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April 4, 2021 - Epoch Times
33:29
‘Do Not Use Justice for Blacks As Excuse to Destroy This Nation’—Bob Woodson on ‘Systemic Racism’
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I didn't march so someone could use the rich legacy of the civil rights movement as a weapon to punish whites.
To paraphrase Dr.
King, racism is not bad because it is visited upon blacks by whites.
It's bad because it is evil.
Bob Woodson is a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement and founder of 1776 Unites, which describes itself as a movement to help tens of millions of Americans become agents of their own uplift by embracing the founding values of America.
Today we discuss the devastating human cost of the, quote, race grievance industry he believes is gripping America today.
Do not use justice for Blacks as excuse to destroy this nation.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Bob Woodson, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
As always, enjoy being here.
Well, Bob, not too long ago you wrote, along with a whole number of American intellectuals, a letter to Smith College about their handling of a particular scenario that happened a few years ago.
Subsequent racial bias training that was basically instituted on the group of people that were accused.
I wanted to find out how all this is playing out now.
Did you get a response?
And maybe to start with, if you could just kind of outline what happened in the timeline.
In 2018, in Smith College, a very elite girls' school, women's college, where the tuition is like $80,000.
80,000.
Well, in 2018, as reported in the New York Times on a big cover story recently, reflecting back on those times, what happened since, a young black student was in an unauthorized area of a cafeteria that was off-limits to students because it's being used for a summer program, and she started to eat her lunch.
Well, a cafeteria worker was instructed that when someone comes in to call security, so the security was called, he recognized the student and she him, and he said to her politely that this is off-limits, and so she went out into the lounge area that was also off-limits and began to eat her lunch.
And so a custodian I saw her and did the same thing.
She was asked to leave, but he allowed her to stay.
She taped these encounters and then posted on Facebook an entire rant.
She was eating while black and why would a woman of color have to suffer the indignities of racism and really went off on the people.
And as a consequence, Kathleen McCartney, the president of the school, apologized to the student, took action against the custodian and the cafeteria worker, and then required all of them to take race grievance training.
And then she commissioned a study by a local law firm who came in and they did a 171-page investigation Over the course of months and found that it was no evidence at all of bias.
So what she did was she took disciplinary action without investigating the facts.
She assumed that this young woman was telling the truth.
But even after she received the report that there was no evidence of discrimination Or racial profiling.
She said, well, it was probably indirect or unconscious bias, but quietly apologized to the worker, but refused to apologize publicly.
In the meantime, the custodian who'd been working their 35 years unblemished record Had a pre-existing disorder and as a consequence of the student posting his picture on Facebook with his email address labeling him a racist, she did the same thing to the cafeteria worker posting her email address in her picture labeling her racist.
He went on sick leave and retired and is now on disability.
After 35 years, this man has been terrorized by this young black woman who wanted to become a racial martyr.
And so what the president did is took disciplinary action against the whole cafeteria staff.
And so when I contacted Jody Shaw, who was a staff person who was a whistleblower who resigned after many years, and she was the one who reported it to the New York Times.
And so what we did was reach out to her and I put together a letter that was signed by 50 black intellectuals and activists and business leaders Challenging the president of the college to one, apologize publicly to these workers.
Two, we wanted them to compensate them for their loss.
And third, we want this DEI training or I call it race grievance training discontinued because it is insulting And then she wanted the student, the workers, to apologize to this student, even in the face of evidence that there was no racial profiling.
And so we sent this letter, and we're also supporting, there's a GoFundMe page, we're going to try to raise money for these two workers so they can be made whole and don't have to suffer, and also raise money for their legal defense.
And anyway, we sent a letter to the president and she sent just a glib response.
Thank you for your letter.
We appreciate your concern for Smith College.
More information about the event in July 2018 is included in the attached report.
I want to assure you we value every employee's contribution to the college.
That was all she said.
So we wrote a rejoinder to her and said we read the report.
And we think that your actions was egregious and therefore we want you to take those three steps.
But it's important because we believe that this is a perversion of the civil rights movement.
I'm a veteran of that movement.
