This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-sees-focus-on-young-black-and-hispanic-men-in-post-presidency/2014/02/27/259fc212-9f6e-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Obama sees focus on young black and Hispanic men in post-presidency Obama sees focus on young black and Hispanic men as focus after presidency
(about 4 hours later)
A few months after a group of young black men and he had their second intimate meeting with President Obama, Marshaun Bacon sat at Hyde Park Academy High School in Chicago and dreamed that he could cross paths with the president another time way in the future. He has lamented growing up without a father before. He has acknowledged, in speeches and in a best-selling autobiography, his anger and confusion about that fact. He has admitted youthful drug use and the pull of other temptations.
“I’m hopeful that, once his term is over and he comes back to Chicago, he’ll still want to be involved in the BAM program,” Bacon, a counselor with the Becoming a Man program for inner city youth, said last fall. But with the ornate East Room of the White House as a backdrop, Barack Obama on Thursday became the first U.S. president ever to publicly utter, “I got high.” He said those three, once politically devastating words standing in front of 19 at-risk black and Hispanic teenagers, to remind them that he was once like them.
On Thursday, Obama made clear his thinking is in the same place. He announced $200 million in commitments by foundations to aid young men of color, part of a broader administrationwide initiative to address this group of youths. It will be the beginning of an effort, aides say, that will last beyond his time in the White House. He was not just the first black president or a black father. He was a concerned black leader seeking to stir public outrage over the disparities in educational achievement and incarceration faced by young minority men — a demographic he once approached with political hesitation for fear he would be accused of racial favoritism.
“The group that is facing some of the most severe challenges in 21st century America is boys and young men of color,” Obama said at a news conference in the East Room of the White House Thursday afternoon. “I believe the continuing struggles of so many boys and young men ... this is a moral issue for our country. We need to give every child, no matter what they look like ... the chance to reach their full potential.” Early in his presidency, in attempting to sand the rough edges of the George W. Bush administration, Obama would use his story as evidence that the United States — far from bullying and intolerant — is a country that forgives, overcomes and works toward a more perfect union, to use a phrase that he turns to often.
“The president has made clear the challenges facing young men and boys of color is something of great personal importance to him,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, in a call with reporters Wednesday. “And for this reason, this initiative is something that is one that the president has been closely involved in every step along the way, and one that he and the first lady will remain committed to after the end of his presidency.” On Thursday, though, he held up his story as a sunny exception to the cloudier rule.
As Obama unveiled the new initiative on Thursday, Bacon and three boys from Becoming a Man were with him at the White House. Many young black and Latino men in this country face far steeper hills than their white counterparts — or than he did as a young black man raised in a white middle-class neighborhood in Honolulu. Obama condemned the nation’s apathy toward obstacles to minority progress, and called for greater public attention to knocking them down.
It was their third encounter with the president, a rare series of meetings between the president and a single group of inner-city youth. Bacon and the young men, along with about a dozen other students, last met with Obama at the White House in June for a Father’s Day event and, a year ago, they all gathered with him at Hyde Park for a private discussion on the challenges of growing up as a black man in America. “The group that is facing some of the most severe challenges in 21st century America is boys and young men of color,” the president said. “I believe the continuing struggles of so many boys and young men, the fact that too many of them are falling by the wayside, dropping out, unemployed, involved in negative behavior, going to jail, being profiled — this is a moral issue for our country.”
“I honestly believe that the connection that the president made with those young men in Chicago and then here at the White House touched the president as deeply as it did those young men,” Jarrett said. Obama’s remarks came at an event highlighting a new White House initiative, “My Brother’s Keeper,” to secure commitments from foundations and businesses to help keep young minority men in the classroom and out of prison. He characterized the moment as part of a “year of action” in which he is using his executive authority to accomplish his goals.
The initiative Obama unveiled Thursday is called “My Brother’s Keeper,” and it features $200 million worth of commitments by top foundations such as Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Bloomberg Philanthropies to introduce programs across the country to help young black and Hispanic men graduate high school and stay out of the criminal justice system. But it was clear that this was no ordinary White House event. Obama was channeling his life experience, from the beaches of Hawaii to the streets of Chicago, and was projecting forward to what he would do when he leaves the White House at age 55.
Obama announced commitments from corporate leaders – including Joe Echevarria from Deloitte, Magic Johnson from Magic Johnson Enterprises, Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake Partners, Adam Silver of the National Basketball Association and Thomas Tull of Legendary Entertainment – to aid young minority men. The White House did not put a dollar figure on these commitments. “The president has made clear the challenges facing young men and boys of color is something of great personal importance to him,” said Valerie Jarrett, his senior adviser and longtime friend. “And for this reason, this initiative is something that is one that the president has been closely involved in every step along the way, and one that he and the first lady will remain committed to after the end of his presidency.”
Others attending the event included General Colin Powell, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. The initiative features $200 million worth of commitments by organizations such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies to invest in programs that help young black and Hispanic men.
In addition to the outside commitments, Obama is establishing a federal task force, led by cabinet secretary Broderick Johnson, that will seek to marshal federal programs in support of young minority men. The group will focus on evaluating and promoting the best policies for improving the lives of young men of color – and the best metrics for assessing success or failure. Obama also established a federal task force that will seek to marshal federal programs in the effort. The group will focus on evaluating and promoting the best policies for improving the lives of young men of color, and the best metrics for assessing success or failure.
Cecila Muñoz, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, said young men of color are being targeted for special help because they are disproportionately affected by many of society’s ills. The president spoke in front of an audience that included many black and Hispanic leaders. Also attending were the parents of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, two unarmed black teenagers from Florida who were shot dead in separate incidents, causing national outrage.
“We know, based on the academic evidence, that boys and young men of color, regardless of their economic background, are disproportionately at risk,” she said. “And we know that this starts at a very early age.” It was the shooting of Martin, and the subsequent not-guilty verdict in the jury trial of George Zimmerman, that led Obama to redouble his focus last year on what his administration can do to help young black men. But the president framed his message Thursday as a way to appeal to the entire nation.
Jarrett described the initiative as an outgrowth of Obama thinking about how to better bolster young minority men and noted that the event was held just one day after the second anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black youth fatally shot in an altercation in Florida. “If I can persuade, you know, Sharpton and O’Reilly to be in the same meeting, then it means that there are people of good faith who want to get some stuff done,” he said, referring to opposing television personalities Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly, both of whom attended.
“In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin verdict, I spoke about the need to bolster and reinforce our young men,” Obama said Thursday. In personal language, Obama sought to make the case that the nation must act as a whole to lift up struggling young men.
He said the administration would also look for ways to partners with Republicans focused on criminal justice reform, citing Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) as well as Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.). “I know if I had a son, on the day he was born, I would have felt everything I felt with Malia and Sasha — the awe, the gratitude, the overwhelming sense of responsibility to do everything in my power to protect that amazing new life from this big world out there,” he said. “I don’t have a son, but as parents, that’s what we should want not just for our children but for all children.”
“We all have a job to do,” Obama said Thursday, “and we can do it together—black and white; urban and rural; Democrat and Republican.” After speaking nearly 5,000 words, Obama turned away from the microphone and gave a personal message to one of the teenagers, telling him, “I’m counting on you.”
Jarrett said the new initiative “is just the start of an effort that we’ll continue to build over the next month and years.”