politicians and bigots have always appealed to white supremacist values to achieve their political goals.

The Federalist article is extreme — and it’s purposeful. The boogey-man rhetoric it employs is taken straight from the pages of the white supremacy playbook. It’s the kind of tactic that’s been effective at radicalizing individuals, especially white evangelicals and conservative white women, throughout the years.

Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia flagrantly tailored his campaign to self-professed “mama bears,” conservative women who rallied around the candidate’s opposition to vaccine mandates, critical race theory (as he defined it) and other cultural flashpoints.

Youngkin positioned himself as the defender of ordinary parents fed up with what they perceive as government overreach. In the weeks leading up to the election, Youngkin posted a meme of his Democrat opponent captioned: “Scary Terry [McCauliffe] will keep parents out of their kids’ schools.”

Related: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

Power-hungry politicians and bigots have always appealed to white supremacist values to achieve their political goals. In the 1950s, politicians latched onto white resistance to desegregation by turning busing into a trigger for white aggression. Children had been bused since the 1920s. But after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the subsequent rulings to enforce it, busing became synonymous with a court-ordered invasion of white privilege. White women fought on the frontlines of the racist resistance to Black families integrating white schools. Politicians and right-wing activists amplified their fury and turned it into a movement.

School busing — not the fact that adults were attacking school buses with rocks and spitting on children — became the supposed threat to democracy. The practice of manufacturing fear around integration has been repeated ever since, with every advance in the Civil Rights Movement facing a racist backlash, including the current uproar over critical race theory, as inaccurately depicted, following the Black Lives Matter protests of the last two years.

Many of the mama bears coming out to protest now are direct political descendants of the white evangelicals who felt embittered about Supreme Court decisions and state policies around school desegregation, the teaching of evolution, the expansion of the curriculum to include multicultural voices, comprehensive sex ed, and the removal of compulsory, school sanctioned prayer. A recent article in the Christian Post lists the grievances for these parents: “We’re fed up with the pollution of our children’s minds with LGBT pedophilia and porn, racism, colorism, anti-capitalism, religious bigotry, anti-free speech, and other anti-American propaganda.”

Expanding civil rights isn’t anti-American. Discriminating against Black people, curtailing the pursuit of truth by Black students and scholars and maintaining a racial hierarchy are the actions that undermine our nation’s ideals — especially when these hateful acts are wrapped in democratic terms like “school choice” and “parent rights.”

Conservatives are currently using bans on critical race theory — a term they inaccurately define as any effort to teach about systemic racism or cultural sensitivity — as a pretext for eliminating from history lessons topics like slavery, Jim Crow racism, voter suppression, and housing and school segregation — all significant aspects of American history with long-lasting impact. In addition, conservatives are attempting to assuage or eliminate any feelings of guilt or accountability their white followers might have for this troubling past: White politicians seemingly don’t dare allow children to know that their ancestors and the U.S. government created these policies.

The Colorado Springs’ Gazette editorial board recently wrote that the mama bear movement represents a “sprouting and growth of grassroots, representative democracy.” Colorado Springs, home to the right-wing evangelical organization Focus on the Family, is known for its conservative bent. The Gazette board tied the mama bear movement to backlash against critical race theory as well as Covid-19 protocols and restrictions. The Gazette is rallying the next wave of troops for a debased, unsubstantiated cause.

Related: Rewrite the history textbooks, or the white supremacist violence will continue

The mama bears movement has largely been spontaneous and localized, but just as in past racist backlashes, a growing political infrastructure is being built for these conservative parents. For example, the group Moms for Liberty was recently created to organize parents and has already been influential in local races for school board. As reported by The Washington Post, “In 10 months, Moms for Liberty has grown to 135 chapters in 35 states, with 56,000 members and supporters, according to the organization’s founders.”

Rational voices must push back against ridiculous, groundless claims based in racism. But how can we fight against the fear of a boogey man that doesn’t exist? Thousands of our neighbors, colleagues and possibly even some friends fought against critical race theory being in taught in schools, when it wasn’t being taught there, and many will believe the lie that the left wants a licensing exam for parenting, even though it has no basis in reality. How do we engage with people we disagree with when they are clearly off the rails?  

Fortunately, as parents, we have a common experience to draw on: Most of us have had to deal at some time with toddlers who become fearful of the dark, and have helped them overcome the fear of nighttime monsters that don’t exist. Some of the same strategies used to squelch toddlers’ nocturnal fears can be used when dealing with adult conspiracy theorists.  

Acknowledge the Fear

If someone has sent an unhinged article on social media as an invitation to believe in something that doesn’t exist, or has brought up an outlandish boogeyman in conversation, simply pointing out the ways that the information is racist probably won’t be very effective as a way to open their eyes. More is needed.

If your neighbor or friend tells you that the state is coming to see if you have a parenting permit, get to the matter at hand. Give them an opportunity to acknowledge their authentic fear. Allow them to see that parenting permits and critical race theory as portrayed by the right aren’t what really frightens them. Apprehension comes more from societal changes that hold a mirror to deeply held beliefs, values and privilege.

This kind of effacement is difficult at the individual or societal levels, but it is more likely someone will acknowledge what they are truly feeling than admit that parenting permits don’t exist.

It’s better to show than to tell

Debating the merits of a conspiracy theory won’t end with someone disavowing the conspiracy. Just as there will always be a columnist who will write outlandish articles about things like parent licenses, there will always be another YouTuber or Reddit user providing so-called evidence to add fuel to a conspiracy that people are already motivated to believe.

However, as the equivalent to briefly turning on the light in a dark room to enable a child to see that nothing is there, ask your conspiratorial friend to show you the legislature that passed a parenting exam or name a state or school district where critical race theory is part of the curriculum. In other words, offer them facts from a reliable source while pushing them to provide you with reputable evidence for their own claims. It’s said that the best disinfectant is light. And for many people, a consistent delivery of facts will eventually erode irrational beliefs.

