Richelle Brooks knew that college was the surest path to the middle class, but her mother, a restaurant manager, couldn’t afford it. So the high school senior did what counselors and teachers told her to do – she took on loans, confident she’d earn enough to pay them back.

When she didn’t, she borrowed again … and again. After 13 years in school, she had a doctorate in educational leadership – and more than $200,000 in debt.

But economic security has eluded her. For awhile, she worked as a principal at a charter school. But when that school shut down last summer, she couldn’t find another administrative post and had to settle for a lower-paying teaching job.

Now 33, with two children she’s raising on her own and a balance that has ballooned to $237,000, Dr. Brooks feels she was misled.

“I did everything I was told you have to do to make a livable wage,” she says. “You take out loans, and when you graduate you pay them back.”

So this summer, she joined a group of 100 “debt strikers” who are refusing to repay their loans in an effort to pressure President Joe Biden to forgive all outstanding federal student debt in his first 100 days in office. The strike is symbolic – Mr. Biden has extended a pause on student loan payments through September – but its message is clear.

“This debt isn’t going to be repaid,” says Thomas Gokey, a onetime college adjunct who co-founded the Debt Collective, the group behind the strike. “It has to be canceled.”

As the nation’s federal student loan balance has mushroomed, topping $1.5 trillion last year, the calls to cancel some or all of that debt have grown louder. Total cancellation, an idea considered fringe just a few years ago, has become mainstream, with more than half of Americans in a 2019 poll saying they are in favor of eliminating all existing student loan debt. 

Now, amid a pandemic that has led to disproportionate job losses among people of color and a racial justice movement that has focused attention on inequities across American society, proponents of loan forgiveness argue it has become an economic and social justice imperative.

“The student loan system is predatory, and it’s violent against already marginalized groups,” says Dr. Brooks.

Canceling student loans would shrink the racial wealth gap and stimulate the economy, freeing up money that consumers would spend on homes, cars, and new businesses, proponents argue.

But skeptics say debt relief would do neither thing well, and would be unfair to Americans who worked their way through college, chose the cheaper institution, or sacrificed to pay down their debt – never mind those who sat out college altogether. It would deliver a windfall to higher-income households, while leaving out some of the poorest Americans – those with only high school diplomas – thereby deepening the nation’s educational divide.

President Biden has signaled he won’t wipe out student loans unilaterally, and called on Congress to cancel $10,000 per borrower through legislation instead.

But nearly everyone agrees on one thing: Debt relief wouldn’t do anything to stem the spiraling cost of college or reduce future students’ reliance on loans. It could even make those problems worse, if students start borrowing without regard to their ability to pay, and colleges raise their prices accordingly.

If policymakers hope to rein in borrowing long term, they’ll need to find new ways to help students pay for college. That might include making college free to everyone – or everyone below an income cutoff – or expanding the federal Pell Grant program to cover more students or a larger share of tuition.

None of the options are cheap, and they’d have to clear a closely divided Congress.

Yet there’s a burgeoning consensus among activists and lawmakers from both political parties that the nation’s college financing system is in dire need of comprehensive reform.

“If you cancel debt without tackling the system holistically, all you’re doing is setting yourself up to have the same problem in 10 to 15 years,” says Wil Del Pilar, vice president of higher education policy and practice at The Education Trust.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Students walk through campus between classes at Louisiana State University on March 13, 2019, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Debt burden is not equally balanced among students, with Black borrowers disproportionately affected.

Debt relief and its limitations

There’s no doubt that Black borrowers are disproportionately burdened by student loans, borrowing more and defaulting more often, than their white peers. Black student parents, like Dr. Brooks, borrow the most of all, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

These disparities have their roots in decades of housing and labor market discrimination that have made it difficult for Black families to accumulate wealth. The median white household now has a net worth 10 times that of the median Black household – a gap that has been perpetuated, and made wider still, by unequal student debt burdens. More than half of Black households with student debt have zero or negative net worth.

What’s less clear is whether forgiveness would be the best way to level the economic playing field.

A recent study found that forgiving $50,000 in student debt, as progressive lawmakers have proposed, would wipe out debt for nearly three quarters of Black households, lifting more than half of those with negative net worth into positive territory.

But that same study found that debt relief wouldn’t come close to closing the wealth chasm between Black and white households.

