Ep 606 ｜ White Supremacy Is Not Black America’s Problem ｜ Guest： Bob Woodson Sr.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
144.59348
Summary
Robert Woodson Sr. is the founder of the Woodson Center, which was established in 1981, which focuses on helping grassroots faith-based and community organizations confront community problems and create sustainable solutions to community issues. He has been a civil rights activist and advocate on behalf of the Black community, countering a lot of the failed solutions that we have seen from the left over the past few decades.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey, guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. This episode is brought to you by our friends
00:00:04.160
at Good Ranchers. American meat delivered right to your front door. Go to goodranchers.com
00:00:08.440
slash alley. That's goodranchers.com slash alley. Okay. We've got a wonderful, encouraging,
00:00:24.360
enlightening conversation for you today with Mr. Robert Woodson Sr. He is the founder of the
00:00:32.280
Woodson Center, which was established in 1981, which focuses on helping grassroots faith-based
00:00:38.920
and community organizations confront community problems and create sustainable solutions to
00:00:44.960
community issues. He has been a civil rights activist and advocating on behalf specifically
00:00:53.780
of the Black community and really countering a lot of the failed solutions that we have seen from
00:00:59.980
the left and the false narratives that we have seen from the left over the past few decades that have
00:01:04.920
actually ended up just decimating the Black community, hurting the very people that these
00:01:12.940
activists on the left say that they are aiming to help. So he has done amazing work. He is motivated
00:01:20.440
by his Christian faith, which you will hear infuses all of the work that he does. In 2020, his center
00:01:27.440
launched the 1776 United Campaign as a counter to the false 1619 Project. So we're going to talk about
00:01:36.380
all of that today, the problems facing these communities, what we not just as Americans, but
00:01:41.900
specifically as women, as mothers can do to combat a lot of the division and the very real problems
00:01:48.240
that are facing our children, really children of all different backgrounds and how we can kind of just
00:01:54.820
remove this, um, this blinder that has been put in front of us of divisive racial rhetoric and false
00:02:04.680
ideas about race and the history of race in America to see things as they are. So we can enact
00:02:10.960
effective solutions together. You're going to love this conversation. You're going to learn a lot and
00:02:15.600
you're going to love him for sure. And so without further ado, here's our new friend, Mr. Robert
00:02:20.620
Woodson Sr. Mr. Woodson, thank you so much for joining us. I know a lot of people are already
00:02:28.760
familiar with you. They've been familiar with your work for a long time. Maybe they read your
00:02:32.740
recent book or they see you on Fox News. But for those who may not know, can you tell us who you are
00:02:37.900
and what you do? Yes, I'm the founder and president of the Woodson Center for the last 40 years. The
00:02:46.600
organization is a national not-for-profit headquartered in Washington. And we provide service to grassroots,
00:02:52.580
low-income leaders in maybe 39 states, about 2,500. And we assist them in developing self-help programs
00:03:01.960
to address poverty, crime, and violence from the inside out and the bottom up. Prior to that,
00:03:08.880
I was active in the civil rights movement and worked for the American Enterprise Institute for five years.
00:03:15.940
But for the most part, my passion is helping low-income people to develop strategies to uplift
00:03:26.720
themselves from poverty. Tell me a little bit about the difference in the programs that you guys
00:03:34.420
support, the policies that you advocate for, the kind of self-help strategies that you guys are
00:03:41.920
employing versus the solutions that we often hear from the left to alleviate poverty and that we've
00:03:49.420
really seen fail over at least the past 15 years. How have you guys kind of set yourselves against
00:03:56.160
those supposed solutions on the other side of the aisle? Well, one of the reasons that I got
00:04:01.500
involved in these issues in the first place when I was leading civil rights demonstrations in the late
00:04:06.400
60s, I found that many of the people who sacrificed most low-income people who are on the picket lines
00:04:13.700
did not benefit from the change. When we were picketing outside of a pharmaceutical company in
00:04:19.160
Westchester, Pennsylvania, when they desegregated their workforce, they hired nine black PhD chemists
00:04:25.460
and that became a metaphor for what was to happen over the next 50 years. The poverty, the approach
00:04:33.980
the government took in the 60s was to spend $22 trillion over the last 50 years on programs to aid
00:04:41.240
the poor. 70 cents of every one of those dollars did not go to the poor for those who serve the poor.
