Income-based student debt relief misses wealthier black families with heavy debt

Evidence

Targeted debt relief will do more to reduce the racial wealth gap than blanket debt relief, but here, too, obstacles remain. A white family with low income is likely to still have greater wealth than a black family with a similar income, so targeting debt relief based on household income may exclude some high-income blacks with significant student loan debt and include low-income whites who still have greater wealth than the average black family. (Remember, even if your family pays for your college education and gives you a down payment on a house, you can still technically be low-income.) For that reason, my preference would be to target relief based on wealth and not income. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 334