Other research shows that debt relief would deliver the biggest benefit to high-income households, which often include individuals who borrowed to attend graduate school. If the government canceled all student debt, the top 20% of earners would get $192 billion in savings, and the bottom 20% would get only $29 billion.

A smarter solution, some skeptics say, would be to expand income-based repayment programs that let struggling borrowers lower their monthly payments to a manageable amount and have their remaining balance forgiven after 20 to 25 years.

“The principle that you don’t pay more than you can afford makes sense,” says Sandy Baum, nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Center on Education Data and Policy. “Let’s forgive the debt of people who can’t afford it, not those who can.”

Proponents of debt relief say the focus on dollars forgiven is misplaced. They point out that even if upper-income households would get the biggest share of the relief, poorer ones would benefit more, in relative terms, since they’re starting out with less. Just a few thousand dollars in forgiveness would slash their debt-to-income ratios and multiply their wealth.

Courtesy of Louise Seamster

Louise Seamster, an assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at the University of Iowa, is among those who say that even if upper-income households would get the biggest share of debt relief, poorer ones would benefit more, in relative terms, since they’re starting out with less.

“It’s disingenuous to say we shouldn’t help tens of millions of people who are struggling because of a fear that some people would benefit more,” says Louise Seamster, an assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at the University of Iowa.

Loan forgiveness would also help Americans with some college and no degree – a group that made up more than a quarter of unemployed people last fall. These “noncompleters” are three times more likely to default on their student loans than college graduates.

Yet when it comes to shoring up the economy, debt relief would be far less stimulative than unemployment benefits and universal checks. Abolishing all $1.5 trillion in federal student loan debt would free up only $90 billion in cash in 2021, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

That’s partly because a relatively small share of the savings would go to low-income individuals, who research shows are the most likely to spend additional money when they get it.

It’s also because debt relief, unlike stimulus payments, doesn’t accrue to individuals all at once. Borrowers aren’t handed a check for the forgiven amount; they simply stop making payments on their debt. For a typical borrower in standard repayment, complete cancellation would free up between $200 and $300 a month.  

And debt relief wouldn’t reduce future borrowing, either.

Free college   

To ease the burden of student debt long term, policymakers will need to find a way to bend the cost curve or shift more of the responsibility for paying for college back onto taxpayers.

President Biden has proposed doubling the maximum Pell Grant award and creating a federal-state partnership that would make community college tuition-free for all students and four-year public institutions tuition-free for households earning less than $125,000.

The president’s “free college” plan would increase the number of students enrolled in college by 2 million. And by creating a better educated workforce, it would grow Americans’ disposable income by $61 billion a year, boosting gross domestic product by $139 billion in the first two years alone, a recent analysis by the Campaign for Free College Tuition found. It would drive up graduation rates, increasing state and federal income tax revenue in the long term.

The plan would also discourage states from slashing their higher education budgets during economic downturns, requiring them to maintain their spending to qualify for a federal match. State budget cuts have contributed to rising tuitions, with colleges raising their prices to recover the shortfall.

Though several cities and localities and more than a dozen states already offer “free college,” only one state – New York – covers four-year colleges, and it excludes part-time students.  

A federal program would provide the “scale and scope” that state and local programs can’t, says Morley Winograd, president of the Campaign for Free College Tuition. The group’s polling shows that roughly three-quarters of Americans support some form of free college.

But there’s no guarantee that states would buy into free college, even if the feds cover the bulk of the costs, as President Biden has proposed. When Congress offered states a 90% match to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a number of Republican-led states rejected the deal. A decade after the law was enacted, 39 states had expanded, while 12 states had not.

“It’s not free college for all; it’s free college in states with Democratic governors that decide to participate,” says Matthew Chingos, vice president for education data and policy at the Urban Institute.

Others warn that educational quality could suffer if states stretch their budgets to make college free, and don’t invest in instruction and student services when enrollments spike.

Regardless of the merits of free college, the president’s plan is likely to face pushback from conservatives concerned about its cost. That’s why Michelle Miller-Adams, a professor of political science at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, suggests starting with free community college – an idea that has found support in several red states, including Tennessee, and has the backing of the business community, a key Republican constituency.

“If you can get free two-year college, and demonstrate its benefits, you can build from there,” she says.

Courtesy of Michelle Miller-Adams

Michelle Miller-Adams, professor of political science at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, suggests free community college as a starting place for making college more affordable for Americans.

