President Obama calls for minority youth outreach programme |
President Obama calls for minority youth outreach programme
BBC News
2014-02-27
US President Barack Obama has called for a national campaign to improve opportunities for black and Hispanic boys and young men.
Called My Brother’s Keeper, his new initiative aims to overcome the socioeconomic conditions keeping such youth from thriving.
The White House said businesses had pledged $150m (£89m) to promote it.
The president said it was an “outrage” that black and Hispanic men in the US fared so much worse than white men.
“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 behaviour, going to jail, being profiled – this is a moral issue for our country,” Mr Obama said at the White House on Thursday, with more than a dozen black and Hispanic young men and boys standing behind him.
“It’s also an economic issue for our country.”
In a memorandum released on Thursday, the White House said the task force would focus on issues facing boys and young minority men under the age of 25.
Obama’s ‘bad choices’
America’s first black president has generally avoided policies defined by race, the BBC’s Beth McLeod reports from Washington DC, but in an emotional speech Mr Obama said it was an outrage that young Hispanic and African-American men have the odds stacked against them in US society…
…He spoke of visiting a school near his home in Chicago and sharing with the boys there his own experience of growing up without a father, acknowledging to them that he had been angry about that and had made “bad choices” and “got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do”.
“I could see myself in these young men,” Mr Obama told the audience at the White House. “And the only difference is that I grew up in an environment that was a little bit more forgiving, so when I made a mistake the consequences were not as severe.”…
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