My Brother's Keeper

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"My Brother's Keeper" is a new initiative that President Obama has unveiled.  This program focuses on helping young Black and Latino men with the challenges they face and to get them out of what Obama calls the "school-to-prison pipeline".  In addition the intentions of this new program are to help put boys and young men of color on the path to opportunity and success.  Obama will establish a "My Brother's Keeper Task Force" which will identify the best practices and how to expand upon them.  Some of the areas that "My Brother's Keeper" will focus on is early childhood development, school readiness, literacy by third grade, and school discipline reform.  Businesses have also pledged to aid in "My Brother's Keeper" by offering internships and designing school curricula to prepare these kids for jobs.  In fact businesses have planned to invest around $200 million over five years in order to help men of color.  Furthermore, this is not a program Obama intends on spending much if any government money on.  He will not be putting any line items called "My Brother's Keeper" on 2015's fiscal budget.  This relates to AP GoPo because it goes along with our political culture and the idea of "equal opportunity".  As we've read in Chapter four, a majority of American's believe in equal opportunities.  This is a perfect example; Obama believes that these young men of color need a 'boost' in order to have an equal opportunity.  In this case that 'boost' is the My Brother's Keeper program.
Personally I have mixed feelings about this program.  I understand wanting everyone to have equal opportunities, but there's a fine line between an equal opportunity and defeating the greater purpose.  I think it is a wonderful concept and I also think its awesome that Obama has been able to get businesses to invest money into this program rather than spending government money.  However, I do not really agree with the idea of focusing this program on young Black and Latino men.  I feel like the "school-to-prison pipeline" is becoming an increasing problem for a variety of many adolescents; not just Blacks and Latinos.  This to me seems similar to affirmative action.  Which in essence seems like a good idea, but when you take a further look into it, it does more harm than good.  In my opinion, aiming My Brother's Keeper exclusively at Black and Latino boys deviates from the bigger picture.  In this case the bigger picture could be one of two things; becoming more competitive in the race for education or eliminating racial discrimination.  In order to compete globally in the race for education and advancing technologies we have to progress as a whole society.  This is why it seems more logical to have the program's intended audience to be America's youth as a whole rather then just a section of it.  Additionally, we have had a long battle with racial discrimination in America.  To me aiming My Brother's Keeper at young Black and Latino men specifically, draws more of a separation between the races than it would if the program was aimed at helping all of America's youth.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea but I wish it would have had a broader spectrum of possible participants.