Latest / Color Commentary / Ep 51 | Losing Ground?: Black Wealth, Student Debt, Lost Cities, and What We Can Do
Transcript
- CSS Ep51 V1: Welcome to Color Commentary, a podcast where the stories shaping our world are told in black and white first, and then we dig into their deeper meaning in full color. Each week I'll be bringing you the news like this. First, we'll start with what I like to call the black and white section. A clear, straight shooting rundown of the facts and the traditions of grapes like Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite, you know, the classic voices of journalism. Then we'll shift into the color commentary section, where I'll add my own personal opinions and insights. Now, sometimes it'll just be me. Sometimes we'll have guests. Remember, I'm a scholar, I'm a hip hop junkie, a movie and culture nerd, and an avid book reader. So in these shoes, you're in these shows, you're gonna get a glimpse of all of that. All right. Well, let's get into it. So it's just me this week. This is episode 51. And there were three headlines that dropped within about a week of each other. You know, one was on The business page, one was an education story, and one was about cities. And I am gonna treat them all as one story. Okay, so so so so stay with me. I think I've earned your trust, all right? Short version: black wealth is down, student loan collections are coming back with a vengeance, and black families are leaving the cities that raised a lot of us. Okay, so facts first. And then I'm gonna get into it with my own thoughts. All right. Now, these usually get talked about separately. I want you to hear them back to back and notice that they land in the same households. Okay. So, and from a personal standpoint, I come from Oakland, I come from the Chicago area, and both of them show up in these numbers that we're talking about today. So this is a little. Personal for me as well. And personal and national. So it's an interesting story for me. Okay. Here the facts in black and white. Now, let's start with wealth. New data from the Federal Reserve shows the median network of black households fell by about 25% in three years from $49,100 in 2022 to $36,800 in 2025. Over the same period, white, Hispanic, and Asian households All saw their wealth go up. So that widened the gap. By 2025, the typical black household sat about $179,000 below the national median, up from $162,000 in 2022. For comparison, the median white household held about $332,000. Here's what that looks like. So where did it go? An analysis by the Center of Economic and Policy Research points to falling values of black owned homes, vehicles, and retirement accounts. And I may get this pronunciation wrong, forgive me. Gabinga Azilor, who is the chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the GRIO that housing is where most black wealth sits. While groups with more wealth tend to have it spread across other assets like the stock market, low rates of black business ownership, and rise in black unemployment were also part of the picture. So wealth went down, hence this graphic. So wealth went down, hence the graphic. The second story is about the paycheck. On October 19th, The Washington Sun reported, citing five sources, that the Treasury Department is moving to hire private debt collectors to pursue defaulted federal student loans possibly as soon as November of this year. Nearly 10 million Americans are in default. The administration has not announced it, and the reporting says not to expect an announcement before the midterm elections. Very curious timing. Here is what collection can mean. Under federal law, the government can take up to 15% of defaulted borrowers' pay through what is called administrative wage garnishment, and it does not need a court order to do it. It can also hold back tax refunds and certain federal benefits. Here's some background. In May of 2025, the government started taking tax refunds from defaulted borrowers again. Then in January of this year, the education department paused wage garnishments. And refund seizures while it put new repayment rules in place. On September 30th, Treasury and the Education Department opened what they call the Defaulted Loan Support Center for borrowers trying to get out of default. The administration's position is that collection is required by federal law, that borrowers get notice and a chance to repay first, and that collecting protects taxpayers. The Washington Sun also reported. That Treasury's own staff blocked a similar effort last year over the harm it would do to low-income workers. So why does this land differently on black borrowers? Well, research from the Brookings Institution, following students who started college in the 2000s, found that roughly 49% of black borrowers defaulted, compared to about 21% of white borrowers. Black students who finished with a bachelor's degree defaulted at 21%. While white students who dropped out of a bachelor's program defaulted at 18%, family income and wealth explained only about half of that gap. And finally, the third story is about where we live. New Census Bureau estimates compiled by Blackdemographics.com show which metro areas lost the most black residents between 2020 and 2025 among metros that started with at least 80,000 black residents. Chicago is first down about 54,000, then Los Angeles, down about 50,000. The San Francisco Metro Which includes my beloved Oakland down about twenty-five thousand. New Orleans is down about twenty thousand, and New York is down around nineteen thousand black people. Across the top ten, that's more than two hundred and ten thousand people. Let's zoom in on Oakland. In 1980, black residents were about 47% of the city. By 2022, it was about 20%. That decline kept growing through the 2010s, even while the city as a whole was growing. Oakland added about 50,000 residents that decade, but built only about 9,000 new homes. Now Chicago, between 2000 and 2020, the city lost more than 200,000. Now, Chicago, between 2000 and 2020, the city lost more than 265,000 black residents. By the 2020 census, Chicago had about 788,000 black residents, the lowest number in more than 60 years. And black Chicagoans went from the city's largest group to its third. In the neighborhoods that lost the most black residents, WBEZ. Found jobs held by black workers fell almost 7% from 2012 to 2020 while they grew in the rest of the city. Where are people going? Well, many are going to the South. Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, and Phoenix each added tens of thousands of black residents over the same five years. Many are going to the suburbs. By 2020, about 54% of black residents. In the hundred largest metro areas lived in the suburbs, up from 43% two decades earlier. One caution on those numbers. The census estimates show the change, but not the reason. So births, deaths, and moves within a metro area all count. So that's the board, right? Black household wealth fell by a quarter and three years. Collections on defaulted student loans may come back as soon as next month with a vengeance. and third, in the cities that built black America, the black population continues to shrink. That's the news. Now let's talk about it and talk about it. We shall. You are listening to color commentary with Dr. Cole. Now listen, all these people that's getting squeezed across the three different stories, same families. And these might get filed as like a money story or an education story or a city story. But read them together and it's the same household. And they're all getting squeezed in a few directions at once. And it sucks, man. And it really, really sucks. And and and This is why we have to talk about it. This is one of the reasons I built this show around color commentary to give the facts and my thoughts. Because all of these things impact the other thing. And they're huge and they're super, super detrimental. And when black people's wealth is built up in home ownership, and we hear that black people are not owning at the same clip. And they're l they're moving away, they're losing that equity in those homes, they're losing that value. And black real estate is not being valued and not growing as at the same rate as it should be. I think the Brookings Institute did another study on that that was led by Andre Perry that talked about when a black person owns a home versus when a non-black person, mostly white, owns a home, that the value goes up. So All this stuff, man, there's a vice grip that is around black wealth right now. And then when you talk about taking college away or taking the ability to to to to get loans so you more of our kids can actually go to college and then even when they get there, the rigor of college is not where it needs to be. And yeah, by the way, we're about to go after these people that are defaulted with all the fervor that the national government can muster. It's just different that's just interesting energy for me. And I'm not even trying to like bitch about it. Like again, debts are debts. I am somebody that owes a lot of money in college debt and I pay it. I get on my plans, I do the things that I gotta do, and I set that up. And listen, man, me going to college has absolutely changed my where I am in life. It absolutely has. So I understand that there's a wage to be paid, but the way in which we're going about it is wild. It's wild. And with these prices rising, the way that they are in these cities and the value and equality in some of these places shrinking. Because you're also going to hear stories about black crime down. I don't know if those stories are being done in conjunction with also looking at Where our demographic is. Now listen, I'm pro-black out here. And I need us to be adults of when we're going and looking at data of what's actually happening. And what's happening is there's been an exodus of our black people in these places, whether it's in these communities, in these colleges, it's wild. And again, I'm not casting aspirations now. I'm just saying we gotta know how to look at all. At just the full thing. And that's what brings me to my next point, right? Is that the degree was supposed to be the way out of poverty, not out of your community. The way out of poverty. And it has been. It has been for a lot of people. The numbers still show when you go to college, you earn more than people that did not go to college. We're not gonna play those games. We're not gonna play the semantics games. All right. Black college graduates though, they are defaulting more often than white students who never even finished. And family wealth only accounts about half of that number. So we gotta interrogate this stuff. We gotta sit with these things. And when I write a piece or I name something or I call some research the Black Achievement Trauma Tax, now this is that with a dollar amount attached to it. Everybody Look, man, when you do the things that the the society says that you should do in order to get ahead in this country, and again, there are clear cases when that works, but then you also see this pro disproportionate glide in a way that is hindering black people at a different level, man. You just gotta know what's up. And this again, not to bitch about, but to be aware. Again, I want when I say the AND model, I want awareness. And then we're gonna talk about navigation and then duty. Right now, we're in the awareness part. I'm making you aware. All right? Because again, man, when you look at where our median black household incomes are or net worth, I'm sorry, when you look at the direction that we're going versus other groups that we're comparing against, we got to start having some different conversations. We just do. You might not think that things are hurting you, but as a collective, they are. And you might not be feeling the squeeze now. But these numbers are indicative that if you're not right now, you will. I didn't even add in a potential fourth story, and that's for black business