A recent study of 33 free public college programs from across the country found that they increased enrollment among first-time, full-time students, with the biggest boost occurring among Black, Hispanic, and female students.

Yet even the two-year plan would suffer from one of the same flaws as debt relief: It would offer help to some higher-income people who don’t really need it, says Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who studies student aid.

Doubling down on the Pell Grant

A more targeted approach would be to double the Pell Grant, sending more money to students with the greatest need, Dr. Levine says. The grant’s purchasing power has eroded over time, and now covers less than a third of the cost of attending a public four-year college.

Doubling the Pell Grant would completely close the affordability gap for low-income students, an analysis by Dr. Levine found.

Another way the Pell program could be used to drive down debt would be to make students in short-term programs eligible for the grants. That idea has bipartisan support in Congress and is popular with the public, but it’s controversial.

Skeptics worry that extending Pell to short-term programs would lead to an increased “tracking” of low-income students of color into highly specialized careers with limited potential for growth. Others fear an explosion of low-quality programs seeking to profit off the federal dime.

Proponents counter that safeguards can be put in place to ensure program quality, and say short-term programs should be seen not as an end point, but as the first rung on a ladder leading to a degree.

“At a time when millions are out of work, extending Pell to short-term programs would put people on a path to get quickly back into the job market,” says Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield, a senior fellow with the National Skills Coalition. “And it won’t require them to take on debt.”

The evidence for short-term programs is mixed. Though some studies have found wage gains for students in some states, others have shown that 2 in 5 adults with only a short-term certificate are unemployed. A recent federal pilot found that extending Pell Grants to students in short-term programs increased enrollment and completion rates, but had no impact on borrowing.

The reality, of course, is that none of these plans may come to pass. As the nation emerges from a pandemic and a recession, there will be a lot of urgent needs and limited resources to meet them, says Jessica Thompson, associate vice president at The Institute for College Access & Success.

But Dr. Brooks and the other 99 debt strikers say they aren’t giving up on their fight for full debt relief, despite Mr. Biden’s rejection of the idea.

“Nothing will happen unless we fight like our lives depend on it,” says Mr. Gokey, the Debt Collective co-founder. “And our lives do depend on it.”

This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reporting about responses to social problems. 

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Houthi soldiers march during a funeral procession for Houthi fighters killed in a battle with government forces in Marib province, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 17, 2021.

After six years, billions of dollars, and more than 200,000 lives lost, a rare diplomatic breakthrough in Yemen’s war has emerged in an unlikely guise: a Saudi peace initiative.

Under pressure from the United States, Riyadh is proposing a cease-fire agreement that offers concessions while failing to secure a single objective of its six-year war.

Yet the agreement is not without benefit for the Saudis: a chance to repair their tattered global reputation.

With diplomacy having successfully shifted one major player in the conflict, pressure is intensifying on the Shiite Houthis and other actors to close in on an elusive cease-fire, enabling relief for a country wracked by war, famine, poverty, cholera, and COVID-19.

Last week’s progress is owed in part to renewed U.S. engagement led by U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking, and the yearlong intense shuttle diplomacy by United Nations envoy Martin Griffiths.

Washington convinced Saudi Arabia to agree to a cease-fire arrangement – based on a framework crafted by the U.N. through months of intense diplomacy – that addresses the concerns of both the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

Key to the breakthrough: having the Saudis “own” the initiative and offer the agreement themselves. Riyadh announced the initiative last week, shortly after a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Billed as a “peace initiative,” the Saudi offer calls for a nationwide cease-fire under the supervision of the U.N., lifting the naval blockade, depositing taxes and customs fees into a joint account in the Yemen central bank accessible by both the government and the Houthis, and reopening the Sanaa airport – core Houthi demands.

“This courageous decision came as part of the political efforts by Saudi Arabia, coalition countries, and the international community to achieve security, stability, and peace in Yemen,” says a senior Saudi official, who confirmed close cooperation with the U.S. prior to launching the cease-fire offer.

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

People carry foodstuffs they received from the local charity Mona Relief at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen, March 1, 2021.

“The Saudi initiative underlines the kingdom’s seriousness in ending the crisis,” the official says. “We hope the Houthis will respond by sitting at the negotiation table with the Yemeni government and parties to arrive at a political settlement.”

To prove its good faith, the Saudi-led coalition allowed four oil tankers to dock at the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah port – providing fuel needed to distribute food and medicine across the country.

