MANSFIELD — Mya Frazier still remembers the hopeless and embarrassment she felt because of a bad credit score.
As a budding news reporter and divorced single mother in her early 20s, she struggled to pay for both bills and child care. Student debt loomed over her.
She turned to credit cards. She sought out debt consolidation and credit repair services she characterized as predatory.
“I have never forgotten how cruddy and humiliating that felt,” she recalled to an audience at the Renaissance Theater on Thursday. “I was a financial journalist and my entire life felt like a financial disaster.”
Frazier went on to become an award-winning investigative reporter, but the impact of those years didn’t fade.
In fact, they propelled her towards her next big story.
“Why at the worst moments in people’s lives do we make those struggling the most pay more?” she asked. “That question never left me.”
Frazier, a Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow, has spent the last three years exploring the history and impact of credit scores, digging deep into how American financial systems — like credit scores and lending — shape people’s everyday lives.
In her talk, the last of 2025’s Kaleidoscope series held at the Renaissance Theater, Frazier shared some of those findings, which she’s currently compiling for a book.
She argued credit scores — along with the multi-billion dollar industries behind creating, tracking and repairing them — are the driving force behind a new class system.
“Credit scores rip us from our context,” she said. “They shift blame onto us as individuals for what is often larger shifts out of our control.”
Those factors, Frazier said, include shifts in the economy like the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic, rising costs for health care and higher education, along with years of equality that still have ripple effects today.
“We’re living under record levels of income inequality,” Frazier added. “We’ve had massive declines in economic mobility. We’ve seen dramatic rises in consumer debt, especially among the low income and working classes.”
Something is deeply unfair about how the system works
Frazier also discussed how the legacy of systemic racism has impacted the ability of some Americans to build generational wealth, something that can still impact credit scores today.
She shared the results of a recent study on that examined credit scores generated by using the VantageScore model.
“This study found that even when a Black American has a spotless record of repayment, their scores on average are 71 points lower than the credit scores of white individuals with the same repayment record,” she said.
Class divides also appear to have an impact on scores.
“Even if you have a spotless record of repayment, if you’re from a low income household, your credit score is roughly 76 points lower than the richest Americans with the same spotless records of repayment,” she said. “Such data suggests that something’s deeply unfair about how the system works.”
She also pointed out that credit scores are relatively new.
It wasn’t until 1989 that the Fair Isaac Corporation, better known as FICO, created the credit scoring model still in use today.
When asked about solutions to the pitfalls of credit scoring, Frazier didn’t offer specifics.
“That’s one of the challenges I’m facing as I’m finishing up this project is, ‘What is the pathways to reform?’ I’m not sure yet,” she said during an audience question-and-answer session. “I’m going to keep working on that part of the question.”
“There are people who want to fix this and are trying to do things,” she added. “But it is a very powerful industry with powerful lobbyists and enormous influence in D.C.”
“We need better regulation of the industry, which we’re not getting right now because the one agency that sort of had some (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) is being completely dismantled,” she added.
Community member Margaret Davis said she found the conversation interesting.
“I’m glad somebody such as her recognizes it needs to be looked into,” she said. “I know there’s no clear cut answers, but at least somebody is looking into it.”
Public invited to follow-up conversation Nov. 20
Frazier’s visit to Mansfield was part of the Kaleidoscope Series, a speaker series focused on exploring complex issues facing Richland County through fresh perspectives, with the goal of encouraging civic engagement, empathy and forward momentum.
The 2025 Kaleidoscope series was a collaborative effort by the Richland County Foundation, Richland Source, the Renaissance Performing Arts Association and the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library
A follow-up engagement session on economic mobility will take place on Nov. 20 at 5:30 p.m. in the Community Room at the Ontario Branch of the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library.