00:04:46.900
And these professional providers asked which problems are fundable, not which ones are solvable. So we
00:04:53.920
really created a commodity out of poor people with the consequence that there were perverse incentives
00:05:00.500
for really reducing poverty. That's why in the face of these expenditures, poverty has barely moved in the
00:05:08.160
last 50 years because we have perverse incentives for people to be self-sufficient.
00:05:14.420
Right. And tell me in your estimation what these programs have done to the family in general,
00:05:23.660
but specifically the black family. Because of course, the left kind of separates these issues.
00:05:28.580
They don't want to say that those perverse incentives that you just described actually do
00:05:33.040
disincentivize present fathers. But that seems to be the case. That seems to be at least a correlated
00:05:40.980
trend over the past 50 years since the start of the welfare state that really across all races,
00:05:46.220
but especially among black Americans, it is more and more likely for a child to be born to a fatherless
00:05:52.620
home. So can you talk about that connection? Sure. One of the big myths that's been perpetuated by the
00:05:59.760
left, particularly in their 1619, that the 70 percent out of wedlock birth in the black community is
00:06:06.800
somehow a legacy of slavery and discrimination. But that is just not true. Someone said,
00:06:13.000
unless we can deal with fact-based truth, then lies become normal. So what we did at the Woodson Center
00:06:19.500
is we looked at the record. And we found that immediately after slavery, they looked at the
00:06:26.260
records of six plantations as to the state of the family. 75 percent of those slave families had a man
00:06:32.200
and a woman raising children. And the two-parent nuclear family continued for a century up until
00:06:38.780
1965. 85 percent of all black families had a man and a woman raising children. In fact, in the 1930s,
00:06:46.840
when racism was enshrined in law and the country was going through a depression,
00:06:52.960
the black community's marriage rate was higher than any other group in society. Elderly people could
00:06:58.340
walk safely in their communities without fear of being assaulted by their grandchildren.
00:07:04.020
But all of that changed with the government intervention in the 60s, where some leftist
00:07:12.300
scholars, Clown and Piven, said, if you separate work from income and make welfare more attractive,
00:07:19.000
and then it will result in the disintegration of the family, and therefore poor people will be
00:07:24.480
compelled to turn to government. And that's where they thought they could move the country to social.
00:07:29.900
And they were right. The poverty programs made welfare more attractive. They stigmatized two-parent
00:07:37.200
households as being Eurocentric and therefore racist. The black power movement joined in that consensus.
00:07:43.380
The women's movement joined. So you've got a combination of public policy. You've got social forces.
00:07:50.660
And then you've got government action opening welfare offices, making welfare more attractive. And as a
00:07:57.120
consequence, the black family disintegrated within a decade, something that slavery and Jim Crow couldn't
00:08:06.820
accomplish. But liberal government programs decimated the family. And that's why we have the mess that
00:08:14.060
we're in today. And so that's what we're trying to combat.
00:08:19.520
You're absolutely right that they use that argument. And we're going to talk about your 1776 project.
00:08:24.580
But this whole 1619 critical race theory idea is really that America hasn't changed since 1619,
00:08:31.780
but that oppression and slavery has just taken on new forms. So, you know, they connect it to Jim Crow.
00:08:38.160
And then they say the reason for fatherlessness is not just generally the legacy of slavery, but also
00:08:44.140
mass incarceration. Again, they have to blame, you know, white supremacy and the right-wing system or
00:08:49.780
whatever it is. But as you pointed out, the fatherlessness rate actually among white and black
00:08:55.700
Americans started to skyrocket in the 1960s before the so-called war on drugs and mass incarceration,
00:09:02.580
which really kind of the tough on crime policy started in the 1980s. So it actually more strongly
00:09:09.540
correlates to what you're saying, the growth of the welfare state, not the tough on crime policies of
00:09:14.800
the 70s and 80s, not Jim Crow and segregation. It really does correlate with the timeline of the
00:09:22.580
welfare state. But the left can't own up to the fact that their proposed solutions have actually
00:09:27.860
failed the very people that they said that they wanted to help.
