It wasn’t the first time such a complaint had been made against an American university. For almost a century, conservatives have accused them of being hostile to their views. But their real target has always been the students. Conservatives believe universities indoctrinate young people to reject conservative ideas. The complaint has been raised by many prominent conservatives from William F. Buckley in the ‘50s, to Lewis Powell in the ’70s, to Vice President JD Vance today. Each time they suggest that increasing the number of conservative voices on campus will fix the problem. It hasn’t, and it won’t.

When it comes to swaying the opinions of the young, conservatives don’t have an access problem, or even a messenger problem — they have a message problem. The conservative message is failing because it conflicts with how young people think.

The influential child psychologist Erik Erikson described the psychosocial developmental stage of young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 as a period defined by the need to shape identity through connection. During this period, a hunger for belonging fuels the young person’s moral sensitivity, and they tend to respond most strongly to frameworks that emphasize fairness and inclusion — moral values that align more closely with progressive politics than traditional conservatism.

What’s often overlooked is how this developmental trajectory is reflected in the brain. Neuroscientists have found that the region of the brain responsible for long-term reasoning and impulse control doesn’t fully mature until around age 25. As a result, college-aged adults are especially attuned to emotional and moral messages, particularly those centered on harm and justice. They’re also more reactive to authority-based reasoning, which can make conservative appeals grounded in hierarchy or tradition feel threatening.

Instead of shaping a message that meets young people where they are emotionally and developmentally, conservatives accuse universities of indoctrinating them. Buckley, the father of American conservatism, was the first to suggest this in his 1951 book, “God and Man at Yale” — a foundational text for conservatives. Buckley offered few practical solutions for addressing the problem, but his complaint inspired other conservatives to seek solutions, including Lewis Powell, the future Supreme Court Justice.

In what would become known as the Powell Memo, a highly influential 1970s blueprint advising conservatives on how to push back against the social advances of the Civil Rights Movement, Powell suggested that one key reason conservatives were failing to reach college students was that conservatives were comparatively poor communicators. He thought more charismatic, dynamic speakers were the answer. He proposed pressuring universities to invite conservative speakers to campus who were “attractive, articulate and well-informed,” hoping they would attract young followers.

A similarly false assumption underlies the Trump antisemitism task force’s suggestion that Harvard increase the number of conservative voices on campus. “Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity.” This strategy did not work in the 1950s when Buckley proposed it, nor in the 1970s when Powell did.

Greater access and better spokesmen alone will not make conservative ideas more attractive to young people. Views that don’t match the emotional and relational priorities of emerging adults whose brains are still forming the very circuits that govern moral judgment will always struggle on campus. Not because these views are being deliberately silenced, but because they are out of sync — with psychology, with neuroscience and with what it means to grow into adulthood.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. Anne Tapp Jaksa is a professor of education at Saginaw Valley State University. She also chairs the board of directors of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

From the days when enslaved people were legally forbidden from learning to read, to the fight for desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education, to the overturning of affirmative action, schools have both reflected and shaped racial progress and regress in America. Despite the importance of race in education, many contemporary academic institutions are beginning to shy away from explicitly addressing it. This hesitance only reinforces the false narrative that race is a divisive topic rather than an integral part of understanding American society.

In previous generations, national figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall and James Baldwin played critical roles in helping to guide public discourse on the subject of race. Today, that leadership is largely absent, leaving teachers, political leaders and even parents without clear direction. Yet, young people continue to have questions about race.

This is not the time for educators to abdicate their role in helping to shape how race is discussed in this country. Students are not colorblind, nor do they want to be. They see the disparities in their communities, in media representation, and in their classrooms. So, educators at all levels must work to equip them with historical context and the critical thinking skills to navigate the complex racial issues of today.

Additionally, teachers need to establish guidelines that encourage open yet respectful discussion in the classroom — safe spaces for dialogue, where racial topics can be explored without fear of backlash or embarrassment. For this to succeed, teacher training programs, such as those at Towson State and Johns Hopkins universities, must include guidance on discussing race that equip educators with both historical knowledge and strategies for handling pushback from students, parents or administrators. Importantly, teachers and education students must also be encouraged to be leaders in race conversations, rather than encouraged to shy away from controversy.

