Thanks so much, and I agree with you completely about the utility of mentorship. It is a practical step that can transform young people’s lives for the better. And, I am not naive about the political climate that President Obama exists in. I understand his political pragmatism. He is acting on an issue that he can get some traction on. Mentorship for black youth is undeniably better than no mentorship for black youth.

But still, the way we talk about issues of racial inequality matter, and I feel like we pay a steep price for perpetually skirting around the root causes of racial inequality.

So many times when discussing racial disparities in the public sphere, the dominant narrative is “what could black people have done better?” instead of “what could society (teachers, police, politicians, etc.) have done better?” This line of questioning lets our public servants and society as a whole off of the hook.

By focusing solely on the actions of black people, the mainstream American public can say, “we had a national conversation on race” without doing any introspection or admitting any culpability on behalf the state. To me, this kind of one-sided blame game conversation is unproductive, and will never yield the results of what Americans say they seek— an egalitarian society.

I am glad that My Brother’s Keeper exists, but I feel like we aren’t doing ourselves any favors by pretending that the primary issue plaguing black people is a lack of mentorship and not an excess of racial bias and structural racism.