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"Get Rich or Die Tryin'"

By the Hilltop Editorial Board
Black College Wire

No, we aren't talking about the rapper who considers himself the George Bush of hip-hop. But the title of 50 Cent's first album rings true in the experience of many in the middle class, and for students looking to enter the workforce as the middle class shrinks and the gap between the haves and have-nots widens.

Lou Dobbs calls for middle class to fight.

CNN's recent report by Lou Dobbs, "War on the Middle Class," might be something we all should be looking into more deeply.

Dobbs pointed out that the middle class in America must pay growing tuition, health care, energy and other costs while fighting a Capitol Hill run by special interests and big businesses.

Many of our friends at other colleges have already felt the tightening of funds. The New York Times reported last year that taxpayer support of public colleges was lower than it had been in the last 20 years—schools the paper points out "played a crucial role in the creation of the American middle class."

With people getting less time to pay off loans and students graduating with student loans that are at an all-time high, more citizens are going into debt.

Now is the time for us as students to decide where we want to land on the economic ladder, one that is becoming steeper. We must make plans to do what we have to do to make sure that happens.

The fact that America's middle class is shrinking means you can move only further up or further down. For too long, the squeaky wheel has gotten the oil, so that large corporations and causes with big money get the ear of Congress members while citizens who elected them work overtime trying to send children like us to college.

Bishop T.D. Jakes remembers making "Ph.D. money on a G.E.D."

Bishop T.D. Jakes said in a televised sermon that in past years, Americans "could make Ph.D. money on a G.E.D." Those industrial jobs in factories and mines, on which many black families lived comfortably, are now obsolete.

Even more damaging to the working class is that those jobs not taken by machines are moved halfway across the world. Not only is there less work for the skilled worker, now you are competing on a global scale.

Jobs that used to keep the middle class afloat are now going offshore as companies capitalize on cheaper labor in other countries. This just stretches the wealth gap in America, already affected by higher living costs.

We must plan now for our future, recognize the great investment it takes to earn a degree—even with the attack on students that makes paying for that education harder—and realize our community needs us.

We know that "when America catches a cold, black people catch pneumonia," so we have to do the work to support and elevate our middle class.

This editorial was written by the editorial board of the Hilltop at Howard University.

Posted Nov. 1, 2006