“My Brother’s Keeper?”

Last updated on: February 28, 2014 at 8:46 am by Jane the Actuary

“My Brother’s Keeper?” 2014-02-28T08:46:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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In the paper today: “Obama announces initiative for young black and Latino men“:

Obama announced a program called My Brother’s Keeper and ordered the federal government to focus resources on programs that had been proven to help minority young men stay out of trouble, succeed in school and land good jobs. . .

The effort will resemble others in Obama’s second-term agenda, as it relies on existing resources, recruits private-sector participation and depends not at all on the approval of Congress. He’s calling on prominent men of color — Colin Powell and Magic Johnson are already on board — to bring police, business and philanthropic leaders to the cause.

But the initiative is unique for Obama in that it targets beneficiaries specifically by race, a departure for the first African American president, who typically talks about disadvantages in economic terms rather than racial ones.

The [project] is a public-private partnership designed to better focus existing government funds and to leverage private investment. The official announcement, originally scheduled for two weeks ago, was delayed by a snowstorm.

Obama on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum setting up a task force to figure out which public and private efforts are working and how to expand upon them. The task force will recommend ways to create incentives for state and local governments and the private sector to invest in the most effective programs. So few details . . . will the outcome be another set of mentoring programs, high school tutoring, and college scholarships and mentoring exclusively benefiting black and Hispanic boys, or will the approach be more indirect, with such programs offered at high-poverty neighborhoods and schools, but open to all?

Here’s the official fact sheet from the White House. These are the action points:

Assess the impact of Federal policies, regulations, and programs of general applicability on boys and young men of color, so as to develop proposals that will enhance positive outcomes and eliminate or reduce negative ones.

Recommend, where appropriate, incentives for the broad adoption by national, State, and local public and private decision makers of effective and innovative strategies and practices for providing opportunities to and improving outcomes for boys and young men of color.

Create an Administration-wide “What Works” online portal to disseminate successful programs and practices that improve outcomes for boys and young men of color.

Develop a comprehensive public website, to be maintained by the Department of Education, that will assess, on an ongoing basis, critical indicators of life outcomes for boys and young men of color in absolute and relative terms.

Work with external stakeholders to highlight the opportunities, challenges, and efforts affecting boys and young men of color.

Recommend to the President means of ensuring sustained efforts within the Federal Government and continued partnership with the private sector and philanthropic community as set forth in the Presidential Memorandum.

Will this work? It depends, I suppose, on how narrowly and blindly you define “outcomes.” For example, for the first bullet point, if your metric is “number of black boys suspended from school” then all you have to do is demand that schools suspend fewer black boys, regardless of behavior. If you want to recommend incentives for “providing opportunities” for minority boys, the easiest way to check this box is a quota system on school/college admissions. To actually improve outcomes, in terms of the percentage of black and Hispanic boys who become successful adults, is harder. (Hint: it helps if he’s got a dad in the home!)

Is it a Bad Thing to focus on minority boys? In a way, it’s probably safer than focusing on boys, in general, due to political sensitivities, even though it’s been shown by scholars that minority youth are just hit hardest by the trends impacting all boys — such as in “Why Boys Fail” (my summary here) and Christina Hoff Sommers’ book (which I thought I had likewise summarized, but it turns out I only commented on her article, here).

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