00:09:32.580
They really are injuring with the helping hand. But then, but again, we must introduce some facts.
00:09:39.140
First of all, I lived in New York in the late 70s and the demand for tougher on crime came from the black
00:09:47.860
community. The Rockefeller laws that were put in place came as a result from the black community
00:09:54.280
because we had three major drug gangs operating in Harlem and it was a crisis. And that's where the demand
00:10:01.080
for longer, stiffened penalties came in response to the black community's demand for it.
00:10:08.520
And so it wasn't because of any racist policies. It came from the black community.
00:10:12.940
Yes. There was an interesting Pew Research poll. Well, actually, let me let me say this first. I
00:10:19.500
remember when there were so many conversations in 2020 about defunding the police. And this mostly
00:10:24.960
came from, you know, academics, both black and white academics saying, you know, this is the way
00:10:30.540
to liberation and equality and release from oppression for black people. But if you
00:10:35.420
looked at the polling, Gallup conducted a poll that showed that about 80 percent of black Americans
00:10:42.120
either wanted the same level of policing or more policing in their communities. And then there was
00:10:47.640
a recent just the other day, there was a poll that came out by Pew Research asking black Americans,
00:10:55.980
like, what is most important to you? What do you feel like affects your life the most? Only 3 percent said
00:11:02.680
racism. One of the first things was violence in their communities. And yet, if you listen to the
00:11:09.000
mainstream media, if you listen to Black Lives Matter and the activists and academics that claim
00:11:13.360
to be representing the black community, you would think that actually the biggest problem and detriment
00:11:18.120
to black Americans is white privilege. That's just not the case.
00:11:23.540
It really isn't. And again, my colleague Delano Squires, I think, stated the issue
00:11:29.660
very adroitly, he said that this narrative is driven by guilty whites who are seeking absolution
00:11:38.040
from crimes they never committed, and self-entitled elite blacks who are seeking
00:11:44.900
absolution from injustice they never suffered. So this narrative is being driven by elites who are
00:11:51.940
grievance merchants, and they profit from American grievance. But that study from Pew
00:11:57.680
was echoed over the last 20 years, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Study, a liberal democratic
00:12:04.680
think tank, did similar studies every four years. And that kind of outcome was consistent. Race
00:12:13.160
always scored at the very bottom. It has never been a primary concern of black America today. This is being
00:12:21.060
manufactured by elite class of poverty and race merchants who profit from the suffering of low-income
00:12:31.560
blacks, and they cover their actions with this false cover of racial justice that they're seeking.
00:12:38.340
The activists and authors, they make a lot of money from saying this stuff. And then the Democrat
00:12:48.920
politicians who have been in charge of these districts, these communities for decades, of course,
00:12:54.060
they benefit from more dependent constituents because they can just get reelected and re-solidify
00:13:00.920
their power. So there are a lot of selfish motivations in this kind of manipulation that we see,
00:13:07.480
unfortunately. I'm wondering if you can give insight into why these liberal policies have so
00:13:14.380
seemingly disproportionately affected negatively the black community. I think they've negatively
00:13:20.380
affected Americans of all backgrounds, especially impoverished Americans. But why do you think we see
00:13:26.680
the disparities that we do to the level that we do when it comes to fatherlessness, when it comes to
00:13:32.160
crime, when it comes to homicide? Even things like maternal mortality of women, the actually leading
00:13:39.740
cause of maternal mortality for black women is not anything that happens in a hospital, but it's
00:13:44.500
actually homicide by a domestic partner. And I think any person, any thinking, feeling person doesn't want
00:13:50.860
to see these disparities. So why is it that black Americans seem to be so disproportionately affected by all
00:13:58.100
of this? The left says it's systemic racism, but what would you say? I mean, I guess you've already
00:14:05.860
Yeah, I think it has the very fact that we all know who George Floyd is, but we don't know who
00:14:13.280
Ariana DeLand is. She is a three-year-old who was sleeping next to her grandmother on New Year's Eve and
00:14:20.940
a bullet ripped through and tore through her body. And she's in intensive care as we speak. She was the
00:14:27.100
niece of George Floyd. Wow. I didn't know that.
