The success of “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s latest film, should be a celebration of Black excellence. Instead, it has become a cultural Rorschach test for how America feels about education — and who it thinks education is for.
The film’s director followed a familiar but rarely acknowledged path: college, film school, debt, discipline, and institutional training. He learned his craft in academic spaces that shaped his political voice, artistic language, and command of narrative. The film’s star, Michael B. Jordan, took a different road — no college degree, straight into work, talent meeting opportunity at the right moment.
Both men are extraordinary. Both paths are valid. But only one of those stories is routinely weaponized.
When Education Becomes the Problem
In the public conversation, Jordan’s success is often invoked as proof that college is unnecessary — especially for Black men. Coogler’s education, meanwhile, is treated as incidental, or worse, indulgent. The subtext is clear: Black excellence is more palatable when it’s uncredentialed. Education complicates the story. Education signals power.
This isn’t an accident. It’s stratification.
Stratification isn’t just about income — it’s about steering. About deciding, culturally and politically, who should build, who should think, who should manage, and who should lead. And the United States is increasingly engaged in a quiet re-sorting of Black and Brown ambition.
How Trades Are Being Framed
Suddenly, college is framed as a scam. Too expensive. Too ideological. Too elitist. Trades, we’re told, are the “smart” alternative. And again — trades are honorable, skilled, necessary work. Electricians, plumbers, and welders keep this country running. But let’s be honest about what’s happening: the trades are not being marketed as one option among many. They are being framed as the appropriate option for Black kids.
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This is not a critique of skilled labor — it’s a critique of who is encouraged to pursue power-shaping education and who is quietly redirected away from it.
No one is urging the children of wealthy families to abandon universities en masse. No one is telling legacy admits that law school is unrealistic or that policy work is overrated. The skepticism about college only becomes urgent when access broadens.
The Data Behind the Divide
The data tells the rest of the story. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 53% of white adults hold an associate degree or higher, compared with 39% of Black adults and just under 30% of Hispanic adults. That gap persists even as overall college attainment rises. This isn’t a talent issue — it’s structural. And instead of closing the gap by expanding opportunity, we’re now being told to normalize it by narrowing aspiration.
The economic consequences are not theoretical. A bachelor’s degree still delivers a substantial earnings premium across racial lines. For Black Americans, lifetime earnings increase dramatically between a high-school diploma and a bachelor’s degree — a difference that shapes home ownership, retirement security, healthcare access, and intergenerational mobility.
Yet the cultural script is shifting. We celebrate individual exceptions — the Michael B. Jordans — while quietly lowering expectations for everyone else. That’s survivorship bias masquerading as wisdom. For every star who “didn’t need college,” there are thousands of equally talented people whose careers stall without credentials, networks, or institutional backing.
Why Education Threatens Power
Coogler himself has spoken openly about carrying roughly $200,000 in film school debt, a burden he took on because education was still the price of entry into elite creative spaces. His success doesn’t disprove the value of college; it underscores it. He didn’t bypass the system — he mastered it.
And that’s precisely what makes education threatening.
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A college-educated Black and Brown population doesn’t just earn more. It votes differently. It organizes differently. It challenges authority differently. It produces lawyers, researchers, policymakers, professors, and cultural critics — people who don’t just participate in the economy but shape it.
The Real Lesson Beneath Sinners’ Success
So when America tells Black and Brown students to “be realistic,” what it’s often really saying is: don’t expect to lead. Build the house. Don’t own it. Fix the system. Don’t design it.
We should be expanding choice — fully funding public universities, canceling predatory student debt, and strengthening community colleges and apprenticeships alike. What we should not do is disguise stratification as concern or sell narrowed horizons as empowerment.
America doesn’t hate college. It becomes suspicious of it the moment Black students start using it to claim power.
And that is the real lesson hiding beneath “Sinners'” success — one worth confronting if we’re serious about Black futures.
Natalie Williams is an early childhood educator and senior director of education at the Miami Children’s Museum. She is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute and holds master’s degrees in business and special education.