owners. I run a business. Raising money right now is rough. It's rough. So now you got these black and and and these black businesses being threatened, both in for profit and non fac non profit fact like alike, across the board. Again, this is awareness. So for some leaving can be a smart decision. Listen, man, I don't think anybody should be shamed for going to Dallas or Atlanta or Charlotte or the suburbs of Chicago or Iowa or wherever or Phoenix. I I I just I mean people are trying to go where their dollar stretches, where they feel welcomed. and a lot of these cities are are shifting in ways and they're becoming a lot more expensive. And we're doing the thing, right? White people fly fled from the city and go to the suburbs. Cool. Then black people start getting some money, start pushing into the suburbs. What happens? White people retake the city. Young people that have money of all races want to be in the city. That includes black people. That includes these folks, right? Like they want to be in the mix of it. It's just we just keep shuffling. And like, what does that mean? And here's the thing, right? When these people are forced to leave, when the black people leave Oakland, a lot of the culture goes with it. I grew up in Oakland. I love Oakland. Oakland's where I'm from. If you had, if you made me choose, and I couldn't say, well, I grew up in the, I was born in the Chicago area and I lived in Paducah, if I could only say one place that I had to claim for the rest of my life, it would be Oakland, California. It's what raised me. It's where I got the game from. A lot of who, most 90%, ton of who I am is from Oakland. And I'm telling you that that city is different. The magic of it is still some magic there, but it's different. It's just different. It feels different. And the reason why a lot of those people moved there is because they wanted some of that magic, but a lot of that magic has exited stage right. Gotta talk about it, right? And so when we are, but here's what happens: when that happens, the black schools, that means that those people are gone. There's less students that are able to choose that school. That means that churches are losing members. And now that can be worked out if that person is just moving into the suburbs. I went to Humanity Baptist Church. We had a large population of black people. Well, all is the black church. But a lot of those people lived in Oakland or near Oakland and then they moved away, but they moved to like Antioch. They moved to places that they can still drive in for service. But eventually some of those people moved away further. And then what happens is that church loses its membership. That mosque loses its membership. Those social programs lose a lot of their membership. The Boys and Girls Club loses a lot of that membership. Or the demographic starts to change. Because here's the thing: a lot of those families are moving out, and then people Without kids, and I'm a person that does not have kids, are moving in. So a lot of these social nets, these social services, they're not able to serve at the rate that they was able to serve. Per pupil funding is down. OUSD overestimated by at least 400 students for this year's enrollment. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money for a cash trap district that is already. It has with a crazy deficit that just got out of receivership, but looks like they're about to go back. And maybe they should, but that's a different conversation. Now here's the agentic term, right? Because I'm not just here to complain about this shit. What can a family control right now? Well, if you're in default on your loans right now, get out ahead of it. You gotta get on that phone. You gotta work out a plan. You gotta see what the plans are. And these new plans under Trump suck compared to the ones under Biden and Obama. But you still gotta go in and engage with those plans. I just don't want you to be defaulted, man. default sucks, especially with what they're about to do with the default. So you gotta get ahead of it. You gotta do that. Like the other thing that around this story, right? If we're talking about this, find your community now, wherever you live. Who are the other people? And they don't, I'm I speak to black people, but you know, that community can have people that ain't black. Who are you anchored to? Because we also live in a time where people are becoming less social. We're come becoming we're living in a time where there is less my brother's keeper, my sister's keeper, my neighbor's keeper. You gotta reestablish a sense of community. I'm not saying foul shit can't happen when you're in community, but when you are in community and foul shit does happen, it's easier to combat on some level. You gotta know what's going on in your local governments. Not just the national stuff. You gotta know who's on your local city council, who's on your school boards, how are they making decisions? Why are they making those decisions? And if you do live in a smaller town, sometimes a little easier to get involved. What type of community do you want to live in? The other thing is you gotta keep your nose in the news. Now, I use ground news because it's a it's a news aggregator and I can see where the news is coming from. I can say, okay, this is a story. Okay, there's 50 people that 50 outlets that wrote on it. This many are conservative, this many are liberal, this many are the ones that kind of shoot it down the middle. This is, you know, I I tend to try to look at the international stories on some of this stuff because they tend to. I I feel, I mean, it's just a me thing. I I feel that they tend to give just more of the facts. It's not colored as much around politics. But I read the stuff that the left says and that the right says, I need to understand where the dog whistles are, I need to understand what's being said, I need to understand what the narrative is. You need to understand what the narrative is and where it's coming from. So