My Brother’s Keeper
The announcement was unusually personal and many thought quite heart-felt: at the end of February President Obama introduced a White House initiative he called “My Brother’s Keeper,” designed, the administration claimed, to empower boys and young men of color to meet the challenges and overcome the obstacles to success that they face disproportionately in US society. But when all the tears had been wiped away, what had the president actually proposed, and what did it mean?
He was joined in the East Room by General Colin Powell, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Magic Johnson, and many “leaders from key national and regional philanthropic foundations and major businesses,” according to the White House.
President Obama cited a range of statistics that are by now drearily familiar: as recently as 2013 only 14 percent of Black boys and 18 percent of Hispanic boys scored proficient or above on the 4th grade reading component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to 42 percent of white boys and 21 percent of Black and Hispanic girls; youth who cannot read “proficiently” by third grade are four times less likely to graduate high school by 19; by the time students have reached 9th grade, 42 percent of Black male
In Response: Adolph Reed, Jr. in Harper’s Magazine
He was joined in the East Room by General Colin Powell, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Magic Johnson, and many “leaders from key national and regional philanthropic foundations and major businesses,” according to the White House.
President Obama cited a range of statistics that are by now drearily familiar: as recently as 2013 only 14 percent of Black boys and 18 percent of Hispanic boys scored proficient or above on the 4th grade reading component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to 42 percent of white boys and 21 percent of Black and Hispanic girls; youth who cannot read “proficiently” by third grade are four times less likely to graduate high school by 19; by the time students have reached 9th grade, 42 percent of Black male
In Response: Adolph Reed, Jr. in Harper’s Magazine
March 2, 2014 letters@harpers.org “Electoralitis,” the word coined by Adolph Reed, Jr. (“Nothing Left” March, 2014) to illuminate a wildly contagious epidemic that has afflicted and laid waste to huge swaths of the population and the radical left, is practically perfect. Every election cycle in which left politics are tethered to the Democratic Party leaves us more anemic, weaker, more flat on our
by billayers / 37min