The Saudi intervention

Pressure from the Biden administration, including the suspension of arms sales, was a motivator. But the agreement was no easy concession for Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia launched its costly military intervention in 2015 to support the Yemeni interim government after the Houthis forced it out from Sanaa. Riyadh feared the Houthis becoming a permanent Iranian proxy on its borders staging constant attacks on Saudi soil.

Six years later, the Houthi movement has become more powerful and gained more territory, while becoming more reliant on Iran.

Reportedly bolstered by Iranian arms shipments and technology transfers, the Houthis have gone from targeting Saudi border regions to regularly striking critical oil infrastructure and airports in the heart of the kingdom, even hitting residential areas in Riyadh.

Hours after the Saudi cease-fire offer, the Houthis struck the airport in Abha, in southern Saudi Arabia, with a drone. Three days later, the movement launched ballistic missiles and drones into Saudi oil facilities and military bases across the kingdom.

Those attacks notwithstanding, by offering concessions and the cease-fire, observers say Saudi Arabia secured two things it badly needed: an exit from a costly conflict, and a partial rehabilitation of its image.

After years of being broadly seen as the aggressor in Yemen, Saudi Arabia can claim to be a peace broker acting in good faith. By offering concessions, it placed the ball in the Houthis’ court.

The move prompted praise in Washington and the West, a marked change from when candidate Joe Biden described Saudi Arabia as a “pariah state” last year.

Shifting narrative

Diplomats working on the Yemen file agree that Saudi Arabia’s shift, along with renewed U.S. involvement, may encourage other actors in the complex conflict to narrow the gaps in their positions to reach an elusive cease-fire agreement.

“We are hopeful this momentum, together with all the mediation work undertaken in the last year, will propel us towards an agreement that paves the way for alleviating the suffering of Yemenis and putting Yemen back on a path towards sustainable peace,” says the U.N. envoy, Mr. Griffiths, in an interview.

In the meantime, the U.S. has been ramping up pressure on the Houthis, who for the first time in the conflict are losing control of a narrative depicting themselves as defenders of Yemeni sovereignty against a foreign aggressor.

In an interview, a State Department spokesperson says the U.S. welcomes the Saudi and Yemen governments’ “commitment to a cease-fire and political process in Yemen under the U.N. framework,” while reprimanding the Houthis.

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Ahmadiya Juaidi, 13, waits to receive a supplemental nutrition shake at the malnutrition treatment ward of al-Sabeen hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 24, 2021.

“We have a sound, fair proposal for a nationwide cease-fire, with elements that would immediately address Yemen’s dire humanitarian situation,” says the spokesperson.

“The Houthis are continuing a military campaign to take Marib – home to nearly a million [displaced people] – over suspending the war and providing relief to the Yemeni people. The United States and the U.N. urge the Houthis to respond.”

Incentives for Houthis?

Publicly, the Houthis dismissed the cease-fire offer as “not serious” and “nothing new,” criticizing the linking of easing the humanitarian crisis with cease-fire talks.

They are demanding that the blockade be lifted, the Sanaa airport reopened, and humanitarian relief allowed into Yemen before, and independent of, any cease-fire arrangement so that Riyadh can no longer hold the blockade as leverage. They also demand sole control over the ports and the airport.

Meanwhile, the Houthis are embroiled in an offensive in the central region of Marib, a strategic area rich in natural gas, in the most intensive fighting in years. Observers are calling the fighting, reportedly involving tens of thousands of Houthi and government-aligned fighters, “a bloodbath.”

Still, talks are ongoing. U.S. and Omani representatives are trying to use the momentum of the Saudi offer to convince the Houthis to cement their current military gains in a cease-fire and an eventual, favorable power-sharing arrangement, diplomatic sources say.  

The question remains what incentives can be offered to the group, which over the course of the war has grown from a fierce northern faction into the dominant force in Yemen, analysts say.

It has captured the capital, assumed control of state institutions, and installed a Houthi patronage network along with technocrats to run a central bank, ministries, and diplomatic missions.

“The Houthis are now behaving as a state. How can you convince them to become part of a state?” says Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen, nonresident fellow at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. “What is their incentive for sharing power?”

Competing agendas

Observers warn that Iran may also play the role of spoiler, prolonging the conflict to use the Houthis’ agreement as a bargaining chip in any nuclear talks with the U.S.

