My Brother’s Keeper: Do we have the will to make a way?

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Hugh Vasquez

I was honored to provide a guest post on the Huffington Post blog of Eric Cooper, Founder, President of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, in response to President Obama’s recent My Brother’s Keeper initiative. You can read an excerpt below, and find the full blog post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-cooper/for-our-young-men-of-colo_b_4911854.html.

For our young men of color, do we have the will to make a way?

I applaud President Obama’s new initiative, “My Brother’s Keeper,” but an important conversation is missing from the announcement and from the initiative itself. While it is necessary to encourage boys to work harder, that alone will not solve the problem. The reason so many boys and young men of color continue to fail remains unexplored. Read the full post.

About Hugh Vasquez

I am a Senior Associate at the National Equity Project. I work with a range of school district and nonprofit partners to plan and implement racial equity initiatives. I am also a partner with the Center for Diversity Leadership; founder of the Todos Institute in Oakland; presenter with Speak Out; a primary cast member in the award-winning film The Color of Fear; the lead facilitator in the film Skin Deep, a documentary on race relations with college students. I co-authored the books No Boundaries: Unlearning Oppression and Building Multicultural Alliances and Making Allies Making Friends: A Curriculum For Middle Schools, as well as published various articles on strengthening cultural roots and eliminating privileged systems.

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