00:14:30.720
But no one, and every five minutes a child is shot in the country. 50 children have been murdered over
00:14:38.940
the past year. But we don't know this because you have an elite group of blacks and guilty whites who
00:14:47.760
are driving this fake race narrative because it is profitable for them. You cannot generalize
00:14:57.000
about any group of people. All women or all blacks and therefore try to apply a remedy because it
00:15:05.000
always helps those at the economic or better educated group. We don't have a race problem in America, but we
00:15:12.940
have a grace problem. But those who are advocating against the police are themselves hypocrites
00:15:20.120
because they do not live in communities that are at risk. They have armed guards. The members of
00:15:28.200
Congress spend $300,000 on personal security while advocating defunding the police. But also it's
00:15:37.960
lethal to convey to a group of people that your destiny is determined by somebody else. I think it was
00:15:46.120
Pastor Chuck Swindell said, 10% of who we are is defined by our external circumstance. 90% is our
00:15:53.980
attitude about the 10%. And this is where grassroots leaders that we support understand that their
00:16:02.420
destiny is in their own hands, not in those who will get paid to voice their grievance.
00:16:10.440
Yes. Before we get into all that you're doing even more in the 1776 project, I just kind of want to
00:16:19.380
take a pause because you mentioned that we don't have a race problem and we do have a grace problem,
00:16:24.620
which I couldn't agree with more. I want to hear a little bit more just about your story and
00:16:29.500
particularly your faith story and how faith has played a role in the work that you have done over
00:16:36.120
the past 40 years. Well, part of my discovery when I started the center 40 years ago, after 10 years,
00:16:46.720
I wanted to deepen my understanding of why grassroots leaders are more effective in changing people's
00:16:52.820
attitudes, values and beliefs. So I had a town meetings in seven different locations where I
00:16:59.940
brought grassroots leaders in from around about 100 miles. And I asked them what works and why does it
00:17:06.020
work? 95% of them brought the people whose lives have been transformed to the meeting so that they
00:17:14.860
could speak for themselves. 95% of them said faith in Christ works for my life. And so people told me,
00:17:24.560
Bob, you're going to, this is going to change you and it's going to change your organization. And it did.
00:17:29.660
I had staff members leave. I had funders leave and say, are you becoming a church? I said, no, I'm not
00:17:35.780
I'm just reflecting on what the people told me. So I, I, I, we, we took a profile of what these
00:17:43.960
principles and we had a conference where I brought 150 of them together because I did a report on the
00:17:51.040
outcome. And I asked them, did I get it? And sure enough, from that day on, I knew that the reason
00:17:59.320
that these people were effective when they had no funding is because they served as witnesses to
00:18:06.080
people that transformation and redemption in the midst of a toxic drug infested neighborhood is
00:18:14.240
possible. And so what I did was begin to chronicle that success. If you say that 70% of black families
00:18:22.980
have raising children that are troubled, it means 70, 30% or not. So I go into the homes of the 70%
00:18:31.340
and you will find that those are the social entrepreneurs. These are the people who are
00:18:36.560
achieving against the odds. They have valuable lessons to teach us about what is the solution
00:18:43.460
and what is the process of transformation and redemption. And so the Woodson Center's whole premise
00:18:52.560
is we have studied the success of the real anti-poverty experts. And those are the faith leaders and
00:19:01.240
healers in these communities. And we treat them as social entrepreneurs. And so we come in and provide
00:19:09.240
resources, access to resources, training, so that if some of these leaders are helping 50 children,
00:19:15.860
we help them to expand so they can help 500. So the answers to the problems of poverty and despair
00:19:23.300
is to invest in these grassroots healing agents. I call them Josephs. And because in Josephs of Genesis,
00:19:33.600
he was treated unfairly, but he never came to bitterness and resentment. And he was faithful to
00:19:41.840
his God, even as he was going through his trials and tribulations. But if it wasn't for the good
00:19:47.860
Pharaoh, a good Pharaoh is some rich and powerful person who's able to look beyond their celebrity and
00:19:56.440
their influence and anticipate trouble over the horizon and then look for untutored experts.