when it hits your ear. You have facts to lean on. You don't have confirmation bias or my hatred for these people. That's just important. Right now it's really important to be an informed citizen. As I talk about us becoming some call post literate, I'll say less literate society. Less people are reading. More people are getting their thoughts and ideas from podcasts, from people with a with a pr with a opinion, and from Shows that you think are new shows, but they are entertainment shows. And entertainment shows have to hook you. So they can't just give you the data the data and the facts straightforward because that's boring and they don't get advertisements from that. So they have to play to your sensibilities. This has to be the most sensational thing. This has to be my hatred for these people. It has to be my love for these people. It has to be the oppression here. It has to be these people are oppressed. Everybody's oppressed right now. I just started a whole story. Again, yes, Charles talking about oppression. I am. I'm talking about black people. But again, I'm not mad if a Latino person gets on here and looks at these same stories from the perspective of their people. I'm not mad at I'm just not. It's just not a I don't get upset at that. I'm not upset that Asian people look at what's going on from their perspective. i it just doesn't bother me. I look at it all, but when I'm reporting out, I report. On the people that's closest to me. So we talked about awareness, we're talking about navigation, right? Where are your coins stowed, right? Like if your your money or your wealth, if you are a homeowner, are you appreciating value? Are you diversifying your investments? What does that look like? What does your retirement look like? Do you know? Are you having these kind of conversations? And if you don't own a home, you still can have investments. You still need to know if you have a job, what's your retirement looks like. Are you maxing that out? And not for nothing, as much as we're on apps now, as much as gambling is big, as much as everything is digital. A lot of people here got Cash App. I like Cash App more than I like Robin Hood. In Cash App, you can pay for stock. You can buy partial stock. So what I do, I I I chose the the different companies that I like. And like one of them is losing. Like Nike is really down right now. But s you know, Apple does well. I like Apple. I got Starbucks, I got Nike, and my stocks are up right now. But here's my stock. Apple is up, Tesla is up, Walmart. NVIDIA, Meta, I have Take Two because I play 2K and because GTA6 is coming. By the way. AMC Entertainment. I go to the movies a lot. Alphabet. I have a Vanguard S P five hundred. Starbucks. Those are those are what I what I do. and my Nike stock is plummeting. It's terrible actually. gotta stick with it. But geez, it's down a lot. Are you diversifying these things? Right? What I do, and I don't have a whole I'm not saying you need thousands and thousands of dollars. You can you can put five dollars on one of these things. So every time I go to Starbucks and I wanna get a drink, if I can't at least match what I'm spending at Starbucks, I'll try to get the drink and put that same amount, if not more, into their stock. And it's something that I don't think about. I also have like a five to ten dollar automatic thing that happens every week or every month or something like that is different depending on the stock. And I've built a nice little portfolio that I've managed, right? Like it does pretty well. It's it's it's up. You know, it's up. It's up in the thousands. Right? So still a pretty good investment. So again, as we talk about how we navigate, you gotta Stay ready, you know what I'm saying? If you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready. And I'm telling you, some shit is coming. I'm telling you it is. And the fact that they said that they're not announcing a lot of this stuff, especially the the going after people that are in default until after the midterm should tell you something. It's a very important election. Elections have consequences. National elections and national consequences, but also local. And local, you got to pay a little bit more attention to because if you're somebody that just votes down ballot, like I vote all Democrat, I vote all Republican, I vote all this, I vote all that. Local is a little trickier because a lot of times Democrat and Republican don't play as much into it. You actually have to be in the facts. You actually have to be in the weeds. Educate yourself on it. And if you don't understand it, Then use one of these AI things that people are using to do videos and have fun with and all that stuff. Throw it in there and say, tell this to cheese, tell me what this means, like I'm a fifth grader. Here are my values. Does this align with my values? Have it help you. There's no shame in getting helping. by the way, it's private. You being ignorant on something does not stop the tidal wave from taking you out into the ocean. And many of us can't swim, especially in rough waters. And rough waters are here. And rougher waters are coming. So again, why are we doing the default stuff now? Why are all these people moving out of these places, man? You know why? Why is all this stuff happening like right now? You gotta be on top of this stuff, man. And listen, I'm black. I'm blacky black, black. And you gotta know. And these are cliche and it's a cliche for a reason. Cliches become cliches because the shit been true for so long. When America catches a cold, black people catch fucking pneumonia. Even the rich ones. So the rich ones about to go through it, what you think is about to happen to the working class and the poor ones? I just talked about these safety nets that's going away. Where is your community? Who can you call? Who can you borrow sugar for? Who can watch your kids? Whose kids can you watch? Who can you protect? Who can protect you? I'm just saying the concept and value of community