President Barack Obama launched a new initiative called “My Brother’s Keeper” Thursday that plans to focus on the plight of young men of color and the unique struggle they have in American society.

The statistics don’t lie. Half of these boys/men grow up without a father in the house, 80 percent read below proficiency levels by the fourth grade and they are six times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts.

But the president and I part company on the solution. Awareness is fine, but I don’t see where it is the duty of government to reverse these statistics. This is an issue inside the respective black and Latino communities and no amount of billboards and public service announcements is going to change anything. The change will come when the people inside those communities make reversing these numbers a priority.

My challenge to minority communities is that, instead of playing the victim, show the rest of America that you take this seriously, are focused on changing the family/education/crime dynamics and aren’t waiting for “government” to solve it for you.

When that happens, I think you’d see the country line up to help you. Until then, it come across as another government program meant to curry favors and votes in return for taxpayer’s dollars while doing nothing to fix the actual problem.

Do I need to list all the previous examples of this?