00:20:02.940
As the Pharaoh in Genesis did, he reached into the prisons for a 31-year-old uneducated Hebrew
00:20:09.680
shepherd. Well, we're bringing the Pharaohs of America together with the Josephs of America
00:20:21.200
Wow. Wow. Yeah, I love that. I love that illustration. I think that's going to
00:20:25.140
speak to a lot of people in a way that they can understand. Can you tell us a little bit more?
00:20:29.720
Tell us a little bit more about the 1776 project and why you started it. Is it a response specifically
00:20:37.580
to the 1619 project? What's going on with this organization?
00:20:42.320
It was in August of 2019 when Hannah Nicole Jones and the journalist at the New York Times published
00:20:54.240
1619. I believe they were trying to weaponize our history and define America almost as a criminal
00:21:01.900
organization. And they said that America's birthday should be 1619 when the first African slaves
00:21:09.220
survived. But they really weren't slaves. They were indentured servants and all of them achieved
00:21:13.080
their freedom. But nevertheless, she then went on to falsely say that the Revolutionary War was
00:21:19.240
to protect slavery. And she had to later recanted. Right. And so what we wanted to do, since the
00:21:25.640
messengers were black, we thought that the counter messengers should be black as well. So we brought
00:21:31.160
together 23 scholars and activists. And we wanted to offer not a debate, but we wanted to offer a
00:21:38.880
counter narrative. So we wanted an inspirational and an aspirational response so that people could get an
00:21:46.540
accurate understanding of an accurate understanding of history. We think that the history of slavery has
00:21:54.060
not been completely told. We have to agree with them on that. But nevertheless, you don't confront
00:22:00.140
a revised history by offering a revision. So we offered an aspirational alternative. In our essays,
00:22:10.860
we talk about how there were 20 blacks who were born slaves who died millionaires. Some of them went back
00:22:18.380
and purchased the plantations on which they were slaves, and even took in the families of the destitute
00:22:25.020
families of the slave masters. We talked about in our essays that when blacks were denied access to a
00:22:34.780
capital in the city of Chicago in 1929. They started 731 businesses that had 100 million in real estate
00:22:45.980
capital. But we were denied access to hotels. We started our own, the Wallahaji in Atlanta, the Carver
00:22:52.860
and Calvert Hotels in Miami, the St. Teresa in New York, the St. Charles in Chicago. We even built our own
00:23:00.380
railroad in Baltimore. So all of that history is part of the American experience that even black Americans,
00:23:11.660
only in America can someone be born a slave and die a millionaire and come in and take in the family.
00:23:18.700
That's an example of radical grace in action. But we think Americans need to, that should be a part
00:23:27.580
of our history, but very few people know. We were only 5% were literate after the war,
00:23:35.660
after slavery. But because of the institutions within the black community, the black churches,
00:23:42.940
that number went from 5% to 70% in less than 50 years. Nowhere on the face of the earth
00:23:49.340
that if people become literate at that rate anywhere, only in America could that effort of self-help and
00:24:00.140
self-determination, only in this country could that have happened. And so we think that we should
00:24:10.540
celebrate and have an accurate history. So we were offering an alternative narrative, not an alternative debate.
00:24:19.340
And did something happen? I'm just remembering with
00:24:25.500
the Trump administration, they backed the 1776 project or something, and then the Biden administration
00:24:31.900
took that away? Or maybe I'm thinking about some, maybe I'm thinking about critical. No,
00:24:35.660
you're right. Okay. In the waning days of the Trump campaign,
00:24:40.460
they came up with the 1776 commission. Oh, okay. And, uh, and they brought some people. We stayed away
00:24:51.580
from it. Oh, gotcha. So it was not connected with you guys. No, it was not connected at all. And the
00:24:57.980
fact that it came up almost as a part of the campaign, we became very suspicious of it. Yeah. And
00:25:04.620
therefore we, uh, we stayed away from it because we don't believe the answer is in politics. Right.
