My Brother’s Keeper is an organization that believes “all young people deserve the chance to dream big and have a real shot at making those dreams come true, despite the circumstances of their birth.”
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Boys and young men of color don’t always see reaffirming messages in society, or have access to successful leaders that look like them, to believe that they can grow up to achieve and accomplish anything they set their mind to.
Their “hopes and aspirations are stunted through [these] systematic forces and inter-generational roadblocks: a lack of family resources, disparities in education, unfair policing, and disproportionately high incarceration rates.”
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My Brother’s Keeper has sought to eliminate the achievement gap that exists between these boys and young men and their white peers. They aim to create opportunities that otherwise would not be available to them.
In a commercial that first aired during the MTV Movie Awards Sunday night, we are introduced to our future cinematographers, journalists, valedictorians, doctors, screenwriters, scholars, and legislators.
“If we believe in their futures,” says President Obama, “they will believe in them too.”
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