Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 26, 2022


Ep 606 ｜ White Supremacy Is Not Black America’s Problem ｜ Guest： Bob Woodson Sr.


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

144.59348

Word Count

5,861

Sentence Count

350

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

26


Summary


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
00:14:03.460 said the programs, but what else?
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
00:20:16.980 to form an alliance to restore this nation.
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
00:30:06.300 really only focus on
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.
00:40:06.780 Oh, yes. So I can say to all white people,
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.
00:40:31.580 Thank you.