Have constructive discussions about the boogey man

Tony McAleer — a former skinhead and now a nonprofit leader working to help people make amends for their past behaviors — says that you can’t “deprogram” a skinhead. “At that point, ideology and identity have become the same,” McAleer told the Canadian Broadcast Company. “When you challenge ideology, you’re challenging their sense of self.”

For many people, a consistent delivery of facts will eventually erode irrational beliefs.

This means that any intervention needs to aim not simply at countering the ideology, but also at appealing to the best in someone, as a way of inviting them into a sense of self that is not dependent on hateful or conspiratorial ideologies. This strategy connects to the idea, above, that it’s better to identify the underlying fear than focus on the conspiracy. By helping people to acknowledge that fear while offering them a way out that still preserves some sense of their original self, we can counteract a lot of the appeal of irrational beliefs.

“I know it’s hard, but whatever you do, don’t tell the child ‘Don’t do that.’ Since the dawn of time, it’s never worked,” McAleer said. “If you have no conversations, you won’t pick it up the second it starts up.”

As difficult as it may be, we must have courageous conversations with both the mama bears and well-meaning moderates who try to avoid discussions around racism. These conversations can prevent people from falling into the worst beliefs, or help them overcome those beliefs. There are many resources that offer tools for facilitating these tough conversations. For example, during the unrest of 2020, the Annie E. Casey Foundation offered concrete guidelines on how to facilitate authentic and productive conversations about race.

Ignore the cries

Finally, after you’ve done your part to engage, if those you are speaking with don’t want to start the process of changing, you must move on. There are limits to engaging with the irrational. There comes a point at which it becomes emotionally extractive and toxic to continue. Attention provides oxygen for conspiracies.

Reasonable parents know how difficult it is to ignore a baby crying in fear of the dark. However, if parents rush in each time to turn on the lights and affirm this irrational fear, no one will be well rested. If social media friends and contacts ignore facts and keep spouting nonsense, it’s probably time to block them, to tell them “We’re going to have to agree to disagree,” or simply ignore them so you can get some sleep.

This story about mama bears was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Last week, survivors of sexual abuse spoke to Congress about a new FBI report outlining the disastrous investigation into Larry Nassar, the former USA gymnastics physician.

As one survivor, Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney, put it, “They had legal, legitimate evidence of child abuse and did nothing.”

Beginning as early as the mid-1990s, Nassar abused dozens of girls, criminal behavior that was finally stopped in 2018 when he was sentenced to 175 years in prison. One may ask, how could this level of abuse go on for so long?

The answer is simple, and disturbing: because we let it happen.

Team doctors, coaches, university personnel, USA Gymnastics and the lead law enforcement agency in the United States all ignored the charges of these young women, many of whom represented their country in competition. As the leading physician for a premier Olympic sport, Nassar wielded immense power over the women and girls he abused under the guise of help. Although Nassar is a monster, our society is to blame for a culture that continues to permit the abuse of women and girls, and doubts them when they come forward.

The #MeToo movement has prompted change, but there’s still so much work to be done.

Related: It was only a matter of time before the #MeToo movement rocked schools

When seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles testified at the hearing, she pleaded with the legislators to focus now on the young women coming up in sports, and protect them.

“I don’t want another young gymnast, Olympic athlete, or any individual to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others have endured before, during, and continuing to this day, in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse,” she said.

Media talking heads, social media trolls and fanatics called Biles, the greatest of all time in her sport, a “quitter” when she withdrew from the gymnastic team finals citing her mental health at the Tokyo games. They tried to brand tennis star Naomi Osaka the same for exiting major tournaments due to bouts of depression. This treatment furthers the abuse. The harassment defines them as mere objects for our enjoyment.

The bungled FBI investigation is just one a symptom of a culture of abuse of and contempt for girls and women that extends to our schools. If the chronic abuse of the most-decorated female athletes can be easily swept under the rug, disregarded by authorities, then school students without a public persona are even more vulnerable.

In 2015, one in five women stated they had experienced rape or attempted rape during their lifetimes, one in three reported such rape first happened between the ages of 11 and 17, while one in eight reported it happened before the age of 10, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. The CDC reports that one in four girls experience sexual abuse in childhood.

The typical discussion about gender equity in sports revolves around the fair distribution of resources. In March of this year, the NCAA was forced to apologize after it provided women athletes competing in the Division I basketball tournaments a weight room that was vastly different from and inferior to that it provided to the male athletes. But this kind of disparity should come as no surprise. When girls are not protected physically, they won’t be supported financially. Consequently, school districts, universities and other institutions must provide venues to share their accounts of abuse.

Under Title IX, all schools that receive federal funding must respond to reports of sexual assault. According to the nonprofit advocacy group Equal Rights Advocates, “If you report sexual assault or harassment, your school cannot ignore you or blame you.” ERA’s website states that schools must respond within a few days.

Schools should do more than simply not ignoring young women, however. They should provide counseling and legal assistance as part of sports programs. Protecting girl and women athletes means that schools must guard them against predators, both from outside and from within the institutions the students represent. And we must hold abusers and their enablers accountable. Nassar couldn’t possibly carry out his abuse without assistance.

When we see girls as people and not objects for our entertainment or desire, we will begin to protect our children.

This story about sexual abuse was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Is there any school district whose students experienced more disruptions than those in New Orleans?

Between the major storms of Katrina and Ida there have been dozens of hurricanes and tropical storms that have interrupted students’ schooling in that city for extended periods. The New Orleans school board tries to make up lost learning time, but the reality is that the weeks lost can’t simply be restored, and people don’t necessarily heal their traumas along a set schedule.