00:25:12.220
And so we, we were careful not to condemn it, but we also did not want to be associated with it
00:25:19.420
because it was developed in a partisan framework when the 1776 Unites program. We have, we have some liberal, uh,
00:25:29.340
commentators, uh, essayists, Clarence Page, uh, Pulitzer Prize winning, uh, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
00:25:39.420
Right. Um, and others, because I think that this issue is too important to get admired in politics.
00:25:47.020
And that's why 1776 Unites, our book sold out on Amazon. We've developed some curriculum from it
00:25:55.420
that is now being embraced. I think we have 35,000 downloads and all 50 states are now embracing 1776.
00:26:05.340
We have an animated series coming out and that we're excited about. Um, we don't think that
00:26:13.020
we should outlaw the teaching of 1776. I think we should put our 1776 as a competitive point of view.
00:26:23.740
You mean not outlaw 1619. Right. Not outlaw 1619. Uh, but cause that's canceling. If you're against
00:26:32.860
cancel culture, you can't then turn around and cancel. Hmm. So we believe that our, our, our essays
00:26:40.860
and its content are powerful enough, uh, that we can compete. Students need to know what people
00:26:47.820
are, are, are, are saying, but it ought to be competitive. Right. Well, there's certainly a debate
00:26:53.020
to be had. There is debate on the conservative side, you know, Christopher Rufo and others would take
00:26:59.660
maybe, you know, a more, um, policy centric approach to trying to get rid of 1619, but I
00:27:06.140
totally hear your perspective as well. I think that we are all in agreement though, that we need
00:27:11.660
alternatives. It's not about whitewashing history as a lot of people on the left say, it's talking
00:27:16.860
about the good and the bad and the ugly, but realizing as Frederick Douglass did that the abolition
00:27:23.260
of slavery and the true equality of people of all backgrounds was made possible first by this
00:27:29.500
radical notion that we are all made in God's image, given inalienable rights, inherent rights
00:27:35.900
by our creator that was inked into our founding documents. And without those founding documents,
00:27:42.220
without the constitution, we wouldn't have had the foundation to achieve the amazing things that we have
00:27:49.740
in the way of equality. I think it was Frederick Douglass who said that the constitution is a
00:27:53.820
glorious liberty document, it's an anti-slavery document. So it sounds like that's what you guys
00:28:00.460
are trying to emphasize, that it's because of our foundation, not in spite of our foundation,
00:28:06.060
like 1619 Project would say, that black Americans, that all Americans have been able to achieve
00:28:13.260
equality in the things that they have throughout history, right?
00:28:15.980
That's true. But I think that where we're, where the right makes some people that are conservatives
00:28:25.580
err, they take ideological weapons to a war narratives. We need a ground game. We don't have one. It's not
00:28:37.100
enough to complain about what the left is doing. What we're doing at the Woodson Center is actually going
00:28:43.100
out into these communities and empowering grassroots leaders whose actions embody the principles. It's
00:28:50.780
kind of what Jesus did when the disciples of John the Baptist came to him and said,
00:28:56.060
are you the one that do we seek another? He didn't offer a white paper or say, this is my resume. He healed in
00:29:03.100
their presence and said, go tell them what you saw. The Woodson Center is doing just that. We're showing you
00:29:10.620
gang members that were predatory last year, and now they're peaceful. These are our grassroots leaders
00:29:17.100
who have transformed drug dealers into responsible citizens. So we really believe the best way to
00:29:27.100
undermine what the left is doing is not by offering a counter-intellectual debate with them,
00:29:33.580
but why don't we write about the testimonies of people whose lives have been transformed and uplifted
00:29:43.260
as a consequence of the embrace of these principles. So we're seeking witnesses.
