They told young Black people, go to school, follow the rules, get a degree, take the loan, get the job, buy the house, and everything will work out. But young people are looking around now and asking a real question, worked out for who?

The public school system was not built equally for everybody. Wealthy families have always had a different track for their children, private schools, tutors, legacy networks, internships, ownership training, and direct access to power. Meanwhile, working-class Black children were pushed into overcrowded schools, underfunded classrooms, standardized testing, discipline systems, and a narrow message, obey the system and maybe one day it will reward you.

That message is breaking.

Young Black people are not lazy because they question college. They are not lost because they question work. They are not rebellious because they question authority. Many of them are simply tired of being pushed into an endless system of debt before they even get a fair chance to build wealth.

Black borrowers are more likely to carry larger student loan balances than White borrowers, and Pew found Black borrowers were more likely to report balances above $10,000 than White borrowers, 64% compared with 53%. The Federal Reserve also reported that Black and White borrowers are more likely than Hispanic borrowers to carry higher student-loan balances.

So when young Black people say college feels like a trap, they are not imagining things. They are watching people graduate with debt, struggle to find jobs that pay enough, rent apartments they can barely afford, delay buying homes, delay starting families, and still get told they failed because they didn’t work hard enough.

That damages the mindset. It teaches young people that the system is not designed to free them, it is designed to process them. It tells them school is not about purpose, ownership, or power, it is about compliance, credentials, and repayment.

And once a young person believes the system has no real reward waiting for them, they stop trusting the people defending that system. They stop believing speeches. They stop believing politicians. They stop believing older leaders who keep telling them to follow a road that led too many people into debt, stress, and no ownership.

This is why the mindset is changing. Young Black people do not want to be led into a life where they borrow money to get qualified, work jobs that barely cover survival, pay rent forever, and watch wealth get built around them but not by them.

Now look at what’s happening locally with Columbus City Schools.

You have a district where attendance has been a major issue, thousands of students chronically absent year after year, meaning they are physically disconnected from the very system that is supposed to prepare them. When students don’t see value, they stop showing up, that’s not a discipline problem, that’s a system problem.

You have ongoing concerns about how money is being managed, constant conversations about budget gaps, cuts, and reallocations, yet outcomes are not improving at the level they should be. When funding goes in but results don’t come out, young people notice that.

You have staffing instability, layoffs, administrative reshuffling, and program changes. That creates inconsistency in classrooms, lack of trust, and a feeling that the system itself doesn’t have a clear direction. If the adults running the system look unstable, why would students believe in the system?

So what do young people see in real time?

They see schools struggling to keep them engaged. They see adults arguing over budgets. They see programs come and go. They see no clear path from classroom to ownership, wealth, or stability.

And then they are still told, just stay in school, go to college, take on debt, and everything will work out.

The real issue is not that young Black people do not value education. The issue is they are starting to understand the difference between education and debt. They want skills. They want ownership. They want income. They want land. They want business. They want technology. They want trades. They want financial literacy. They want proof that the path they are being told to follow actually leads somewhere.

And the hard truth is this, if schools are not teaching Black youth how to build wealth, understand policy, control money, protect their communities, own property, create businesses, and challenge systems, then those schools are preparing them to survive inside somebody else’s economy, not lead their own.

So no, young Black people are not giving up. Many of them are waking up.

The question is, are we going to keep calling them lost, or are we finally going to admit that the system we told them to trust has been leading too many of them into debt with no real power at the end?