“The Houthis dismissing these [Saudi] gestures and an opportunity to translate their military successes into permanent political gain tells me they are either misreading the international community or serving Iran’s interests rather than their own,” says Abdulghani Al-Iryani, senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.

There is another hard truth facing the diplomatic push for a cease-fire: the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government are but two sides in a multifaceted war that includes UAE-backed separatists, an Islamist movement linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and several other factions with competing agendas.

“The cease-fire can stop the Saudi war, but the local aspects to the conflict remain unresolved and proxy groups remain,” says Ms. Shuja Al-Deen. “I fear this may just mark the end of one war and will mark the start of a civil war.”

Aware of the challenges, diplomats say they are working to incorporate the UAE-backed separatists into the cease-fire.

As the major battlefronts quiet, and humanitarian crises ease, diplomats believe the cease-fire will build confidence among rival factions to move toward a political dialogue to reach a final settlement.  

Until then, diplomats say they are racing to capitalize on something that has been in short supply in Yemen: momentum and hope.

Before the pandemic, rates of food insecurity in the United States had been declining during the longest economic expansion in the country’s history. The percentage of households that were food insecure for at least some portion of the year had dropped from 14.9% in 2011 to 10.5% in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

But within those households, that still represented 35.2 million Americans worried about a low-quality diet or even when they would get their next meal. 

And now, over the past year, the pandemic has multiplied the number of people who face food insecurity in some way.

Beyond hunger itself, researchers say the ripple effects can range from poorer health to challenges for children with school or emotional development. 

Yet the U.S. produces more than enough food for everyone – raising questions about why the problem is so persistent and what can be done to address it.

Why are so many people food insecure?

Food insecurity is a complex problem, and commonly viewed as one that is mainly borne by people living in poverty. But although it’s often intricately linked to poverty, they are two different things, says Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University. 

Some people living above the poverty line are food insecure because they might have high expenses for housing or health care, or face high commuting costs to get to their jobs, explains Dr. Barrett. Conversely, there are also low-income people who are not food insecure because they are good at managing their money or have unusually low expenses. 

“So the mapping between food security and poverty – where poverty here means low income – is imperfect because ultimately they’re both getting at the core idea of what is people’s quality of life,” says Dr. Barrett. “And if you think about what defines someone’s quality of life, well, it’s defined by a lot of different things.” 

The pandemic has thrown many more Americans into precarious situations, where their income or work opportunities are reduced – and perhaps also their access to family, social networks, community organizations, shops, and transportation.

Who is hungry in the United States today?

In a census survey in March, nearly 18 million people reported “sometimes” not having enough food to eat, and 5 million said they “often” didn’t have enough. 

That combined total of 23 million – 1 in 14 Americans – is for just a two-week period in March, representing a huge increase. (The USDA’s pre-pandemic figure of 35 million was for people affected at some point during an entire year.)

As unemployment surged to 14.7% in April last year, demand at food banks also jumped across the country. A Pew Research Center survey found that about 17% of Americans have gotten food from a food bank. Researchers at Northwestern University estimated that food insecurity more than doubled during the pandemic, affecting up to 23% of all households. Although unemployment has diminished since last spring, census surveys continue to show high levels of food insecurity.

Daniel Acker/Reuters

Food is packaged and distributed at the nonprofit New Life Centers' food pantry in Chicago on March 16, 2021.

Black and Hispanic households are more likely to be affected. The same Pew survey also found that Black and Hispanic adults were three times more likely to have gone to a food bank, compared with white adults. 

What is being done to tackle food insecurity? 

In the U.S., three federal nutrition assistance programs address the issue: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). According to the USDA, 58% of food-insecure households participated in one or more of the three federal programs in the month prior to December 2019. 

SNAP, which used to be known as the Food Stamp Program, is the largest and also one of the most vital nutrition assistance programs for low-income Americans. Eligible households receive an electronic benefit transfer card that they can use to buy food. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 38 million people used SNAP in 2019 – that’s 1 in 9 people. Numbers are expected to be higher during the pandemic; preliminary data showed that the number of Americans receiving SNAP benefits was 14.9% higher in April 2020 than in April 2019.

For food-insecure children, the National School Lunch Program enabled free or reduced-price meals in 2019 for an average of 29.6 million children each school day. And the WIC program served an average of 6.4 million low-income women, infants, and children under the age of 5 every month in 2019. 

Apart from the federal programs, other core resources for food-insecure people are food banks and pantries.