00:29:52.540
Right, right. It is odd to me that there would be anyone who would be opposed to that kind of
00:29:58.620
transformative and redemptive work because that's how you make long-term changes. Left-wing policy and narratives
00:30:08.940
disparate numbers. And so they'll try to push bail reform or say, well, there are too many black people in prison
00:30:16.780
or there are too many black people represented in this way. And so let's just try to finagle the outcome
00:30:22.540
so it looks like all of the outcomes are equal. But they never get to the root problem. Like,
00:30:27.740
what is causing the crime? What is causing the poverty? It's almost like they don't want to
00:30:33.340
reckon with the fact that it really is for all of us, no matter what, like a heart issue. It's a
00:30:38.780
lifestyle issue. It's a choices issue. And so I guess that would be why people on the left with their
00:30:45.660
different, I don't know, or anyone would be opposed to what you guys are doing. It's harder work. It
00:30:53.980
also just seems to not give them the kind of influence and the power and the money that they
00:30:59.660
want. I don't know. But it's hard for me to understand why people would oppose anything that
00:31:03.340
you guys are doing when it's clearly effective. Well, it's not a matter of opposition. I think Bill
00:31:09.660
Bennett years ago stated the issue. He said when liberals look at poor people in efforts to
00:31:17.660
self-development, they see victims and conservatives see aliens. Too many conservatives who are writing
00:31:27.740
about this never talk to the people suffering the problem, nor do they reflect in their studies and
00:31:33.260
in their essays, the testimonies of people who have embraced these issues and therefore lives have
00:31:40.300
been changed. And so we're trying to change that, that we need to take a narrative to a narrative fight.
00:31:48.780
And so that's why I think that we're trying to get more conservatives to invest in people who are on
00:31:58.860
the ground and whose actions embody the principles of our founders. That's why we're trying to recruit
00:32:06.860
funding so that we are not guilty of what we say the left is doing. We put over $1,500,000 into many
00:32:19.500
grants going directly to these grassroots leaders who are on the ground making a difference in people's lives.
00:32:27.420
So it is important, if we want to defend liberty, that we must also help feed our ground troops. And
00:32:37.260
grassroots leaders, to me, are America's new patriots. And they are the ground troops that we need to
00:32:44.940
resource and give them an opportunity to speak for themselves. It's much more effective to undermine the
00:32:54.300
left when you create a situation where those so-called marginalized groups, for them to stand up
00:33:04.860
after they've been in power to say, these people do not speak for us. We speak for ourselves.
00:33:12.060
And we champion and embrace the values of our nation.
00:33:15.580
And so that's the Woodson strategy is to provide the means for the poor to speak for themselves.
00:33:25.260
And that's how you bring about major changes in our society.
00:33:29.740
So I'm wondering if you can speak just kind of as we wrap up here, specifically to my audience,
00:33:41.500
which is mostly women, mostly suburban women, a lot of moms, probably ages about 25 to 40.
00:33:52.140
Um, and, uh, particularly white Christian women are facing this onslaught of guilt that comes from
00:34:04.060
Instagram influencers, really from Christian authors and influencers, and even Christian pastors
00:34:10.540
that especially since George Floyd have been feeding them a steady diet of conversations about white
00:34:18.940
privilege, conversations about white supremacy and white guilt and Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X.
00:34:26.380
Kendi and Nicole Hannah-Jones, and even some professing Christian racial activists that really set up
00:34:34.300
the same kind of left-wing narrative about racial disparities and the legacy of slavery and how
00:34:42.380
white people basically need to lay prostrate before, you know, black people in order for there to be
00:34:48.460
any change. And so a lot of white women feel a lot of pressure to simply acquiesce to left-wing narratives
00:34:57.500
and to give in to left-wing policy solutions. They don't want to speak up about the things that we're
00:35:02.940
talking about. Um, because no one wants to be called a racist and no Christian wants to be called
00:35:07.420
unloving or a bigot for sure. Um, so there's just a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and a lot of fear,
00:35:12.780
particularly from white Christian women when it comes to this, because they don't want to buck against
00:35:17.500
the left-wing narrative and be called names. But how can they get involved and actually make a difference,
00:35:23.660
speak the truth in love and do things that can actually help the communities that many on the left
00:35:29.900
are saying that they want to help, but are actually failing to help?