Finally, classroom conversations about race must be blended with larger discussions on inequality, addressing intersections with issues like economic disparity, immigration and disability rights. This will help teachers and students avoid a common mistake that writer Nikole Hannah-Jones calls the “colorblindness trap.”

The idea of a colorblind society is seductive because it appeals to our innate sense of fairness. The problem with this thinking is how easily it leads to thinking race doesn’t matter. Race does matter. But, opponents of diversity have convinced Americans that our society should be blind to color. They deceptively argue that focusing on race is divisive, when what they really want is to avoid having to do anything to address the unpleasant realities of race in America. They seek to isolate Blackness, for example, from the social or economic conditions of being Black — such as a greater incidence of poverty, and poorer-resourced schools — to make it easier to do nothing about it. By decoupling race from the realities of race, they are able to treat it as an isolated identity marker, not as a factor that intersects with economic, social and political conditions.

The consequences of avoiding race discussions are not hypothetical. The rollback of affirmative action and the growing resistance to DEI initiatives signal a broader cultural shift that, if unchallenged, will erode decades of social progress. We are at a crucial moment in our history where election fatigue and political maneuvering threaten to undo hard-won racial advances.

The absence of national figures guiding conversations on race means that educators must help parents by stepping into this role. Education is one of the few institutions with the potential to shape how society talks about race. Corporations and politicians often shift their messaging based on political winds, but schools have a responsibility to prepare students for an informed, engaged citizenship. If educators fail to provide frameworks for discussing race, students will seek out unfiltered — and often harmful — narratives elsewhere.

While this is a challenging responsibility, it is also an opportunity. By fostering informed discussions, educators can help build future generations that understand race not as a taboo or a divisive force, but as something to celebrate.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. Anne Tapp Jaksa is a professor of education at Saginaw Valley State University. She also chairs the board of directors of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

As Democratic leaders consider the way forward in the wake of this most recent electoral defeat, they might consider centering their efforts on the needs of the party’s most reliable voting bloc — its base: Black voters.

Though reliably robust, Black support for the Democratic Party has been softening in recent decades. Many believe this is because a growing number of African-American voters feel the party no longer cares about their needs — that the party cares more about high earners and the educated elite. If Black voters feel this way, Democratic Party leaders have only themselves to blame. And, some of the blame rests firmly at the feet of two popular Democratic presidents: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

In many ways, President Clinton was a traditional Democrat. He prioritized the needy, worked to reign in the excesses of the marketplace and used public investment to promote economic growth. He is remembered fondly by Black voters for eliminating the federal deficit and overseeing a vibrant economy, but Clinton is also remembered for policies that hurt the Black community, including welfare reform, which severely weakened the nation’s social safety net, and his 1994 crime bill, which increased incarcerations and encouraged harsher treatment of Black men by the police.

Black trust suffered further under President Obama when he failed to aggressively pursue those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. When the banks were bailed out (not the homeowners) and when only one low-ranking securities executive went to prison after all of the damage the banking industry had caused, some Black voters came away convinced that the Democratic Party was the party of the rich.

“Democrats expect your vote; they don’t work for it,” was a common, though false, refrain among some disappointed Black voters in 2024. It was a misperception that former President Joe Biden is partially responsible for inspiring. Though he did much to support the Black community while president, he did a poor job of advertising his efforts. Consider the student loan forgiveness program.

Student loan forgiveness benefits all borrowers, but it disproportionately benefits African Americans. Biden pursued loan forgiveness because he understood its significance to the Black community. The problem was, he didn’t do enough to share his motivations with Black voters. Nor did Vice President Harris when she campaigned for the presidency. Had she done so — had she explained how loan forgiveness was intentionally pursued to benefit African Americans, and had she pointed out that the strategy signaled the administration’s support for the concept of reparations — Harris might have encouraged more young Black men to vote for her.

