With many of President Biden’s legislative priorities stalled, pressure is mounting on the administration to use executive authority to cancel student debts — a move that would substantially narrow racial wealth gaps.

In a recent House floor speech, Rep. Ayanna Pressley pointed out that the student debt crisis disproportionately impacts the Black community.

“But for too long,” Pressley said, “the narrative has excluded us and the unique ways in which this debt is exacerbating racial and economic inequities, compounding our gender and racial wealth gap.”

Pressley joined Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer in a December letter to Biden asking that he consider using executive authority to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loan debts. This action would immediately increase the wealth of Black Americans by 40 percent, according to Roosevelt Institute analysis.

On average, Black students have to take out larger loans to get through college than their White peers. A National Center for Education Statistics study reveals that Black Bachelor’s degree graduates have 13 percent more student debt and Black Associate’s degree graduates have 26 percent more than White graduates with those degrees.

Black women have the largest student debt burdens of all. Those who received bachelor’s degrees in 2015-2016 have average student debts of $37,558, compared to $31,346 for White women, according to a 2020 analysis by the American Association of University Women analysis of a 2017 U.S. Department of Education survey.

Read the full article about student debt cancellation by Sarah Anderson and Brian Wakamo at Inequality.org.