When schools reopen, students may not be ready to enter them. Flooding, wind damage and power outages may keep individual families out of their homes and away from their own district beyond the official school start date. How can students be prepared to learn when they literally don’t have a roof over their heads? It will take weeks and months for some families to receive homeowners’ insurance payments; that span of time should be a measure of school disruption.

And let’s not overlook the daily economic catastrophes that many Black families face even when the skies are clear. The years-long, manmade disruptions of school reform in the aftermath of Katrina made every year a different one by design. Conversions from traditional to charter schools, closures and takeovers put student learning on a treadmill. School choice brought some benefits, but consistency wasn’t one of them.

In addition, with a 24 percent poverty rate, New Orleans remains one of the poorest large cities in the country. An uncounted number of school days are lost due to high levels of poverty, which limits families’ access to services like healthcare, housing, transportation and broadband. Virtual learning required equipment and internet access that too many families didn’t have. The pandemic exacerbated these issues. The connected issues of inadequate healthcare, housing and job protections had a grim impact.

Students, especially in the Black community, lost many family members to the virus. Although Black people represent 60 percent of the city’s population, Black residents accounted for 77 percent of the 492 people who had died of coronavirus in the city as of June 5, before the current surge, according to reporting by NOLA.com. When deaths in long-term care settings like prisons and nursing homes were excluded, the disparity was even more stark: Black residents accounted for 88 percent of the deaths.

After more than $15 billion was invested in improving the levees and other infrastructure, New Orleans was spared much of the physical devastation breached levees caused during Hurricane Katrina. However, people are no better off than they were after Katrina. At some point we must invest in the people of New Orleans just as we did in the levees.

Related: Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education

We should assume disasters like hurricanes, economic crises and pandemics will be permanent features of our future society. However, people will be better able to deal with the inevitable storms if they have access to a living wage, affordable housing, quality healthcare and childcare, as well as well-funded schools.

In March, President Joe Biden introduced the American Jobs Plan, a $2.7 trillion infrastructure bill that endeavored to put people to work by addressing historic discrimination, climate change, broadband access and labor rights — in addition to building and repairing roads and bridges. That proposal included funding to modernize schools and childcare facilities, and to upgrade veterans’ hospitals and federal buildings. The plan was set to invest in the “care economy” by “creating jobs and raising wages and benefits for essential home care workers.” It even appropriated money to ensure “workers have a free and fair choice to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively with their employers.”

That proposal was replaced by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which focuses less on the care economy and more on transportation and water programs, the digital divide, interstate electricity transmission and resilient infrastructure designs, among other things.

In other words, it disregards many of the problems that make people vulnerable, even in fair weather.

New Orleans School Board President Ethan Ashley has called on municipal leaders to center children in the recovery process, specifically calling out the city’s energy company, Entergy. “I have listened to several leaders speak over the last 72 hours, and our youngest New Orleanians have not been prioritized,” Ashley wrote in a statement. “The Superintendent needs to be in conversations with Entergy and Federal leaders about the recovery efforts. 16 years after Katrina, we know that for us to recover well, our children must be prioritized.”

Ashley wants Entergy to consider schools as critical infrastructure, which would have them prioritize power restoration to the facilities. And with good reason.

People will be better able to deal with the inevitable storms if they have access to a living wage, affordable housing, quality healthcare and childcare, as well as well-funded schools.

If we learned anything from the pandemic, it was the crucial role schools play in feeding, sheltering and building our communities. Many children did not receive regular meals when state and city leaders forced districts to move to virtual learning, and students did not receive the kinds of social interactions kids need.

We also learned during the pandemic that we must protect teachers to keep students safe. Investing in vaccinations, training and equipment for teachers minimized the academic damage for students.

Ashley’s request must be broadened. Low-income, Black residents must be prioritized. What good are strong levees if people don’t have secure housing and food? If teachers and other workers have difficulty getting meaningful employment rights, how much say can they really have on their own recovery? If people don’t have the discretionary income to get out of harm’s way, will levees really protect them?

“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning how to dance in the rain,” a quote attributed to writer Vivian Greene, captures this moment. Storms will come. To weather them, we must invest in people.

This story about investing in the people of New Orleans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Today, student debt is a larger source of household indebtedness than credit cards or automobiles, and is surpassed only by home mortgages. From 1993 to 2012, the share of students taking out loans to finance their degrees rose from roughly half to over two-thirds. Between 1993 and 2020, the average loan amount grew nearly three-fold, exceeding $30,000.  

This wouldn’t be much of a problem if borrowers’ incomes increased comparably. But alas, the upsurge in tuition has outpaced the rise in wages and overall inflation. 

While most analysts and politicians across the political spectrum believe we have a student debt problem, there is no similar consensus in their various proposals on how to deal with it. Much of the debate revolves around how much student loan debt should be discharged. However, it’s the “who” in policy that determines many budgetary considerations. Understanding the impact of student debt on specific groups can shed light how much we should cancel overall.  

Arguments that canceling all student debt is regressive, because it will primarily benefit the rich, fall flat.  

But we’ve struggled as a nation to appropriately determine the “who” in public policy and research, cherry picking who should benefit from student debt abatement or who should shoulder its burdens. One of the most consequential manifestations of that struggle is the Black-white wealth divide.  

Generations of anti-Black, exclusive policy contributed to white families amassing 10 times as much wealth as Black families. Not only did federal, state and local legislators intentionally throttle Black wealth with malicious policies that exacerbated the legacy of slavery, such as Jim Crow laws, biased housing and criminal justice practices, they excluded Black Americans from reaping the full benefits of the New Deal, which lifted many more white families out of poverty and enabled them to pass on intergenerational wealth.     