It wasn’t necessary for the Democratic Party to make Black people the center of its 2024 campaign strategy. But the party should have done a better job of addressing Black concerns and vocalizing the many ways it was working to benefit Black voters in particular.

The Republican pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion offers the Democratic Party an opportunity for a course correction.

The GOP has falsely, and deliberately, mischaracterized DEI programs an attempt to address racial grievances by discriminating against whites. Serious people know DEI programs are not designed to favor or punish anyone. They are designed to expand access for the historically disadvantaged.

According to polling, most Americans generally support DEI programs. Despite this, Republicans are working hard to convince us that such programs are outdated and unnecessary. They don’t want American society to be diverse and inclusive, they would rather America be the kind of place where only insiders, the resourced and the connected have access to opportunity. Such attitudes disregard the hard realities of life in the United States for certain Americans.

Some will say that Democrats will lose white voters if they overtly center the concerns of Black voters. But such thinking ignores the fact that Black voters generally care about the same issues that most middle-class and working-class voters care about — issues like fair wages, job security, affordable housing, criminal justice and civil rights.

To prioritize the needs of Black voters prioritizes the needs of all voters, with one important distinction: Democrats traditionally win elections when Black voters turn out in high numbers to support them. So, if white Democrats care about traditional Democratic priorities — priorities that Republicans often ignore — the party needs Black voters to show up for elections. But, for that to happen, the Democrat Party needs to do more to demonstrate its commitment to its most reliable voting bloc.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore.

I wonder what our Founding Fathers would think of our progress?

If the brilliant, and cantankerous, John Adams was resurrected, and happened upon a copy of The Baltimore Sun, I think he would be surprised, then alarmed, and then proud to learn that we elected a Black man to be president — twice. The election of Donald Trump would probably inspire some disappointment, given all that Adams risked to help establish this nation. But, I think the greatest shock of all would probably be the level of immigration.

President John Adams was a supporter of the 1798 Naturalization Act, a law that more than doubled the number of years an immigrant needed to wait before applying for U.S. citizenship. Adams and his contemporaries believed a longer gestation period gave immigrants more time to appreciate what it means to be American. One can argue a similar point today.

Immigration is one of the ways America renews itself. The injection of new blood and cultures helps to keep us young and vital — literally. But, since the 1970s, the United States has experienced the largest surge of immigration in its history, mostly from India and Latin America. Eight million people have arrived since the beginning of the Biden administration alone. According to recent estimates, one out of every 10 people in the United States today was born somewhere else.  That means millions of people in this country have no connection to any of the defining events of the nation’s past, even recent events, like the Civil Rights Movement.

This is important because the children of that wave are now adults and moving into positions of power. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump’s appointees to the new Department of Government Efficiency, are an immigrant, and the child of immigrants, respectively.

During the presidential campaign, I would listen to Ramaswamy’s stump speech about the sacrifices and principles of our nation’s founders and cringe. I thought to myself, how can Ramaswamy have anything but an academic understanding of the sacrifices of the founders of this nation? His ancestors arrived long after the historical events we point to as touchstones of our “Americanness”: the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War and the American Revolution. For many of us, these events aren’t academic, they’re visceral.

The American Revolution, for example, was a traumatic experience that had no guarantee of success. It was a crap shoot. Everyone who openly supported the revolution was signing their own death warrant. The fact that we won at all, was luck. We could very easily have lost that war, and all the people we revere today — Washington, Adams, Jefferson — would be hanged. Scientists speak about how trauma can be passed down through generations. If that is true, everyone today who is a descendant of the people who lived in those times bears the scars of that conflict.

Consider the Civil War, a struggle that almost tore this nation apart. To this day, it is the bloodiest, deadliest war Americans have ever fought. It decimated our Southern states — which have only in recent decades fully recovered. And, there are places in the South today where you can still feel the effects of that war — where people still have yet to dig themselves out of the hole that conflict created.

And, the Civil Rights Movement — which was only 60 years ago — was, in many ways, a consequence of unresolved issues of the Civil War. In the 1960s, people of every shade and background threw themselves into the streets and demanded that leaders deliver on unfulfilled promises made a century before. That movement colored everything that followed. Sadly, there are Americans walking the streets today with no knowledge of the sacrifices that were made to secure the freedoms they take for granted.

