The scene in many ways perfectly illustrated both the power and promise of former President Barack Obama’s provocative White House initiative, My Brother’s Keeper. Propelled by the president’s forceful exhortation, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance – the nonprofit agency created to carry out the president’s agenda – had used its influence to draw hundreds of Detroit-area employers to the large convention hall, where they offered jobs to a group that unemployment statistics indicate is not coveted by corporate America: young Black and Latino males.
Compared to other groups in the U.S., young Black males have higher unemployment, lower graduation rates, less access to health care and higher incarceration rates. According to the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, by eighth grade, just 12 percent of Black boys and 17 percent of Latino boys were reading at or above proficiency, compared to 38 percent of White boys.
Since Obama announced My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) in February 2014, his engagement has led to an unprecedented surge in corporate, nonprofit and philanthropic support for this troubled population. In December, the White House described commitments of more than $1 billion from the private sector, calling the progress “remarkable.”
Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, a Chicago nonprofit that has been working in the Black community for the past 20 years, is skeptical about MBK’s prospects. He’s seen elaborate White House reports on My Brother’s Keeper and heard Obama’s speeches, but not enough evidence that the program has changed the lives of Black boys.
“I don’t buy the glitz; I don’t buy changing the world by press release,” said Jackson, former CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority and chief of staff for Chicago Public Schools. “The young men in Chicago who need My Brother’s Keeper the most have never heard of it. So when you say My Brother’s Keeper started these programs, that’s great. But the young men shooting and killing each other at alarming levels here have never heard of it.”
Chicago saw a 54 percent increase in homicides in 2016 over the previous year (from 496 to 762) and a 47 percent increase in shooting victims (from 2,939 to 4,331). That means that Chicago last year had more murders than the two largest American cities, New York and Los Angeles, combined.
Jackson said he was disturbed that, in Chicago, nonprofits that previously had shown no interest in the plight of black boys stepped into the arena to get their hands on My Brother’s Keeper money – crowding out smaller groups that had been doing the work for years.
“Here in Chicago, there are numerous nonprofits that serviced black men and boys who now no longer exist,” Jackson said, noting that many simply ran out of money. “They’re gone. Black men and boys are in just as bad and possibly worse condition as they were in before My Brother’s Keeper … It’s wonderful to have program brochures and reports, but until I see an infrastructure in place that’s reaching the people who need it most, then it’s a failed program.”
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