Our solutions for the student debt problem should not repeat this sordid history. In fact, past discrimination means we must first check how a policy might impact historically disenfranchised groups before we propose it. One of the most repeated mistakes in the student-debt-cancellation debate is the assumption that all people within particular income strata have the same ability to pay back their loans, masking the lived experiences of Black people. Color-blind income analyses miss the mark.  

Related: Cancel all student debt 

Ignoring wealth and the racial wealth divide is to bury one’s head in the sand to racial injustice. Arguments that canceling all student debt is regressive, because it will primarily benefit the rich, fall flat. Most student debt is held by households with zero to negative net worth, and Black people are overrepresented among that group. An estimated 19 percent of Black American families have zero to negative net worth compared to 8 percent of white families.   

Over the last quarter century, Black people went to college at higher rates, but we also took on more debt than our peers, damaging our capacity to purchase homes and start businesses. In a new Brookings Institution/Jain Family Institute research brief, Jain Family Institute senior fellow Marshall Steinbaum, Brookings research assistant Carl Romer and I demonstrate that Black people take out higher amounts of student loans than every other racial group. In addition, Black students’ current loan balances are much more likely to exceed the original amount, revealing the impact of discrimination on wealth. 

This chart illuminates the results of Black people’s efforts to obtain economic equality, our lack of wealth and our need for federal aid.  

Not only are individuals saddled with debt, so are entire neighborhoods. Our report, titled “Student loans, the racial wealth divide, and why we need full student debt cancellation,” shows student debt as a share of income is highest — and growing fastest — in the lowest-income areas. 

The claim that student debt cancellation is regressive tends to be followed by pointing out that a large number of borrowers have a small amount of debt, and a relatively small number of borrowers carry a large portion of the total debt burden. That much is true, but the unstated implication is that the low number of high-balance borrowers that would benefit the most from cancelling outstanding balances tend to also have higher incomes. 

That implication is false.  

The plurality of outstanding debt is held by borrowers with higher balances who live in census tracts in which the median income is between $20,000 and $40,000. Meanwhile, high-income census tracts account for a very low number of borrowers, affirming that wealthy people are less likely to have student debt because they don’t need loans, and, if they take out loans, are more likely to pay them off quickly. 

Other studies have reported that differences in interest accrual and graduate school borrowing lead to Black graduates holding about twice as much student debt, $53,000, as our white counterparts four years after graduation. Given the racial wealth disparities and debt-to-income ratios, it’s not surprising an estimated 7.6 percent of Black graduates default on loans within four years of graduation, compared to 2.4 percent of white graduates. 

Without question, we have a student debt problem. Real solutions can be found when Black lives are recognized in policy and research. 

When all student debt is cancelled, the numerical difference between the wealth of non-Black and Black households shrinks significantly for households between the second and 20th percentiles, as Carl Romer and I described in “Student debt cancellation should consider wealth, not income,” published in February. Likewise, we found that the more debt is cancelled, the greater the racial wealth gap is reduced at every wealth percentile.  

Now, those are the kinds of student debt solutions we all need, not efforts that replicate the mistakes of the past. We should center the lived experiences of Black borrowers to guide our solutions to the student debt crisis, an idea we have yet to try.  

This story about Black student debt was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter. 

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For the past 200 years, Philadelphia workers have built ships for both commercial and military use. Philly is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy and produced the nation’s first military ships after President George Washington signed the Naval Act into law in 1794. Today, a robust apprenticeship program supported by public spending is providing Philly’s workers with pathways into the proud tradition of shipbuilding.

As part of their efforts to develop a skilled workforce, Philly Shipyard created an apprenticeship program in 2004, which has since graduated over 300 workers, and which has recently been supported by a $720,000 grant from the U.S. Maritime Administration. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that in this program, “apprentices are paid employees from the first day, with retirement benefits and time off,” and that upon completing the program, the apprentices gain journey-worker status and earn 22 college credits.

This apprenticeship model is a powerful rebuttal to the language of “skills gaps” often used by employers and policymakers. The skills gap narrative allows employers to blame workers for not being skilled or productive enough, even as those employers outsource all training and development (including the costs of postsecondary education) to the workers themselves. In contrast, the shipyard model and other apprenticeships like it recognize thatopportunity gaps exist between workers and accessible pathways into more specialized jobs. By bearing the costs of training and education, a cost that is offset by federal grants, the Shipyard is extending opportunity to a wider array of workers who may otherwise have faced financial barriers prohibiting their ability to participate in this sector.

The “skills gap” narrative allows employers to blame workers for not being skilled or productive enough, even as those employers outsource all training and development to the workers themselves.

The apprenticeship program is also a great example of the kind of workforce development championed in the Biden Administration’s economic agenda, building on the earlier work of the previous two administrations. As part of this agenda, President Joe Biden has stressed the importance of organized labor and workforce development, including increasing registered apprenticeships, as the foundation for infrastructure renewal. Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for $48 billion invested in workforce development; among its goals is creating as many as 1 million new apprenticeships.

Related: Biden’s infrastructure plan would create plenty of jobs, but who will do them?

While the federal government is the crucial source of funding for expanding manufacturing capacity through workforce development, state and local governments will be largely responsible for choosing how to spend that money. The flexibility allowed at the regional, state and local levels should push leaders to find best practices and copy successful models. The Philly Shipyard apprenticeship is one such model that these leaders should look to in their efforts to close opportunity gaps, overcome inequities, and increase economic growth.

In implementing these workforce programs, state and local officials should explicitly seek to increase racial equity. This is especially urgent because pathways and advancement in the trades were and often still are racially structured in ways that depress Black wages. In Philly’s overall labor market (including the trades), there are staggering racial disparities for workers with or without college credentials. These disparities are so stark that the average Black worker with a college degree makes only slightly more than the average white worker without a degree, as depicted below:

The fact that racial disparities in wages are not mitigated by education provides further evidence that the skills gap narrative is insufficient explanation for the inequality. It is deeply unfair to tell Black workers that they need to take out debt to finance a college education when we are doing little to eradicate the systemic racism that means they could still make less than white workers with less education when they graduate.

