But first, before turning to “My Brother’s Keeper”: Senator Harry Reid has filed cloture on President Obama’s nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and set the full Senate’s vote on it for Tuesday.
I’m told that red-state Democrats are not happy about this vote, and rightly so, especially in light of Mr. Adegbile’s enthusiastic and politicized defense of convicted Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (among other radical credentials). I’ve written about the nomination here and here, and the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent op-ed last week opposing the nomination, by Republican Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey and Democratic Philadelphia district attorney R. Seth Williams.
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Last week the president announced his new “My Brother’s Keeper” program. It will involve a combined effort of businesses, philanthropies, and government to improve the prospects of “at risk” young men of color. The White House, by the way, uses “of color” to include, in addition to blacks, Hispanics (who are not a nonracial group) and to exclude Asians (which are), but that’s a story for another day.
Now, it’s a good thing that the president wants to address the problems facing these young men (and it would be an even better thing if program ends up addressing the key underlying problem, namely out-of-wedlock births). But the obvious question, which I raised when the program was first hinted at in the President’s State of the Union speech, is why its efforts should be limited to young men of certain racial and ethnic groups — indeed, why it should not also include young women.
It is almost always illegal for the government (and any private program that receives federal money) to discriminate on the basis of race and ethnicity. There is no “compelling” interest to do so here. It may be that a disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos are at-risk, but many are not, and many whites, Asians, and others are. This is just another kind of “profiling.”
Nor will it do to say that there are other programs available for those being excluded here, as one White House official is quoted as saying. This is just another separate-but-equal argument.
President Obama has caved in to pressure from the left — the Congressional Black Caucus and others — to do something he was generally unwilling to do up to now: Endorse a federal program that is overtly limited to those of a particular color. Too bad.
Constitutionality aside, it is divisive and unfair to have racially exclusive programs. And what kind of message is given to blacks and Latinos when they are told that their young men are so problematic that they have to be singled out for special help to ensure that they don’t screw up?
Consider: A Chronicle of Higher Education article last week was headlined “Minority Male Students Face Challenge to Achieve at Community Colleges,” and it discussed various successes and failures in that eponymous arena. Particularly intriguing was this passage:
And instead of offering small, “boutique” programs for minority students that attract just a few dozen students, [one expert] said, colleges should extend programs like mandatory study-skills classes, learning communities, and tutoring to all students. Minority students will benefit disproportionately from such strategies, she said, but they won’t feel embarrassed by participating or feel that they’re being singled out as “at risk.”
So, again: What kind of a message is being sent by President Obama and the federal government when one or two racial/ethnic groups are singled out for special treatment because they are so likely to screw up? Or should it be assumed instead that they are being singled out because The System is so stacked against them?
I’m not sure which message is worse. How difficult would it have been for the president to have designed the new program so that it was open to at-risk youth of all colors — the way even the Chronicle of Higher Education, for Pete’s sake, apparently acknowledges makes more sense?
My thoughts on “My Brother’s Keeper” have been quoted in a number of places, including the Washington Post.
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Finally, in case you missed it, here’s Linda Chavez’s appearance on the PBS NewsHour last week on the significance of Volkswagen auto workers in Tennessee rejecting UAW membership — and the declining importance of unions for today’s workers.