Our Founding Fathers were not infallible. As they established this country, they made many mistakes along the way. For centuries, the people (and the descendants of the people) who made those mistakes have been trying to correct them. That’s what the Civil War was about, and the Civil Rights Movement. The current debates around affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion are examples of that effort. Many Americans have a visceral connection to these issues because of their historical connection to the underlying events. For Black Americans in particular, the physical consequences of those events are etched on our DNA and flow through our veins.

In the run-up to our 250th anniversary, there will be a lot of talk about unresolved issues, unanswered questions, and whether we’ve lived up to the ideals set by our founders. For the first time in our history, a significant portion of our population will have no blood, or experiential, connection to the key historical events that define us. Yet, many of those same people will be in positions to influence the decisions on these questions.

The price of American citizenship is the burden of stewardship — stewardship of this nation’s conscience, to be exact. Recent immigrants, and their children, have been spared the weight of that burden, but they’ve enjoyed the benefits. In the coming year, as we all debate important questions about this nation’s past and future, all of us, including our newest Americans, need to acknowledge the contributions of those who came before and honor their sacrifices.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore.

But, it won’t be easy.

First, Trump will need to find a way to lock down the support of the Latino voters who pushed him over the line. Unintentionally, President Joe Biden may have given Trump a way to do just that. The election proved two things that politicos have been saying about Latino voters for decades: They should not be judged as a political monolith, and, for the majority of them, the economy outranks all other issues. Indeed, by supporting Trump despite his racist remarks against them and their families, Latino voters showed that little is more important to them than the promise of a strong economy. As much as it pains me to suggest it, one thing Trump might do to keep their support is to take credit for Biden’s economic policy successes. As the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah illustrated, Trump is not above taking credit for other people’s achievements.

In January, Trump will inherit an economy on the upswing with falling inflation, low unemployment and impressive GDP growth — and that’s even before Biden’s signature economic policies take full effect. Rivaling FDR and LBJ levels of government investment, the Biden administration is breathlessly pushing hundreds of billions of federal dollars out the door for building projects, road and bridge repair, semiconductor production and transitioning the country to non-carbon-producing energy sources. To increase the odds for success, Biden “GOP-proofed” the spending by channeling it to largely red districts — hoping Republican leaders will lack the political will to oppose money that is directly benefiting their constituents.

President Biden’s investment in infrastructure and manufacturing is so massive that if Vice President Kamala Harris had won — and retained Biden’s programs, and they had been successful — Biden could claim credit for a revival and reshaping of the industrial capacity of the United States not seen since, perhaps, the days of Franklin Roosevelt.

Biden’s economic achievements on behalf of working-class families over the past four years were remarkable — even historic. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act were created to pump trillions of dollars into the economy in communities that need it most.

Ironically, the spending is designed to target the suffering heartland of the country, where Trump’s supporters live, growing “from the middle out,” as economist Heather Boushey put it.

One reason the average American knows so little about these programs is that Harris chose not to run on the administration’s record of accomplishments during her campaign for president. Biden’s approval ratings were low, and Harris was being pressed to show how her policies as president would differ from his. As a Democrat, I hate the idea of bragging rights for Biden’s potentially historic achievements going to Trump, but it may just happen. If this election revealed anything about the American people, it’s that we have short memories.

Perhaps Trump will keep his word, and follow through on his threats to repeal Biden’s economic policies. In a move seemingly in that direction, he recently announced the appointments of his supporters Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new Department of Government Efficiency dedicated to slashing government spending. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the subject, Musk and Ramaswamy shared their intentions to cut trillions in spending from the federal budget as part of a larger strategy to reduce government regulations.

Now that the GOP, through the Supreme Court, has succeeded in overturning the Chevron deference — putting at risk federal protections for consumers, food and medicine safety, and the environment — all pro-business Republicans needed was for someone to come in and actively slash regulations, or, at the very least, weaken the government’s capacity to enforce and make new ones. They couldn’t have found a more willing partnership for the task in Ramaswamy and Musk, whose particular aversion to government regulations has been well publicized.

