Joshua Johnson is the good son. Whenever we despair about the staggering racial wealth gap, decreased access to higher education, or growing poverty and crime, our affinity for Joshua grows and his story comforts us. We saw him on Ellen, saw him with Diane Sawyer, and read about him in the New York Times. He was that poor Harlem kid from a broken family who, with a winning smile, grit and goodness, is paying his way through Penn State by tap dancing on the subway. He is the crowned prince of the American Dream. Even if it’s just one story of overcoming the odds…
Joshua Johnson is the good son. Whenever we despair about the staggering racial wealth gap, decreased access to higher education, or growing poverty and crime, our affinity for Joshua grows and his story comforts us. We saw him on Ellen, saw him with Diane Sawyer, and read about him in the New York Times. He was that poor Harlem kid from a broken family who, with a winning smile, grit and goodness, is paying his way through Penn State by tap dancing on the subway. He is the crowned prince of the American Dream. Even if it’s just one story of overcoming the odds, it’s the one we hold on to.
The story started as one might suspect. According to the New York Times “when he received an acceptance letter from Penn State, Mr. Johnson saw an opportunity to improve his fortunes. A chance to go to college meant he could get a degree and eventually a well-paying job.” But even with generous financial aid from Penn State and federal loans, Josh still needed to come up with around $10,000 each year to pay for school. Joshua’s family could not help — no one in the long line of Joshua’s ancestors has ever gone to college or even owned property — for them, like many Americans, there exists no financial cushion at all. The sharp edges of Joshua’s financial life made him terrified to incur private student loans. So he spent weekends and breaks from school traveling back to New York City to dance on the Subway to raise that difference.
He was a made-for-TV success story. Eventually Ellen DeGeneres magnanimously — as is her way — handed him a larger-than-life check for a $35,000 college scholarship. Thinking like the middle-class kid he aspired to be, he used the great majority of that money to pay down his existing student loans. Ellen also gave him to us, the optimistic people, as evidence that we are okay. And Josh spent two years helping us believe it. While still attending to his studies, he danced on an episode of Dancing with the Stars, at Madison Square Garden, for the Penn State student body, and spoke at college graduations as far away as South Africa. He spoke of chasing dreams, overcoming obstacles and never giving up.
He also played the part that we wanted him to play off stage. Each semester, a deposit on tuition was due by the end of the first month. If tuition was not paid in full a month before finals, he would be barred from taking exams and kicked out of school. Josh had that rhythm down, making the early deposit and then furiously studying and tapping to complete his tuition payment before taking finals. He was no A-student, and like many graduates of inner city high schools was ill-prepared for the rigor of college life, but when his reading assignments overwhelmed him, he would call his mom and she would stay with him on the phone as he read for hours — getting him back on track when he wandered. Night after night she would fall asleep to the sound of her son on speakerphone, working his way through history.
But the rhythm faltered his last semester. After entertaining his classmates and inspiring the world, Josh never actually graduated from Penn State. Despite his best efforts, he failed to make his last tuition payment of several thousand dollars. As he puts it, he “ran out of blessings.” While Penn State let him don the cap and gown, and smile for pictures at graduation, his failure to complete tuition meant that he lost his financial aid and unless he pays them the full tuition amount, roughly $25,000, he does not get his degree. It is fairly clear that Josh cannot pay all of this money, so despite completing all of his course work, he is not a college graduate. Adding insult to injury, the federal student loans are now also due since he “terminated” his schooling. The American reality is that, more often than not, the gap is far too wide for one boy to bridge — even a boy with a gift and the wind at his back.
Perhaps, he tells me with shame in his voice, he could have saved some money somehow or danced more. Josh won’t attribute his problems to anyone other than himself, and maintains such a wide and optimistic smile that makes a cynic like me wonder if he has lost his mind. But a financial pinch that most college students could have absorbed with some family support transformed Josh from master of his destiny to a captive of cold university policy and student loans.
We have failed him. We, the subscribers to the American Dream. We, the searchers for individual data points that give us cover to ignore the trends. As we pat Josh on the back for doing the impossible, we’ve shut our eyes to just how impossible the American dream actually is. We want him to succeed, need him to succeed, and are willing to see success even when it is only a shallow illusion.
What might opening our eyes look like? Noting the expanding wealth gap, making college more affordable, funding more scholarships and financial aid to students in need, giving students a bigger share of endowment funds instead of private equity firms, or even lending money to Joshua at an interest rate comparable to the interest rate at which we loan money to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.
As a banking scholar, I can’t help but see Josh’s situation in those terms. The root of “credit” is the Greek “credere” or to believe. Our credit policies in this country reveal who it is we believe in. When Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citibank saw the terms of the bailout deal in 2008, he exclaimed “This is very cheap credit!” We clearly believe in banks and their ability to shape our country and economy. But don’t we also believe in Joshua Johnsons? Is he not too important to fail? Too fundamental to the safety and soundness of our dream?
You really should see him perform — it is magic. His love of life and perennial optimism flow from his body and move the ground beneath his feet. Catch him online, or if you are lucky and in N.Y.C. he may enter your Subway car, pardon the interruption, and then share a piece of his soul. He is saving up for a move to Atlanta, quite sure there are opportunities there that will set him up for his big break. Joshua describes his current situation with a smile, as “survival mode;” he’s on a five-borough couch tour — in other words, he is homeless, but has a lot of friends. He recounts the recent evening he made his way to the airport–not because he was going anywhere, but just hoping to find a safe place to sleep until he could try again in the morning.
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