I have been afforded many privileges in my life. I came from an upper-middle-class white family in an area with a rather low cost of living. When I was a young kid, my family could afford to send me to day-care. When I got to school, I got the opportunity to join academic success programs which offered me more one-on-one time with teachers to pursue topics beyond the typical classroom. As I grew up, I got involved in sports and joined my school’s orchestra. For both of these, I got the opportunity to travel across the US, and even got to spend weeks abroad performing. I never had to turn down an opportunity to pursue my interests and passions due to our family’s income. When I graduated, though there were scholarships made available to me that eased the burden of higher education, I did not have to settle for the cheapest, most available school and I never had to take out a loan because it could be paid upfront (with the expectation that it still be paid back) by my parents. Anyone who has had to take out loans knows what a relief the absence of interest payments would be. While at school, I worked a max of 20 hours per week as supplemental income, but I never had to worry about keeping a roof over my head or getting food on the table.

My girlfriend, Amirah, came from a single-mother black family in California. Growing up, she was surrounded by poverty, drug influences, and violence. While I was at day-care, she was often left at home to fend for herself. At a young age, she was traumatically burned and removed from school for a significant period. This experience, as well as her personal influences, left scars both physical and mental which dug her into such deep fiscal and emotional debt few could hope to escape. When learning challenges began to manifest, not only could her family not afford to treat it, those challenges were swept under the rug due to a lack of education on mental health. Despite her passion for academics and her want to succeed, she would be reprimanded for reaching out for help and trying to get more academic attention while I was taking special classes. While I was exploring and pursuing sports and music, she was forced onto the sidelines due to the cost just to attend extra-curricular activities. While I was traveling, she spent every day in her hometown, stuck in her own home or at times other’s homes simply because they couldn’t afford one of their own. When she graduated from high school, she went out to work minimum wage positions simply to afford a class here or there to pursue her Associate’s degree at the local community college, while I could go out and even occasionally take time off of work to focus on myself. She still had to live with her mother, because if she ever left she would never be able to afford to go to school to try to make anything better of the life she was given. She accepted relationships with abusive men because all her life she was told, both literally and figuratively, that she wasn’t deserving of anything more.

We met one summer while I was working in her home city of Riverside, CA. Following that summer, she went to school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks because it was the only affordable option she could get into with a very nice Biology program. She had hoped to use that school and that degree as a backboard to someday get into vet school. Every day she was up there I feared for her life. Anyone who knows anything about Fairbanks knows that for most of the winter they only saw a couple of hours of sun on even a clear day, which was few and far between. The trauma and influence she had experienced up until this point have led to a debilitating struggle with mental illness that she does her best to survive with. Her illness dragged her to a lower point than I had ever seen anyone, and on a daily basis too. We did whatever we had to ensure that she could afford to eat, to go to counseling sessions, and to stay on top of her classes. Despite our best efforts, massive cuts to the school’s funding at the state level, as well as the mental toll that no-sun had on her, made it unaffordable in more than one way for her to continue going.

The summer following her year there, I finished my Master’s and we settled on a different school where she could start anew. We moved to Evan’s, Colorado so she could attend the University of Northern Colorado. We thought this could maybe be the change that made everything better. I told her I would shoulder the financial burden so that she could focus on classes. All the hope and determination I had couldn’t get me a job consummate with my experience, and a medical issue forced me out of the one decent position that I had gotten. Medical bills and general living expenses prevented me from being able to provide the care that she desperately needs. Now, as her second semester is wrapping up we’re learning of an $8 million dollar shortfall in the school’s funding which is likely to end up with massive faculty layoffs and likely an increase in tuition costs. This alone threatens her ability to complete her program and would be just another nail in the coffin for her academic journey.

Amirah’s story is not wholly unique. The median household income for black Americans is 1/3 less than the median of their white counterparts. About 1 in 5 Americans experience a mental illness each year, and for 1 in 25 this illness is considered seriously debilitating. Of those that have a mental illness, fewer than half get treatment and for black Americans that drops to less than 1 in 3. Even taking into account federal loan options and Pell grants, fewer than 30 percent of Universities are affordable for low-income families and often degree options only further limit the opportunities which may be available. Disproportionately high black single-parent households, torn apart by incarceration, violence, and lack of opportunity make this figure only more drastic for families of color.

This is why we support Pete Buttigieg for the President of the United States. Pete has a very real understanding of the challenges that black families must overcome to succeed in this world. They aren’t a group of lazy Americans trying to take advantage of the system; they are Americans who have been taken advantage of and forgotten by the very system we uphold. Centuries of racist policies have led to generations disadvantaged by a lack of access to quality education opportunities, lack of access to mental health assistance, and lack of opportunity to dig their way out of the hole we have dug for them. Pete is right, “You can’t just take out a racist policy and replace it with a neutral one and expect everything to get better on its own.” That is why we must be proactive in our approach, to ensure that the next generation of black Americans has the opportunity to live out the American dream just as I have had the opportunity to pursue myself.

Pete’s Douglass Plan is the proactive approach that we need. Pete’s plan will drastically increase the funding for Title I schools which overwhelmingly serve lower-income families, meaning that we can get those resources to that kid who absolutely loves school but can’t understand why they don’t get the math problems. It will expand access to treatment and education about mental health issues, so that fewer people that struggle are allowed to slip under the radar into dispair. It will ensure that hiring practices are made more equitable, so kids can see the success stories of other disadvantaged men and women who we were able to help lift above the challenges that we first put in front of them. It will make public college free for the 80% of students most strapped for cash, to make sure that no high school graduate has to put off the opportunity to pursue a better life because of where they come from. It will address the harms caused by our criminal “justice” system, of which the profit-motive has overwhelmingly impacted families of color, both during and long after incarceration. It will raise the minimum wage, to ensure that those that work hard, regardless of where, can afford to live in dignity and never fear where their next meal is coming from. These policies which I’ve listed only begin to scrape the surface of what the Douglass Plan would mean for countless millions of families of color across the US, yet they alone would have an unheard of impact on the millions of “Amirahs” in the US who have given their all to make something more of themselves than where they came from.

It is true, I have had many opportunities. It’s about time we stood up and recognized that our system has withheld those same opportunities from countless black households. It’s time to actually be proactive about addressing the cost of our past on those in the present and to lift up those that we’ve held down for so long.