If Trump does act to repeal Biden’s economic policies, he risks thwarting the potential economic growth that attracted voters to him in the first place. For the sake of the country, I hope Trump keeps Biden’s policies in place — even if he’s only doing it to hold his fragile coalition of supporters together. President Biden may not get the credit, but we will all benefit. And, I know that’s what Joe would want.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. 

I’m worried about the thousands of other dangerous asteroids scientists believe threaten Earth, that they cannot locate.

According to experts, we should expect an asteroid large enough to cause serious damage to hit the Earth approximately every 60 years. They say they have identified most of the ones as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs — most of them, but not all of them. They are also having difficulty locating more than a third of the estimated 25,000 smaller asteroids that are also expected to threaten Earth in the coming decades.

In October 2022, scientists discovered a mile-wide “planet killer” hiding in the glare of the sun. It has since been removed from the running tally of dangerous asteroids, but they fear there may be others. What worries them most is being caught by surprise, the way they were in 2013, when a smaller asteroid, traveling undetected from the direction of the sun, exploded in the skies over Russia.

That was a wake-up call for NASA. Afterward, they created a new department to better coordinate their early detection efforts.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve noticed an uptick in news coverage lately about asteroids? I started to really take notice after the surprise discovery of “Oumuamua” in 2017. That asteroid, a quarter mile long, was discovered only a month after it had passed the sun and was already on its way to Earth. Like many people, I was so caught up in the buzz about whether it was a cloaked alien starship, that it didn’t occur to me to wonder why NASA discovered it only weeks before it threatened us.

After learning about this most recent asteroid, the one that arrived on Sept. 29, I reached out to a friend who used to work high up at NASA — who was involved in the upcoming mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa. She has never said much about her work at NASA, but she was particularly opaque when I raised the subject.

“Is it a coincidence that I’m seeing so much in the news lately about asteroids?” I asked her.

“No,” she replied.

“Should I be worried?”

“Yes, and no. The government thinks we can’t handle it.”

There are things NASA says we can do. For example, it successfully tested an “asteroid redirection” method in 2022. A small asteroid, which orbits a much larger one, was targeted and struck by a spacecraft — permanently reshaping it and altering its orbit. Provided we catch it in time, other options might also include: “using the gravity of a nearby spacecraft to tug on it, or blasting it with nuclear weapons, or sending a spacecraft to paint it white in order to change the amount of solar radiation it absorbs, and thereby causing a shift in its trajectory.”

Learning about what scientists know (and don’t know) about asteroids is a sobering experience. It’s only a matter of time before you begin to think that it’s a miracle a major strike hasn’t happened already. Such an awareness is enough to make a person ponder the meaning of life.

There is a famous poem by Mary Oliver called “The Summer Day,” in which she finds herself contemplating the origins of the universe, and whether a higher power exists, when a grasshopper flings itself out of the grass and into her lap, where it sits and eats sugar from her palm.

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is,” she writes.

“I do know how to pay attention … how to kneel down in the grass … how to be idle and blessed … how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day …”

“Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? / Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. 

Carville was right. All American elections are about the economy, but every election, especially every national election, is also about identity — specifically, what it means to be American. The choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a choice between two versions of that identity: a choice between aspirations and reality. When we enter a voting booth to elect a president, each of us confronts a choice that is as old as our republic — it’s a choice between who we aspire to be, and who we actually are.

Because we are a relatively young nation, composed mostly of immigrants, it’s hard to define what it is to be an American without referring to our founding documents. When you look at those documents — the Declaration of Independence, the first Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights — what you see, (if you bypass the lofty idealisms, and read between the lines) is our Founding Fathers’ keen determination to establish the United States as a “business.” Not a collective, but a collection of individuals organized freely around the principle of making money. The freedom to be an individual, or to act and think like one, was baked into our national consciousness at conception.

Americans are not like the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Swedish. We don’t think about the welfare of the collective. To do so would be un-American. For too many of us, the wellbeing of our fellow citizens is, at best, a secondary consideration.