00:35:34.300
Yours is probably the most important question that you've asked today. And I'm delighted to respond.
00:35:43.100
I really believe that experience will always defeat an argument.
00:35:46.940
And what we're doing at the Woodson Center, we have brought together a group called Voices of Black
00:35:55.740
Mothers United. The left purports to speak to them, but they realize that America is in a moral and
00:36:03.020
spiritual crisis, a free fall that is consuming our children. The leading cause of death for black children
00:36:11.340
is homicide. But we also have brought together the leaders of Appalachian mothers who are losing their
00:36:17.820
children to prescription drugs. And we've brought together moms from Silicon Valley who are losing their
00:36:25.260
children to suicide. In Silicon Valley, the leading cause of death of teenagers is suicide. It's six times the national average.
00:36:36.220
Wow. So we at the Woodson Center have brought together a consortium of these moms
00:36:42.700
into what we call the mother's consortium for the first time. And it was a glorious meeting where we sat
00:36:51.260
down and said that race is preventing us from coming together to address the real crisis in America. That is
00:37:00.140
the future of our children that have this emptiness in their lives that's causing them to devalue their
00:37:09.020
life to the point where they'll take their own or take someone else's or wasted with drugs. And so Frank Luntz
00:37:17.020
moderated a meeting of 18 of these moms that we hope to get broadcast. And we edited down to 25 minutes.
00:37:28.940
He wanted to bring it down to 10 because it's so rich. And so we think that the race issue needs to be
00:37:36.780
taken off the table. And the way you take it off is placed in a more compelling issue that you said.
00:37:44.460
Those moms share a lot in common with other moms who lost their children. And so we really think that
00:37:52.060
at the Woodson Center that this is a principle way that we can take our issue to the American public and
00:38:00.300
sit with those moms and let them come together. We hope to have it aired soon so that moms that you talked
00:38:08.380
about can understand that America does not have a race problem and that they are being
00:38:17.660
they're being disadvantaged. And so but there are solutions exist. And the in the Woodson Center
00:38:25.020
excuse me, is trying to come together to bring moms together to share their mutual concerns and push
00:38:32.940
race off the table. That's how you do it. Yes, absolutely. I think that it is that conversation,
00:38:38.940
these esoteric academic conversations about things like white privilege really are distracting us.
00:38:45.340
They're distracting us from the real problems and enacting real solutions. And plus, if you see the
00:38:51.740
world exclusively through the lens of while all white people are oppressors, all black people are oppressed,
00:38:57.260
then again, you fail to see the real forces of oppression that are victimizing all different kinds of
00:39:03.820
people, especially children. So I love that you guys are just clearing a path for that. I think that that is
00:39:09.820
very necessary work. Can you tell the people listening how they can support you, where they can find you guys,
00:39:16.860
and if they want to donate or get involved, how can they do that?
00:39:19.740
Yes, they can reach us by the Woodson Center, www.woodsoncenter.org or 1776unites.com. But the
00:39:31.740
Woodson Center is where you can donate. You'll be hearing more about one of the major networks is
00:39:39.340
working on an hour long documentary on this mother's project that we hope to be able to present it to the
00:39:46.060
public soon. Oh, good. Well, I really look forward to that. We'll have to talk about that when that
00:39:50.220
does come out. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. I really, really appreciate it.
00:39:57.340
That's fine. I'm thinking that I'm going to try to get certified as a race exorcist.
00:40:08.620
it's gone. I'll wave my hand. It's gone. That's perfect. I think that we probably need that.
00:40:17.020
There's quite a few people that need that, it seems like, in our country. So we'll make sure to
00:40:22.300
add that to your title. That's right. Certified racial exorcist.
00:40:26.940
I like it. I like it. Thank you so much, Mr. Woodson.