Instead of offloading the cost of skills training to workers, we need more programs like the Philly Shipyard apprenticeship. The companies that benefit from skilled labor must do their part to cover the costs of the education they require for their workers.

The government must do its part, too. Public investment and spending can shrink opportunity gaps created by racism or class-based barriers, as it has in the case of the Philly Shipyard apprenticeship, and help reduce the racial wage gaps currently present in the labor market.

Related: Are apprenticeships the new on-ramp to good jobs?

Public spending can also support the overall economic health of these firms, helping secure jobs for workers while stabilizing the economy. As with many manufacturing firms, Philly Shipyard has experienced economic ebbs throughout its history, but it has stayed in business largely due to federal support. The business was initially the product of a partnership between a commercial firm and city, state, and federal government, and as recently as 2011, it benefited from similar public-private partnerships to make it through economic slowdowns.

In 2018, the shipyard was forced to lay off hundreds of workers, and there was widespread concern that the firm would go under. Local and state officials advocated on behalf of the shipyard and its workers with the goal of securing federal contracts for ships that would keep the business afloat. Indeed, a dozen members of Congress signed a letter to the Department of Transportation asking that federal contracts for state-of-the-art ships be sent to the shipyard. The letter noted that the Shipyard has world-class infrastructure (in large part due to the $350 million in public and private investment) and that it has exemplary management/labor cooperation, due to the $300 million that has been invested in workforce development and benefits.

As a result of that support, today the Shipyard is once again experiencing an economic upswing. As The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported, the Shipyard has benefited from “contracts for national security multi-mission vessels, first announced in spring 2020.” The Shipyard has doubled its workforce (from 200 to 400), and could increase that workforce to 1,400 by 2022, according to the Inquirer. To hit that mark, the Shipyard is expanding its apprenticeship program. As the program grows, leadership should take the opportunity to ensure they are pursuing racial equity by making sure, at the least, that their recruitment sources are diverse. By setting an example here, the Shipyard could help other firms address the racial wage gap in Philly’s labor market.

Many standard economic textbooks claim that public spending crowds out private investment. But the Philly Shipyard is a powerful example of why that claim does not always hold true. When public spending is tied to smart investments in people and in places, it can invite private investment and lead to increased opportunity as well as economic growth. It is time to stop talking about skills gaps and to get serious about public investment in American workers and firms. 

This story about the skills gap was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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I guess higher education isn’t the bastion of liberalism that conservatives grouse about.

Bowing to pressure from conservatives, the board overseeing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill denied tenure to journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, lead author and director of The 1619 Project, a special issue of The New York Times Magazine that commemorated the 400-year anniversary of the arrival of 20 enslaved Africans who were sold into slavery to the shores of Virginia.

Hannah-Jones is the incoming Knight Chair — a professorship endowed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It’s a position that typically comes with the job security of tenure. In lieu of tenure, the university offered Hannah-Jones a five-year contract, which can be renewed at the end of the term.

The danger of the board’s action on her tenure — which the faculty and tenure committee voted to grant her — extends beyond the individual fight over Hannah-Jones’ position. The board’s rejection is an affront to faculty, students and anyone who values academic freedom, good governance, the role of the Fourth Estate in American democracy, and truth itself.

Society ultimately benefits when researchers can produce work that doesn’t align with the political whims of the people who govern institutions of higher education.

The tradition of tenure was mainly established as “the ultimate guarantor of free speech” for intellectuals like Hannah-Jones. Tenure is “an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation,” according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the membership organization of faculty that developed the standards and procedures that maintain academic quality.

There’s shared agreement between the AAUP and the membership body for trustees, the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), on the duties and responsibilities for the three branches of higher education governance: boards, administration and faculty. The AGB and AAUP statements on governance reiterate that boards are ultimately responsible, lifting up their fiduciary and strategic planning duties. Faculty oversee academic decisions, and presidents manage administrative units.

Related: Once invisible, college boards of trustees are suddenly in the spotlight

Society ultimately benefits when researchers can produce work that doesn’t align with the political whims of the people who govern institutions of higher education. For the most part, boards of regents and trustees are political appointees, in the case of public institutions, or wealthy alumni, in the case of private institutions. These folks aren’t exactly of the people and for the people.

Giving them power to influence the free flow of ideas in academia undermines the very purpose of the university — and it’s dangerous for our democracy.

The UNC board overstepped its role in the shared governance structure that sustains colleges and universities; the faculty is in charge of such academic matters. To deny a single person tenure because of politics is clearly a violation of the tradition of shared governance. Conservatives who support overturning the faculty’s decision to grant Hannah-Jones tenure are making clear once again that they prefer despotism and demagoguery over democratic decision making and rigorous knowledge creation.

Related: COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

Hannah-Jones’s work is just the kind of rigorous scholarship our nation needs right now. She has prompted a national conversation about race by breaking up the fable that an idealistic group of “founding fathers,” many of whom owned slaves, are responsible for the democracy we know today. The reality is that the substance of American democracy developed from Black people’s pursuit of emancipation and equal rights under the law, a central premise of The 1619 Project.

Universities must protect scholars and scholarship because politicians with power will always discredit truth and diminish the accomplishments of those who oppose them to score political points. Black News Channel host Marc Lamont Hill interviewed Republican candidate for Georgia governor Vernon Jones, probing why he wants to ban critical race theory, an academic framework for understanding systemic racism. In a heated exchange about the meaning of critical race theory, Jones attacked Hill’s academic credential. “Ph.D’s come a dime a dozen … You’re as dumb as two left shoes,” Jones said.  “Because you have a Ph.D., you haven’t practiced anything. You’re in the academic area. You haven’t done any real work.”