The history of the United States is a history of selfishness. When faced with a political choice, it’s the American way to weigh the options and choose the one that best serves our individual self-interests. It’s part of our national identity to think this way — it’s what makes us American. Compared to the rest of the world’s peoples, Americans lead the planet in selfishness.

Gert Jan Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist and academic, has built a career on the study of culture. Based on 50 years of data gathered from societies around the world, he devised a famous theory about the effects of culture on a society’s members, and how culture impacts behavior. His “Six Dimension Model of National Culture” helps to explain why the United States leads the world in individualism. There are other cultures with strong streaks of individualism, like those in Scandinavia, but the American brand of individualism is unique.

What makes American individualism different is its strong competitive streak. Other individualistic cultures, like the British, are much more egalitarian in their individuality, according to Michele Gelfand, a Stanford cross-cultural psychologist, formerly of the University of Maryland, College Park. Americans are not just selfish, we’re also hyper-competitive — not just with foreigners, with other Americans too.

Our selfishness and competitiveness have manifested in numerous regrettable ways over the centuries. Whether it was the choice to violently dispossess the native peoples of this land, or to pursue slavery as a national industrial strategy, or to target a whole group of people, based on skin color, and deliberately preclude them from participating in programs that established the middle class in this country — historically, when Americans are faced with a choice, too often we choose the option that best serves us as individuals.

On its face, the presidential election was a choice between Donald Trump’s focus on immigration and the economy, and Kamala Harris’ focus on middle-class opportunity and abortion rights. But, beneath the surface, it was about much more than that.

America was being asked to choose which version of itself it wanted to carry forward into the next four years — one based on serving the self, or one based on appreciating the concerns and safety of others. Trump was victorious because voters decided that the cost of a gallon of milk was more important than all of the horrible things Trump was saying he planned to do to their neighbors.

It didn’t matter how tragically flawed Donald Trump was. The crimes and convictions were immaterial. As were his racist remarks, his disrespectful comments about veterans and the disabled, and his nastiness toward women. Voters ignored the warnings of those who had worked closely with Trump and turned away when he was accused of selfishness and described as being dangerous and untrustworthy. Despite all of the red flags, the same voters who had abandoned Trump in 2020 for being incompetent during the COVID-19 crisis, and for damaging the economy as a result, returned to him enthusiastically because they were reportedly unhappy about how the prices were at Walmart.

Americans are not always selfish. There are times, during national emergencies, for example, when the whole country seems to pull together as one — World War II springs to mind, as well as the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But, it never lasts. Before long, the old patterns reemerge.

That was the true message of Trump’s victory.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. 

“Democrats expect your vote; they don’t work for it,” they often say.

If pressed, they’ll point to Trump’s support for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) while president and repeat his phony promises to boost Black employment. But, they’ll struggle to list any Democratic policies they support.

One Democrat-led policy that is not getting enough attention in the Black community — even though it holds enormous historical and economic significance for African Americans — is student loan forgiveness. If the Democrats could find a way to discuss loan forgiveness properly, it could be the key to Harris making inroads with Black Gen Z men.

Experts believe that because student loan forgiveness disproportionately impacts Black Americans, it can have a real effect on the racial wealth gap. Young Black voters must be helped to understand this, and they need to see that the Democrats’ strong support for loan forgiveness is a show of support for the Black community. Democrats might also benefit politically if they could help Black voters appreciate the intellectual connection between the concept of loan forgiveness and the concept of Black reparations.

Black Gen Z-ers support (by huge percentages) the idea of paying reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans in America. Democrats need to help them understand that student loan forgiveness can be viewed as a form of reparations.

Student loan forgiveness benefits everyone, not just the Black community. But, for a host of reasons, it is particularly beneficial to African Americans. The Biden/Harris administration understands this. Anyone focused on higher education understands this. When I first learned that President Joe Biden was planning to forgive huge swaths of student loans, I understood the significance immediately and recognized its deeper historical meaning.

