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I’ve been skeptical of student debt forgiveness for the typical reasons: my own sense of frugality (e.g., going to a state school and paying off debt ASAP), concerns about moral hazard (i.e., increasing credential inflation and education costs), and even the ever increasing federal debt (i.e., a ponzi scheme that will one day fall).

That said, I know the world has changed since I was an undergrad. I also appreciate the U.S. has a stark wealth gap along racial lines that needs to be remedied. (And I recognize most conservatives seem to care about national debt only when social programs are being discussed, but lose that concern when considering military spending and industrial subsidies.) This discussion between Tressie McMillan Cottom and Louise Seamster in favor of student debt forgiveness gave me much to think about. This includes the policy issue of debt relief and the ethical issue of equity.

If equality is about ensuring equal opportunities, equity recognizes that neutral-seeming policies aren’t enough to counter historic and systemic biases: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination” (Kendi 2019, 19). I strongly support equality and removing that which perpetuates historic and systemic bias. But I dither on equity. I wish I could find a taxonomy of remedies, like those sketched below, with which to think about the ethics and pragmatics of remedying injustices.

• systemic reform
  • removing the white/wealthy advantage of preferential admissions
  • reforming drug policy
  • reforming policing policy
• reparation
  • Coates’s reparations
• equity
  • affirmative action: quotas
  • affirmative action: “preferences” (non-quotas)
  • Kendi’s Department of Anti-racism

I am a strong advocate of systemic reform: ethically necessary and practically achievable though distressingly difficult to achieve. On affirmative action, I am ambivalently moderate: cautiously supportive of the balance struck in Grutter v. Bollinger, though it is usually bureaucratically incoherent—often requiring doublethink—in practice. I am sympathetic to the obligation of reparations to those directly harmed (e.g., the internment of Japanese Americans), but the passing of time decreases its relevance. I dislike Kendi’s authoritarianism for many reasons. I wonder if there is there a comprehensive treatment on this topic that attends to the ethics and pragmatics of these and other options?

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