has been something we've ditched to the side for this fake digital community. And again, I'm not shitting on that because many of you are part of my digital community, and I thank you. I thank my partners at Edpost and ABH. I thank you. I love this community. I love it more when we connect in real life. I love it more when it turns into something tangible. I love it more if I can know how you're doing and you can know how I'm doing. See these things matter. They matter. And we've done awareness and we've done navigation. Now I'm gonna round this out with duty. Once you know better, you have a duty to do better. And once you know, and you're a part of a community, you make sure they know. Okay? That's what you do. You clip this shit up, the parts that you like and make sense, and the parts that you don't too, and you share it with somebody and say, hey. Or you don't. Forget it. I ain't I don't get paid to do this. This this all just I I like seeing how many people watch the show. Clip it. It's fine. But have a conversation with somebody. Converse about these things. Go and get the facts about these things. Understand how these things will affect you. Have meaningful conversations. Listen, do the shit you do with your friends. You know, I talk about the game with my friends, man. The NBA is back today, the day that I'm recording this. I play 2K. I like talking. I enjoy those things. This is how I relax. But we weave in some of this stuff. Hey, bro, you know what, man. Hey, check your how's the value in your house going? Hey man, what else are you investing in? What you seeing there? What should we be investing in? Hey man, how you taking care of yourself? And then finally as I end this, two people that I care about very, very much and have been instrumental in my life, and are on the older side, they're both ill. And maybe that's why, you know, I I'm bringing it for you, but maybe that's why, you know, I know I I know it's like the energy's a little off. Well, people are ill and I'm thinking about those people. And I talk about our young people a lot. And our good friend Sharif used to quote all these African proverbs. And one of the proverbs that he always quoted on ABH was, You can always tell how a place is doing by looking at their youth and looking at their elderly. I spent a lot of time on the youth. I'm I'm I'm ten toes deep there. I got Our elders Are not nearly appreciated as much as they should be. Not for their wisdom, not for their lived experience, not for what they had to endure. And it's often why I have the type of militant stance I do when I talk about civil rights and things, because I believe it's not our duty to do as much as our ancestors did. With the comforts that they have built for us based off of where they came from and what it was before then, they are expecting us to do exponentially better than they did and push this thing exponentially forward. So when I think about these people, that mean a lot to me, one of them is related to me and one is not, but they both might as well be. And I just think about, man, how we don't want to hear from elders. We want to get them out the way. Now, look, you need things to churn in businesses. And look, and you can't be on the road with bad eyesight. I'm not talking about that, right? But I'm saying we are not bottling up this wisdom the way that we should. Smart people learn from their mistakes. Wise people learn. From the mistakes and lessons of others. So, I'm ending today's show with a plea for you. Somebody elderly at your church, at your mosque, at your job, in your neighborhood, wherever. Especially the ones that are chatty. Have a conversation. Just sit at their feet metaphorically speaking. And just soak it in. They've been here a while. They've seen some things. They've loved. They've lost. They've lived long enough to know that nobody is perfect. But still spry enough to know that they still deserve to be here and can appreciate that. Go suck up some game. Go be an ear to somebody that's just filled to the brim with things that they want to spill over into the next generation. You may not agree. Some of it might not work. Some of it might be dumb. It's dumb old people too. But in general, and what I'm choosing to believe and rock with and leave y'all with today is you look around, how are our young people? Well shit. Can't really take out no loans to go to school no more. And when they do get to the school, it's so watered down product, and they care more about appeasing fillings than actual rigor and us being a thinking country. And then how are our elders? Well, healthcare is still kind of in the shitter. still not really getting what they need. the cost of living is really, really, really high. There's probably more elderly people out on the street than any other time. Then we can do better on both accounts. And keep my people in your prayers. I respect their privacy, so you don't need to know who they are. But just know that I'm feeling for a few different people. and the power of prayer is very real. So, luckily, God can decipher and he knows where those prayers will be getting sent. All right. That's all I got this week. I want to say thank you to the South Star Classroom, which also came over to Ed Post and ABH. and I wanna thank Chris and the entire team and Sharif and Ray and and and and Jay and and and you know, I I I think we're building something. I'm really proud of it and I hope you continue to support. So if you do find it in your heart, hype this, comment on it, and share it. And I'll try to do a better job at clipping it up more. Because I know that's how most people watch it anyway. This has been another episode of Color Commentary. We love to hear from you. So drop us a line at color commentarypod at gmail.com. That's color commentary pod at gmail.com. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show. Leave us a five-star review, share it on social media, and join us every week for more color commentary with Dr. Cole. Peace.