Since the amount of a student loan payment can be the equivalent of a mortgage payment, for some Black families, loan forgiveness can mean the real possibility of homeownership and a more stable economic future. This was a promise once made to African Americans.

After the Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman asked a group of Black community leaders what he could do personally to help the millions of newly freed slaves lift themselves out of poverty. Acting on their recommendations, Sherman led what historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. described as “the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations” to Black Americans. He issued a field order setting aside hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland for distribution to freedmen. With the stroke of his pen, he extended to millions of African Americans the promise of a home of their own, a chance to be self-sufficient, to build wealth and to pass it down to future generations. But Sherman’s promise wasn’t kept. Eight months after he issued the order, President Andrew Johnson overturned it.

I once argued against the viability of reparations. I thought the idea was preposterous. How could this nation ever repay its debt to a people whose flesh was literally the source of its wealth?

What I lacked at the time was the imagination to understand the many forms reparations can take. Affirmative action, for example, can be viewed as a form of reparations. It didn’t occur to me at the time that student loan forgiveness can also be seen this way.

The Biden/Harris administration has already forgiven billions in student loans. When speaking to young Black men, campaign officials could easily argue that one of the reasons Democrats are fighting in the courts so aggressively for loan relief is to help repay the moral debt this nation owes to those who helped to build it.

Harris has already said that if elected president she will continue Biden’s efforts. Someone — maybe not her, but certainly someone — should make the connection between the Democrats’ commitment to student loan forgiveness and its support for the idea of reparations.

And, while on the subject, they might also use the occasion to expose the deception in Trump’s support for HBCUs. Voters must be shown how Trump’s actions can be viewed as an effort to channel students of color away from heavily white institutions, like the University of Maryland, College Park, toward predominantly Black ones, like Morgan State. This becomes even more apparent when viewed in tandem with Trump’s regressive educational policies while president and his support for overturning affirmative action.

The Democratic Party’s quiet fight for reparations is a brilliant political strategy. Kamala Harris needs to take more credit for it, not just for the sake of young Black men.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. 

As I read the story, I thought of Ms. Prudhomme alone, slumped at her desk, forgotten, as the world moved on without her. I hoped that there were people in her life who loved her. I hoped that she didn’t die lonely.

According to Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, this country is in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness. In 2023, he issued a public health advisory warning Americans of its growing prevalence and surprisingly harmful health effects — which can include increased risk for dementia, heart disease and stroke. Murthy estimates that the physical impact of loneliness on the body can be like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Early this year, the American Psychiatric Association conducted a poll of Americans on the subject, and found that “30% of adults say they have experienced feelings of loneliness at least once a week over the past year, while 10% say they are lonely every day.” Loneliness is even more acute among younger adults, 30% of whom responded to the poll that they felt lonely every day, or several times a week. Nationally, among college students, the rate is even higher, as much as 60%.

There are a host of reasons that Americans might feel lonely. According to Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale, loneliness has “been increasing linearly since the 1970s.” As she explained to John Yang of PBS, “We just don’t have enough free time to connect with the people that we care about … there’s also lots of other interesting demands on our time. You know, back in the 1970s, there wasn’t Netflix and all these video games.” Her comments seem to suggest that for some people, loneliness is a choice.

Louise Hawkley, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and founding member of the International Loneliness and Isolation Research Network, appears to agree. She told Matthew Shaer of New York Times Magazine that she believes some lonely people convince themselves to be lonely. “They are absolutely certain that they’re not worth talking to, that no one likes them, that they’re not a good person and that it’s all their fault.” A sense of shame keeps them from reaching out to others.

The poet Fanny Howe makes a similar connection in one of her poems: “Shame and loneliness are almost one. Shame at existing in the first place. Shame at being visible, taking up space, breathing some of the sky, sleeping in a whole bed, asking for a share.”

Experts agree that the path to feeling less lonely starts with the admission that you are lonely.

Remember loneliness is “a common problem,” advises Santos. “You can feel like there’s something wrong with you if you’re feeling lonely, but if you realize that upwards of 60 percent of people out there are feeling the same, you know, it’s not such a bad thing, right?” There is no shame in feeling lonely. It does not make you less of a person — less pretty, less smart. And, if you don’t want to be lonely there are things you can do about it. According to Santos, once you admit to being lonely, then you can begin to address it.