How has the pandemic affected responses to food insecurity?

At the federal level, emergency policies were put into place, such as increased funding for SNAP and allowing the benefits to be used for online grocery shopping. Other initiatives include the Farmers to Families Food Box Program (to purchase and distribute agricultural products to food banks and nonprofits) and the pandemic electronic benefit transfer (P-EBT), which provides families with vouchers to purchase groceries to replace lost school meals when school buildings were closed. 

The pandemic has also caused the private sector, nonprofits, and individuals to find new solutions or rethink approaches to these challenges – and there is potential for some of these changes to stay beyond the pandemic. 

“There’s been a huge enhancement of awareness around the private food assistance systems,” says Dr. Barrett. “That’s really awakened people to how close ... many of our neighbors are to the margin. ... Many in the food bank and food pantry system have seen an increase in donations, and more people wanting to volunteer.” 

Indeed, across the country, communities have stepped in to plug the gaps, mobilizing to support their residents with grassroots solutions like community fridges and mutual aid initiatives.

“The increased awareness, I think, will pay off over time in helping people who have depended on that system get back on their feet,” says Dr. Barrett.

Back in the 1990s, when I was still wearing high heels and form-fitting skirt suits, still working long hours and trying to make my way in the white male world of Los Angeles law, a guy at a gas station got mad at me for how I pulled up to the pump.

Exhausted as I was from a long day at work, I had actually made the effort to make sure someone could pull up to the pump behind me, but since he pulled in from a different part of the lot, it was all wrong to him. The few seconds it took him to navigate toward another lane were just too much for him, especially once he saw my face. Fuming at me from the other side of the pump, he yelled, “You don’t know how to park, you stupid Asian! Why don’t you go back to your own country?”

Interesting question. Which version of America would he have me go back to? Where I come from is not Asia, but a place where Asians were imported for cheap labor. Where I come from is a place that was once its own sovereign nation, which Americans overtook first by armed force and then by political force. My face, which caused him so much ire, is actually all American – made of the American appetite for sugar. 

My face is descended from an English Hawai’ian man who became a lawyer, judge, and congressman representing the island of Maui to the Kingdom of Hawai’i, until the armed overthrow of the kingdom in 1893 by American sugar barons. (My great-great-grandfather resisted the wrongful overthrow of the kingdom and was imprisoned by the Americans.)

My face is also made of the later generations of Koreans and Portuguese who sailed for months across oceans to make a new life for themselves and their families in the expanding sugar plantations of the then-American territory of Hawai’i, contracted into labor by American sugar plantation owners. All of my ancestors were brought into America at the behest of Americans.

But the angry man at the gas station couldn’t see that, nor would he have cared. All he could see was someone easily lumped into a category of people who don’t really belong in America. Ironically, he seemed to me to be an immigrant: His rage was hurled at me in a thick foreign accent. My face was a punching bag labeled “unwanted foreigner,” even among immigrants.

Jesse Littlebird/Courtesy of Paula Daniels

Paula Daniels poses in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was inducted as an Ashoka fellow in 2018 in recognition of her work transforming the food system through a procurement strategy guided by economic equity, environmental sustainability, and public health.

“Where are you really from?”

This was one of the many incidents I would commiserate about with my Asian American friends over a drink – a far cry from the violent incidents of anti-Asian American hatred, most memorably the racialized murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit in 1982. 

Unlike that terror, we could laugh over the daily transgressions we experienced, like how we handled the typical “I mean, where are you really from?” question. But sometimes they really stung. Like the time my 30-something brother was asked, when shopping at a convenience store near his job in North Carolina: “Where you from, boy?”

Or like the time a colleague – a prominent LA lawyer born and raised in Oakland, California – had to fend off an irate and irrational objection at a deposition that weirdly accused her of not being able to speak English, when she was, in fact, speaking English; it’s the only language she’d ever known.

It’s painful to experience how hard it is for some folks to see anything but “foreign” when they see our almond-shaped, brown eyes.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to the angry man at the gas station, but I know I flung a lot of my perfect American at him, shouting assertively over his tirade while our tanks filled. I wanted him to think twice before he thought of a woman who looked like me as an easy target for his pent-up frustrations.

Thinking back on it, I probably yelled, “This is my country!” And more along those lines. But now that I think of it ... is it really my country?