The UNC’s board decision not to give Hannah-Jones the protections that scholars before her have enjoyed is horribly predictable.

Hannah-Jones’ background is in journalism, and for the last four years, the conservative rhetorical gimmick, “fake news,” sought to discredit facts and make journalists enemies of the state. This month it was reported that the Justice Department under President Donald J. Trump secretly acquired Washington Post reporters’ home, work and cellphone numbers from April to July 2017 in a depraved and undemocratic attempt to learn who those journalists talked to.

And she is a Black woman. Throughout his presidency, Trump, still the de facto leader of the right wing in this country, called high-achieving Black women “low IQ,” “nasty,” “losers,” “dogs,” “stupid.” In 1962 Malcolm X said, “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”

If UNC’s governing board won’t protect Nikole Hannah-Jones, then the rest of us must. It’s clear that many conservatives don’t respect journalism, good governance and truth, all of which are embodied by Nikole Hannah-Jones. She is worthy of our protection.

This story about tenure was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Conservative legislators across the country are passing laws to ban books and courses that espouse critical race theory — scholarship born in the 1970s that examines the role that racism plays in our daily lives. For instance, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a higher ed bill based on some lawmakers’ beliefs that critical race theory and similar work “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.”

You’d think that after the white supremacists defiled the halls of the Capitol on January 6, policymakers would be compelled to uproot clear and present sources of racial division. After four years of Trump falsely equating white supremacists with activists fighting for racial justice, you’d also think policymakers would see critical race theory as a way to make sense of systemic racism in the U.S. But, alas, racists find a way to use what should be teachable moments as a twisted opportunity to perpetuate their worldview.

A culture built upon a false racial hierarchy can only be maintained through lies, force and duplicity — all of which are on full display in the asinine attempts to ban critical race theory. Those who are threatened by any systemic analysis of racism and its underpinnings reveal exactly where they stand on white supremacy. 

The reasons this country is literally divided are clear to any reasonable person: slavery, Jim Crow segregation, housing and education discrimination, a biased criminal justice system and feckless conservative lawmakers who are desperate to find an equivalent to a system of white supremacy.

Related: Black and Brown boys don’t need to learn ‘grit,’ they need schools to stop being racist

Critical race theory is a theoretical framework that helps scholars identify and respond to institutionalized racism, particularly as it is codified in law and public policy. This approach originated in the 1970s with scholars like Derrick Bell, the first tenured Black law professor at Harvard Law. More recently, scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw have developed concepts like intersectionality,  an analytical tool that helps us recognize how various marginalized social identities can overlap, leading to distinct forms of discrimination. Critical race theory scholars emphasize that race is socially constructed, that cultural assumptions and stereotypes condition how we understand and respond to others via these racialized constructions, and that these racialized cultural dynamics shape and are then reinforced by the structures of law, business, and policy in ways that often disadvantage or harm marginalized groups and individuals. 

The reasons this country is literally divided are clear to any reasonable person

Critical race theory didn’t make Black people critical of white supremacy, racism did. Our ability to create theories and write books — on critical theory or any subject — is a reflection of our rising power in this country. Critical race theorists reflect the analytic reasoning of the enslaved, those subjected to housing and employment discrimination, and basically any person who can see how inequitably privileges and burdens are distributed in the country.

Health policy researcher Ahmed Ali recently tweeted, “If Black children are old enough to experience racism, then other children are old enough to learn about critical race theory.” As long as there is racism, there will be Black people finding ways to understand and dismantle it.

So if you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist.

Related:  Rewrite the history textbooks, or the white supremacist violence will continue

What lawmakers and pundits are really saying when they urge a prohibition on critical race theory is that they don’t want Black people to question second-class status. Disparagers of critical race theory don’t want us to expose our oppressors as a group of fraudulent, duplicitous and dangerous psychopaths who are backed by equally debased policy.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who wants to ban “woke philosophies” in schools said, “Texans reject critical race theory and other so-called ‘woke’ philosophies that maintain that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex or that any individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.”

Patrick is purposefully misleading his constituents about the purpose of critical race theory to keep them confused and maintain the very systems of oppression he purports to be against. Remember, this is the same state in which the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education has said he believes the earth to be 6,000 years old and that human beings walked with dinosaurs. It is also the same state in which that board voted to replace the word “slave trade” in the state standards with “Atlantic triangular trade.” (The board ultimately decided on the term “trans-Atlantic slave trade.)*

These critical race theory detractors are oblivious to the ironic result of their efforts to ban critical race theory: They are making it more popular than ever.  I learned about critical race theory in grad school along with plenty of other sociological concepts that have since faded away. While I certainly used it as a lens to analyze public policy, for the most part it was stuck in the proverbial ivory tower within a few departments here and there, away from mainstream conversations.

The conservative campaign against critical race theory has finally liberated the concept from academia. The internet has made Bell’s “Faces at the Bottom of the Well”accessible to anyone. Meantime, four out of the 15 top books on the New York Times nonfiction best seller list are about race and racism in America — not including the two memoirs by Michelle and Barack Obama.

The “debate” over critical race theory is another remarkable piece of evidence that intellectualism and racism can’t co-exist: anti-racists and thinking people are one and the same.

This story about critical race theory was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

*Correction and clarification: This column has been updated to include the term the Texas State Board of Education sought to replace and the one it ultimately included in the standards.

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In March, President Joe Biden introduced the American Jobs Plan, a $2.7 trillion infrastructure bill that endeavors to put people to work by addressing historic discrimination, climate change, broadband access, and labor rights — on top of building and repairing roads and bridges. A day after Biden announced the proposal, the Republican National Committee denounced it: “Joe Biden’s ‘infrastructure’ plan is not really about infrastructure, it is another multi-trillion dollar far left wish list.”

As Democrats and Republicans debate the definition of infrastructure, we should not forget that we can’t fix bridges and roads, especially if we are serious about slowing climate change, without massive investment in higher education and retraining. Sustainable careers go hand in hand with a sustainable infrastructure system. Roads and bridges are still important, but the real undergirding of 21st-century infrastructure — upgraded power grids, sustainable transportation, renewable energy — is knowledge and science. The road from kindergarten to a good career is currently full of potholes that the federal government needs to fill. 

A full decade before her husband Joe, as president, would unveil his American Jobs infrastructure plan, Jill Biden, who is on the faculty of Northern Virginia Community College, was advocating for community colleges as crucial to economic revitalization. In a speech  at the 2010 White House Summit on Community Colleges, Biden, who has a doctorate in education, noted that “community college students and graduates across the country are working in jobs that will enable us to expand our green economy, provide Americans with the excellent health care they deserve, and rebuild our country’s infrastructure.” 

Biden added, “I meet students and learn about industry partnerships on every campus I visit that reinforce what we in this room know well: Community colleges are at the center of Americans’ effort to educate our way to a better economy.”  

The Bidens recognize that higher education is infrastructure.

The Bidens recognize that higher education is infrastructure. In the American Jobs Plan, the president notes that “investing in community college facilities and technology helps protect the health and safety of students and faculty, address education deserts (particularly for rural communities), grow local economies, improve energy efficiency and resilience, and narrow funding inequities in the short-term.” To begin to accomplish this vision, the plan calls for $12 billion to address physical and technological infrastructure needs at community colleges and to help expand access. 

Related: The American Rescue Plan will halve child poverty, but we haven’t won the second War on Poverty yet

Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Matt Reed, Vice President Academic Affairs, Brookdale Community College, argues that the funding is essential as tech-heavy industries emerge as the home for middle skill jobs and many institutions face challenges scaling up to provide the various learning environments (such as simulation labs) needed to train the next generation of workers.

Investments in community college can build a bridge to sustainable careers; the same bridge is constructed when we develop our historically Black colleges and universities.

Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, reminded us in a February piece in The Atlantic that “HBCUs have produced more than 80 percent of Black judges, 40 percent of Black Congress members, and roughly half of Black public-school teachers.” The nation’s HBCUs produce “20 percent of all Black college graduates and more than 25 percent of Black STEM-degree holders,” he added. HBCUs are underappreciated assets that can help spark the economy and refurbish the nation’s 21st- century infrastructure.

Because right now, they are severely underfunded. Lomax noted that the total endowment holdings of all 101 HBCUs is approximately $3.4 billion. To put that in perspective, there are 25 individual predominantly white institutions with larger endowments.

Biden’s infrastructure plan addresses this problem by requiring that half of the $40 billion he wants to put toward “upgrading research infrastructure in laboratories across the country, including brick-and-mortar facilities and computing capabilities and networks” be reserved for HBCUs and other Minority Serving Institutions. He’s also calling for an additional $25 billion to boost research and development and create 200 research incubators at these institutions. 

Black people have a long history of building up the country (enslaved Black Americans did so for free, for hundreds of years). It’s past time we recognize our contributions. Biden’s infrastructure bill goes a long way to finally acknowledging that you can’t develop infrastructure without investing in people.

 This story about higher education infrastructure was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan is one of the boldest legislative packages since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s. Within the first 100 days of Biden’s new administration, he has overseen passage of a law that will make a huge and immediate impact on families living in poverty across the country. Beyond the highly publicized $1,400 payments to eligible households, the package will send $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, and $130 billion in aid to schools to help schools reopen safely. In addition, the plan provides $21 billion in emergency aid to people struggling to pay rent and $7.25 billion in capital for small businesses that have floundered due to the pandemic. 

One of the act’s most important provisions – although not directly tied to Covid relief – is an increase in the Child Tax Credit for families with low or no income from $2,000 year per child to $3,000 per year for children ages 6 to 17 and $3,600 for children under age 6. Families eligible for the full credit can receive payments of up to $300 per month from July to the end of the year. And the law greatly expands who is eligible to benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit, including — for the first time — U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico. These two policy achievements alone are projected to lift 4 million children out of poverty and 1 million out of “deep poverty,” according to research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Related: Cancel all student debt

In addition to these two expanded tax credits, the Rescue Plan also includes an extension in food assistance through the SNAP program and other initiatives to help strengthen the social support net. In analyzing the bill’s anti-poverty measures, the Urban Institute projects the American Rescue Plan will lift 16 million people out of poverty and that the relief package will cut child poverty in half. The Institute estimates that poverty would fall 42 percent for Black Americans and 34 percent for white Americans.

Nevertheless, this law is not without flaws. Its most glaring failure is that it does not include a desperately needed increase in the minimum wage. The inclusion of a minimum wage increase of $15 an hour would have reduced child poverty even more.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour; the federal poverty line for an individual is set at $12,880. A person working 40 hours per week at minimum wage must work 52 weeks a year to get to 117 percent of the poverty line. A couple of weeks of illness, vacation, or a cut in hours can drop these workers into poverty.

The language and conceptual framework of “lifting X number of people out of poverty” can be deeply misleading.

And this simple analysis of economic precariousness is just for a worker who is single and has no dependents. Now, imagine the situation for a worker with dependents.

There’s also a deeper problem. The language and conceptual framework of “lifting X number of people out of poverty” can be deeply misleading. The federal poverty line for a family of four is $26,500. And so, to “lift someone out of poverty” in this framework is to take a family making $26,499.99 and raise their wage by one penny. We all recognize that the extra penny is not enough to change anything for that family, but the focus on poverty lines has distorted our understanding of poverty by rewarding policymakers for improving metrics with the least amount of money.