You must work to reconnect with family and friends, advises Santos. After that, it’s important to make new connections. She suggests one way to build new relationships is to focus on the things you enjoy doing and find a way to do those things with other people. So, if you love watching baseball, find a way to watch the game in a public place — like a bar, or a restaurant. If you love knitting, join a knitting circle. Or, better yet, learn to do something new. The important thing is to prioritize time with others.

There is a quiet, older lady who works at the front desk at my gym. The other desk attendees are energetic, and fun, and always chatting with the customers, but she mostly keeps to herself. She looks like she may be a retiree, and perhaps has a physical ailment. She’s always a little disheveled. She rarely makes eye contact. I see her from time to time, walking slowly to her car after her shift. When I arrive for my morning workout, I smile and say “Hi,” but not much more.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll introduce myself, and ask her name.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore. 

Everyone code-switches, not just Black people. With most people, it’s optional, but for Black people, it’s a survival tool. When a white person and a Black person stand across from each other in dialogue, hundreds of years of painful racial history rushes like water into the space between them. For much of that history, the burden of interracial communication fell heaviest on Black people who, if disliked or misunderstood, could suffer serious consequences. So, for the last four centuries, Black people have code-switched — not just on the plantation, but in the boardroom, at the supermarket and on the golf course. It’s a strategy introduced to most of us by the time we hit puberty — like a rite of passage. When Jewish boys in America reach their teenage years, they are celebrated with a bar mitzvah — Black boys get “The Talk” instead.

There are many versions of “The Talk.” Some parents use the occasion to educate their children about the realities of being Black in America, others use it to emphasize all the reasons Black people should be proud of their contributions to this nation. I’m sure Dr. King shared his own version with his boys 60 years ago. Regardless of the theme, the goal is always the same — to teach vulnerable Black children how to act and speak in the presence of white people. It’s their formal introduction to the practice of code-switching.

To code-switch is to make any number of adjustments to one’s way of speaking, or dressing, or behaving to put someone else at ease. Everyone does it. Children do it to fit in at school, former President Barack Obama has famously been caught doing it, I’m doing it right now. Because of the dangers and disadvantages that still exist in this country for Black people, code-switching is essential to everything from getting fair treatment by the police, to winning a promotion at work, to securing a table at a restaurant. Every Black person I know has their own way of doing it.

“First, I determine what kind of person they are,” said a friend of mine who works as one of only two Black people for a tech company in Virginia, “real, fake, trustworthy…” Then, she added, “I speak deliberately and clearly, versus authentically. I pay attention to word choice, clarity, use of slang, etc.”

Another Black friend emphasized the importance of understanding your audience: “I lead with their self-interests. Whatever it is that I’m discussing, I lead with what I think would be most relatable to them — even if that is not the most convincing or important element.”

Whatever the approach, the goal of code-switching for every Black person, whether in the workplace or at Walmart, is to soften the impact of our Black skin, which has been freighted over the centuries with so many of this country’s racial anxieties and fears.

I have my own personal way of code-switching — sometimes it’s apparent, sometimes it’s not. If you are a white person, and you hear me say I speak Russian, I’m code-switching. For a time, I found myself slipping references to the Culinary Institute of America into conversations at parties — that was me code-switching too. I code-switch at work all the time. I learned the hard way that repeating myself is key. If I am engaged in a difficult conversation, my method is to remain calm and repeat myself at least three times: first to establish my point, again to ensure that the point punches through my blackness, and then a third time to confirm that the point was received.

If you think all this sounds exhausting, or even demoralizing, you’re right. If you’re wondering why Black people put ourselves through it, please know, it’s not a choice. Like any other racial group in this country, we’d rather be seen the way Dr. King envisioned, and judged by our character alone. But, 60 years later, it’s clear that we have yet to reach that mountaintop.

K. Ward Cummings (kwardcummings@gmail.com) is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore.