By Kevin Dedner, MPH
Last week President Obama announced his plans for “My Brothers Keepers”, a federal initiative which taps foundations and businesses to help create opportunities and remove barriers for young men of color. As part of the initiative, Obama also appointed an inter-agency task force to examine the Federal Government’s own policies and programs.
I like many, welcomed the news of a federal initiative addressing the challenges for men of color. Anytime a President uses his bully pulpit to speak to an issue, it is a significant moment that history will forever record. The issue is raised to a height of awareness that indicates its importance for the health and well-being of the country. When the first lady launched “Let’s Move”, the childhood obesity epidemic was raised to a level of awareness that marshalled government, business and philanthropic effort. Recent reports indicate that the tide may now be turning in the childhood obesity epidemic.
But the skeptic in me kept asking me to place myself in the shoes of the young man who has had a brush with the law and is now trying to correct his path. We all know someone like that. He’s wondering about the President’s initiative and asking, “What does this mean for me? Will I ever be able to get a decent job, make a living wage and provide for my family?” All he knows is that he is trying his best and nothing seems to work.
There is a good chance that as a teenager he was suspended from school (a situation which has created the cradle to prison pipeline); he may have been arrested for petty drugs possession (which has created mass incarceration and the new Jim Crow), and is likely to have dropped out of high school.
Somehow every time this conversation to help young men of color starts, personal responsibility is injected. That troubles me. While personal responsibility should be a part of the conversation, lack of personal responsibility alone does not explain the crisis among men of color in America. No one is making an excuse for those who have made mistakes. But it is intellectually dishonest to not acknowledge the structural and systematic challenges which prohibit young men of color from achieving the same level of success as their peers.
That imaginary young man who I’m thinking about has now taken personal responsibility. But there is something holding him back that he can’t put his fingers on, yet he knows it’s real.
You see, many young men of color – yes even those who have accepted personal responsibility – live in neighborhoods in which it is nearly impossible to lead healthy and productive lives. These neighborhoods are often filled with dilapidated houses and abandoned commercial buildings. They lack safe places to play and to be physically active, have little or no access to healthy foods and are often in close proximity to landfills or toxic wastes sites. The unemployment rate is high and consistently doubles the national average. These things are structural problems and added together are a formula for bad outcomes both socially, academically and health wise.
My sincere hope is My Brother’s Keeper will produce an elevated honest conversation about the challenges young boys and men of color face. But, most importantly, I am hopeful that the initiative will birth public policy at the state and federal level to help end the structural challenges young men of color face. And while personal responsibility is a part of the conversation, it ought not to be the theme of the conversation.
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