I grew up all over the continental United States (Georgia, Nebraska, Virginia, Kansas, Maryland) as well as Hawai’i, and planted myself in Los Angeles several decades ago. I’ve pledged full-throated allegiance to the American flag throughout my life, despite its complicated history, and I’ve only ever thought of myself as an American.

But will America ever look at my eyes and see an American?

My blue-eyed husband, a descendant of immigrants, is presumed to be American, while I am so often obliged to offer proof. Belonging feels like it has to be bargained for and attested to, rather than being a birthright.

The threadbare fabric of belonging

In the well-known “hierarchy of needs” outlined by 20th-century psychologist Abraham Maslow, belonging is on the same level as the need for love, ranked just above the need for security and safety. For many Asian Americans, this line blurs all too often. The fabric of belonging to the community of country is threadbare, and we live at the edge of citizenship security, pushed by the perception of others against a harsh psychological border.

It’s worth noting that Maslow published his theory during World War II, a year after 120,000 Japanese American men, women, and children were incarcerated in prison camps. We live in a time when it should be so much clearer than it was then that the community of America should not be divided along the artificial borders of race. And yet not much has changed since my gas station incident, except for getting worse: The places across America that have the highest concentration of Asian Americans have seen dramatic increases in hate crimes in the past year. We know what fanned the flames, but as with so many other problems today, we also know that those embers had been smoldering. All this, at a time when income inequality is now more of a problem within the Asian American community than in any other group in America.

Saying “aloha” and meaning it

The idea that the well-being of self and of community is interrelated is an indigenous Hawai’ian value, expressed often in the cherished concept of aloha. A difficult idea to explain in English, it carries the meaning of “mutual respect.” When you say it in greeting, you are offering it.

We are experiencing a respect deficit these days in too many areas. But we are also experiencing an increasing interest in the full complexity of life in a multiracial, multidimensional America.

Maybe one day we can become a place where we see, respect, and appreciate race without stereotyping. It sounds like utopia. But research psychologist Kristin Pauker observed this potential of multiracial societies. She actually reported it about Hawai’i, America’s most multiracial state.

It might also become true for the rest of the country, if only we all really try.

Aloha.

Paula Daniels is co-founder of the Center for Good Food Purchasing and a past president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

AP

A lone pedestrian wearing a protective mask walks past the New York Stock Exchange on March 21 last year as coronavirus concerns emptied a typically bustling downtown area in New York.

Of all the global awards handed out each year, one announced on March 25 was hardly noticed. Yet it should be. The trade publication Central Banking recognized the U.S. Federal Reserve as Central Bank of the Year. The main reason: In early April 2020, the Fed prevented widespread panic in world financial markets over fears of economic disaster from the pandemic.

“That financial markets did not completely break down was primarily due to the actions of one central bank, the US Federal Reserve,” the publication stated. “Under the stewardship of its chairman, Jerome Powell, the Fed acted rapidly and boldly to avert a meltdown – not just in the US, but in markets across the world. The Fed pulled out all the stops in its efforts to shore up US dollar liquidity. And it did so extraordinarily quickly.”

The Fed, for example, set up “swap lines” with more than a dozen other central banks to allow them to inject U.S. dollars into their economies. That and other innovative responses kept credit flowing and averted a “financial crisis that could have morphed into another Great Depression,” Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told the publication.

While much of the world was dealing with a fear of COVID-19, the Fed was dealing with another fear. Global output was declining, far more than during the 2008 financial crisis. In the United States, the rate of people participating in the labor market saw the biggest drop since World War II. A year later, financial stress from the pandemic “has been largely avoided so far, owing to the unprecedented policy actions taken,” according to a new IMF report.

Because financial stability has largely been preserved, the expected “scarring” in the global economy is less than from the financial crisis 12 years ago, the report finds. In fact, the world has seen a few benefits. In the U.S., even though employment has more ground to regain, the number of new businesses reached a record high in the third quarter of 2020.

The Fed was hardly alone in taking action. The world’s three major central banks – in the U.S., Japan, and Europe – expanded their balance sheets by about $8 trillion in response to the pandemic. And they will continue to play a vital role in supporting economic recovery.

For his part, the Fed chief explained his actions a year ago this way: People did not cause the virus, and because they are making sacrifices for the common good, “we need to make them whole.” The IMF expects global growth to be 5.5% or even higher this year. That’s pretty good evidence of a lack of panic and a coming restoration of wholeness.