In presenting his new My Brother’s Keeper initiative, President Obama takes no real political risk. There is no opportunity for a re-election bid, his second term up in two years. Coast is clearing, so the black president can ease it up a bit without fearing any backlash or wrath from white voters. It keeps his solidly loyal black base happy, whether their unemployment rate is still close to double the national average or not. There could be a slice of opportunity to leverage some Democratic outreach to Latino voters so they don’t feel left out (hence, the all-encompassing messaging of “men of color” rather than “black men” to make it safe – everyone’s lumping the two together these days).
Even with the $200 million pledged in private sector money, in addition to the $150 million deposit before the announcement, this is your standard obligatory nod to Black History Month in its last week. Day before was Treasury Secretary Jack Lew kicking off the annual Morton Meetings in remembrance of Azie Taylor Morton, first black Treasury Secretary (who knew, right?). Nothing exactly bad about this, but it’s always good to understand the public relations and photo op value of these events and to weigh or consider any eventual impact. There are untold numbers of federal agencies and their bosses all doing the same thing, and of course they should since a quarter of the federal workforce that is black expects them to.
Both sides of the aisle are doing it, and perhaps it’s good to see them sweating for black voter eyeballs throughout the span of one month. Depends on how you look at it. Even the quiet Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is normally reticent on such topics, recently hosted a gathering of African American Senators to celebrate their legacy in the august legislative body. In 2014, Democrats are struggling to find a resonating sweet spot to lure black voters to the polls, Republicans hoping to keep them home. Black History Month becomes a prominent, if not very short-lived, battleground in those efforts.
My Brother’s Keeper, however, gets the most attention because of its sponsor in the White House. And there is really no perfect way of going about this. The president will get slammed from every side, relentlessly hunted down by ideologues and passions from both his left and right. Conservatives are already blasting him for playing racial favoritism – “what about young white men?” cries Twitter. Others will wrongly accuse him of blowing up the federal deficit with spending on undeserving black boys – when all he’s doing is soliciting corporate sponsors for some change (they get a tax break and maybe some leniency from federal regulators in return). Some progressive black intellectuals on the left will feel it’s too little, too late. It’s a peculiar pickle he finds himself in.
To his credit, this is the first time we have seen a president insert himself so personally into the topic, much less even mention young black men as the focus of an initiative (not even the “first black president” before this “first black president,” haha). Presidents have talked about the plight of African Americans for years, but never so specifically and daringly about the plight of black men. ”The worst part is we’ve become numb to these statistics,” said the president during remarks at the White House, arguably offering the most candid and biting assessment of the challenges faced by young black men by a sitting president. “We’re not surprised by them. We take them as the norm. We just assume this is an inevitable part of American life, instead of the outrage that it is.” Hard to argue with that.
Predictably, the Republican National Committee immediately dispatched its Communications Director for Black Media Orlando Watson in response. “Young men of color face a crisis – one which President Obama has talked about the past five years but seemed uninterested in truly correcting,” grilled Watson in an email statement. “We’re glad the President is addressing this issue, but with Black and Hispanic youth unemployment at 26.2 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively, why has it taken the President more than five years to act?”
That seemed a bit rich coming from Republicans, though. Part of the GOP schtick or sell is the notion of “color blindness,” the bootstraps philosophy of success without the whiff of preferential treatment. Suddenly, we’re not so color blind anymore. Watson’s statement seemed like a stunning reversal on that position. That became confusing. Because if Republicans are somehow outraged that black unemployment is as high as it is then where’s the policy muscle to help alleviate that? Suddenly, there’s concern where there wasn’t. This president has been the target of much fire from his Republican rivals for either being too focused on issues that emphasize black struggle or inviting too many black celebrities to the White House. When messaging from individual Republican politicians can’t get outrageous enough about the president’s birthplace, subtle rhetorical bombs are dropped which either question his legitimacy or liken him to some unhinged African dictator (which is what Ted Nugent really wanted to say, but instead shrouded it with references to “Nazis”).
Certainly, the president has been a bit soft on the issue for the past six years. But, that’s not so much for lack of caring as it is the political realities he’s faced with. If he stepped out on it four years ago, would he be sitting where he is now? And so there’s this disingenuous argument posed by his opposition that politicians shouldn’t be politicians, yet knowing that’s what politicians do. There is no perfect timing for Brother’s Keeper, only perfect optics.
CHARLES D. ELLISON is a veteran political strategist and Chief Political Correspondent for UPTOWN Magazine. He is a frequent contributor to The Root and the Washington Correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune. He can be reached via Twitter @charlesdellison.