To understand Bernie Sanders’ appeal, you need to start with my blue-collar, Korean immigrant mother

The American dream doesn’t always function how it’s supposed to

Close-up of Bernie Sanders with his fists raised (AP)

My mother's postal route takes her down the winding, unpaved backroads of rural Maine. She shovels herself out of snow piles, sliding through sleet, and endures stifling summer days without air conditioning.

A Korean immigrant raised in extreme poverty, she worked hard to get a book-keeping job in Seoul. When she arrived in the United States, she helped support her family by working at a factory and attended community college to earn an associate degree in accounting. But my parents experienced significant financial losses, and she ended up having to take on a steady blue-collar job for its healthcare benefits.

This decision was supposed to build a stable life for her children. But we were not secure: labor class jobs are precarious, putting the body at risk of injury, and workers' compensation isn't always accepted. At times, the salary wasn't high enough for health insurance co-pays.

Now, my mother, the indefatigable wonder and the sole woman of color in her Maine workplace, loves Bernie Sanders. She has this in common with my affluent, university-educated friends who attend graduate school and campaign on the weekends. Their worlds collided unexpectedly, buoyed along by young Americans’ fear of an uncertain future filled with student loan debt and a largely unaddressed climate crisis.

For my family, the myth of the American dream came undone because of the stark student loan reality. A university education does not provide income mobility when there's staggering debt.

With my mother's own career dreams at a perpetual standstill, she taught her children to pursue their wildest academic dreams. We spent our adolescence striving for full scholarships at university. I stayed at my public school with its scarce curriculum and crumbling infrastructure. My younger brother went to the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, a selective boarding school for gifted students that was ranked second in the nation by US News and World Report in 2019.

The Maine School of Science and Mathematics is located in Limestone, a small town near the Canadian border surrounded by potato fields and farmers. This is a place where students get school breaks to help their families work in the fields. The town’s website declares that its population of 2,036 people have been “living the dream for 150 years.”

The school’s population is scant: In 2019, there were 145 students and 18 teachers. They live in isolation. When my brother was a student, years ago, the only place of business nearby was a hybrid convenience store, grocer, diner, and gas station. The students navigate a challenging curriculum, surrounded by a community that loves STEM subjects, and learn to code in their free time. Many, like my brother, go on to renowned universities or medical school with little to no debt. The school was sold to my family as a saving grace for its population of economically disadvantaged students, who make up 18 per cent of its intake.

But there is one story I have mulled over in my mind for almost a decade. One of my brother’s classmates, a talented young woman, was accepted into one of the most prestigious universities in the United States. She ended up not being able to go because of her family’s financial constraints. All that time at the academy for gifted kids, all those weekends spent coding and afternoons spend studying science couldn’t deliver her with the future she deserved. Money stood in the way of her American dream.

And this is the problem with stopgap solution. They don’t consider the idea that maybe opportunity isn’t the only obstacle on the road to financial stability. An acceptance to university does not necessarily mean scholarship aid. A school that accepts students from economically disadvantaged farm families may offer conscientious teaching and a curriculum to prepare them for a rigorous university. However, they may not have a solution for a child that needs to lend a hand to their parents, or help with their siblings, or find money to go to college afterwards.

The reality that educational opportunity may not lead to a more stable life has become pervasive, reaching beyond the working class community I come from. Millennials who started their careers during the 2008 recession entered the workforce with lower starting salaries, if they were employed at all. The Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for 2019’s third quarter said that outstanding student debt rose to $1.5 trillion. The Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of US Households in 2018 to May 2019 said that “24 per cent of adults went without some form of medical care due to an inability to pay.”

These problems that have plagued blue collar families, and many others, for a long time now have been popularized on the debate stage by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Those who seek out their progressive policies, like the friends I mentioned and my mother, are now uniting to campaign for one candidate.

Biden won Maine on Super Tuesday by an extraordinarily small margin. Ilhan Omar tweeted out: “Imagine if the progressives consolidated last night like the moderates consolidated, who would have won?” making note of the states Bernie narrowly lost. Biden’s comeback shows that only time will tell if Bernie’s growing appeal, and campaign fervor, are enough to win the primaries.