A better framework would look at the poverty gap, a measure that takes into account all people below the poverty line and calculates what it would take to fill the gap, an approach advocated by Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project. The America Rescue Plan does a better job of addressing this poverty gap by expanding eligibility of the Child Tax Credit to the lowest income households, but without meaningful changes to wages, it’s not enough to close that gap for good.

Related: The four steps to safely reopen schools and save our nation

Another shortcoming of the Rescue Plan is that many of the provisions — including the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit — are temporary measures. While the temporary expansion will provide leverage for the administration to lock in these benefits in a later bill, it will take political willpower and strength, given the expected Republican opposition. In the fight for a minimum wage increase and student debt cancellation, the Biden administration has, so far, seemed reluctant to lean on the presidential bully pulpit. But without a willingness to bring the heat, the gains we will see through the Rescue Plan may be erased over time.

Here’s what should happen next. First, Congress needs pass a bill to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 dollars an hour and index that minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 dollars per hour would lift 900,000 workers out of poverty, helping hundreds of thousands of children as a consequence.

Second, researchers need to reevaluate the framework used for analyzing poverty, to recognize that success means more than simply adding that additional penny to move a family above the poverty line. Instead, the framework needs to address economic precariousness and examine how best to expand the safety net to ensure that low-income families feel supported. 

And third, we need to pass a bill that makes the expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit permanent.

Almost 60 years ago, we lost the first War on Poverty, an economic battle announced by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. People in poverty have been in an emergency ever since. This time, if politicians in Washington can hold firm, families might end up better off than they were before Covid. 

This story about the Rescue Plan was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Renowned education reformer Horace Mann said in 1848, “Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men — the balance wheel of the social machinery.” Numerous reformers have used similar language to express variations of that idea, including that education is the civil rights issue of our time.

They were lying.

A person’s wealth has always strongly influenced the quality of the education that person receives. Wealth is the sum total of all assets owned minus debt held — a person’s net worth. People who have enough wealth to pay for college out of pocket, start a business and purchase homes are much more likely to attend higher-performing schools, go to college and hold political office. People who have little to no wealth, on the other hand, too often must go deeply into debt to pay for their education, which can cause them to fall further behind economically.

In other words, education doesn’t predict for wealth; wealth predicts for education. The promise of education as an equalizer will always be a false one, unless we actively seek to change the wealth divides in this country and cancel student debt.

As more students take out more loans for increasingly large amounts, the student debt crisis — and proposals to mitigate it — has taken greater prominence in national policy debates. However, if we don’t focus on those who have been most impacted by that crisis — people who’ve been denied wealth — we could make matters worse. Currently, the median net worth of a white household is 10 times more than the median net worth of a Black household.

Related: Interactive — Explore who gains most from canceling student debt

Federal student debt cancellation and free universal public college are examples of programs that, if adopted, would not need means tests in order to have ameliorative effects on the racial wealth gap. Such universal programs would prevent Black students from being saddled with debt in their attempts to achieve the American dream.

We come to this conclusion based on findings of a new Brookings Institution report, “Student debt cancellation should consider wealth, not income,” that I co-authored along with Carl Romer. 

Education doesn’t predict for wealth; wealth predicts for education.

Critics of universal student debt cancellation often focus on the supposed injustice of forgiving the loans of higher-income professionals, missing the reality that many Black families have comparable incomes to their white peers, but have much lower wealth because of past discrimination.

Some argue that debt cancellation is a regressive policy that unfairly and disproportionately aids already affluent individuals at taxpayers’ expense. But these broadside critiques often miss three key details of the labor market. First, while individuals with student loans do have higher incomes, an American Economic Association study showed that they do not have statistically significant higher hourly wages, suggesting that student debt is forcing loan holders to work longer hours. Second, student debt pushes graduates to choose work they are less passionate about and away from public interest careers that offer lower salaries relative to corporate work. Third, recent graduates with student debt take jobs that have higher initial salaries but lower potential wage growth, according to a study in the Economics of Education Review.

This country needs a highly educated populace to advance society. The richness of reading, writing and conversing with others in college can propel individuals to unimaginable heights. Our economy needs effective workers to maximize GDP, artists who unleash our imaginations, researchers who can see the big picture and make leaps in scientific and technological innovation, and journalists who can hold governments and corporations accountable. Individual and societal prosperity is certainly linked to education.

Related: Black college grads end up with $25,000 more in loans than whites. Cancel that debt

But, while higher levels of education do lead to greater wealth, our nation’s economic and social progress will be stymied if we don’t try to close the racial gaps associated with student debt that continue to hold too many Black and Brown people back no matter how far up the academic ladder they climb.

The racial achievement gap is driven by the wealth gap. To reform education without restructuring the way wealth is distributed is like trying to heal sick fish in a poisonous lake.

If we really want all children to receive a quality education, go to college and live their best lives, then we should be doing everything we can to increase the net worth of low-wealth students in high poverty districts while providing them with a quality education. That can be done, generally, in three ways. First and foremost, increase the assets people own (homes, businesses, 401Ks). Second, to a lesser degree, remove certain debts (student loans, hospital bills, credit cards). And finally, eradicate the racism that extracts value and wealth from Black and Brown people.

Our report shows that debt cancellation can be part of the solution. To examine the effects of different debt cancellation policies, we plotted the net worth and wealth percentile of Black and non-Black households. By examining household net worth at every wealth percentile, we show that cancelling debt shifts wealth up across the distribution. This shift disproportionately helps wealth-poor Black households (see the graph below).  

Education reform in this country has fastidiously tried to fix people instead of trying to solve for the racial wealth gap. This is by design. Education reformers profess to want a more equal system, but they’ve made little progress because they have yet to attack the racial hierarchies that are inextricably linked to wealth and that no amount of education can fix.  

This story about cancel student debt was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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