Disappointed but not surprised: On Felicity Huffman’s Painless sentencing
Last week, actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison amid the recent public cheating scandal. She defrauded the education system, and she will serve two weeks.
Following this arguably light sentencing, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t even serve the full two weeks. If the Brock Turner ruling was any indication, maybe Huffman is not “cut out” for the prison system, so the judge will go easy on her. Meanwhile, in 2012, Tanya McDowell, a Black mother experiencing homelessness, was sentenced to five years for enrolling her son in a school outside of his district, according to AJ Plus. Five years. Yet, Felicity Huffman, an actress who had the means to pay for her daughter to get into a school rightfully, faces two weeks. This story is infuriating not only for the blaring white privilege but also the classism (one of many byproducts of white supremacy). College is already a capitalist structure that preys on poor people by convincing us that the only way to succeed under capitalism is to invest in schools that sometimes do not even invest in us. For me, this story feels personal. Five years ago, I watched the acceptance letters roll in. DePaul University. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These were great schools, undoubtedly, but what about the looming debt? How was I going to afford them with no college fund and barely any scholarship money? The answer was simple: I was not.