I didn't march so someone could use the rich legacy of the civil rights movement as a weapon to punish whites To paraphrase Dr.
King, racism is not bad because it is visited upon blacks by whites, it's bad because it is evil.
So we're trying to send a message from the Woodson Center in 1776 by having a group of prominent blacks, professors of universities and just ordinary grassroots leaders We felt that we as Blacks wanted to take the side of these working-class whites who have been bludgeoned by these false accusations of racism and personally damaged.
So we wanted to make a statement consistent with what Dr.
King advises, that all of us, there needs to be a multiracial response against evil, regardless of the sponsors or the color of the sponsor of racism.
It's incredible to hear this whole incident kind of laid out.
This is really something that happened over two years ago, but the story essentially continues to this day.
So what have been the consequences for these workers as a result of these accusations?
There's such a fear among the workers there because with the closing of factories all over the country, Universities like that are a source of nice stable jobs for working class people.
They give health benefits and very generous.
So that is the main source of employment.
That's why they stay there decades upon decades.
On the one hand, they are required to ensure that the students obey the state rules.
For instance, you're not allowed to come into the cafeteria or the dining hall without shoes on.
All right, now if a white worker approaches a black student who walks into the cafeteria without shoes on, who is going to raise issue with them?
Because if they say anything, they're going to be fearful of being called a racist.
If they don't follow the rules, they can lose their jobs for failure to enforce the rules.
So it creates a level of uncertainty on everyone's part.
But it's also, I think it's unfortunate that we've created an environment where Black and so-called people of color students feel so entitled and so privileged that they can posture and try to seek martyrdom on racial issues At the expense of hard-working,
honest Americans who just want to raise their families and they don't want it, but to accuse them of racism.
In fact, one of the cafeteria workers, every time there's a George Floyd incident, it reminds people of that, and they get renewed attacks.
In fact, one of the cafeteria workers reported that someone called and threatened her life.
And so we really believe that Americans should stand up against this race grievance industry, and we must confront the evil of racism regardless of who sponsors it.
And so that is the message that the Woodson Center in 1776, all of our scholars, Glenn Lowry, John McWhorter, All the prominent, I think, intellectuals who are part of our 1776 Unites are coming together, but we're also now expanding it to everyone.
We're asking others to write letters to the President of Smith voicing their opposition, but we also want you to We're going to be posting the GoFundMe information for these two workers so that viewers can support people who just want to raise their families and not be injured.
Basically, the consequence of this for people who are accused, like these two workers, is, well, let's start with, you know, they either lose their jobs or they retire quickly, basically, to avoid the stigma.
There's an unbelievable amount of stress.
It's one of the worst things to be accused of racism, one of the worst accusations, and it's being thrown around like this so casually.
I'm kind of thinking about this whole movement of intellectuals that you're describing, the 1776 Unites Project.
So this is something that's now going beyond celebrating 1776 as the founding of America and the values surrounding that.
I remember we talked about that around the time when you launched this whole initiative.
This is becoming something bigger than that now?
Absolutely.
We really think that what we're witnessing today is an assault on the fundamental institutions and values of this country in the name of pursuit of social justice for blacks.
I really think that the radical left doesn't give a damn about Black folks at all, but they're acting as parasites by taking the civil rights movement, the rich legacy of the civil rights movement, and using it as a surrogate for a weapon against this nation.
For instance, Black Lives Matter and other groups who responded with rioting on George Floyd.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, 85% of those rioters were not black, they were white.
And although they were saying they're doing this in pursuit of justice for blacks, when they went to Portland, Oregon and other cities, they quickly migrated away from seeking justice for blacks to burning Bibles,
burning the flag, They're also saying that the Christian cross is a symbol of white supremacy, and if you go on their website that they took down, they're anti-family, they're saying the nuclear family is Western and therefore a symbol of colonialism and is to be opposed.
It's very fascinating that what really enabled Black America to achieve against the odds Following and endured slavery and Jim Crow for 100 years after slavery was the foundation of family, faith, and personal responsibility and self-determination.
Those were the foundational values and principles and virtues that enabled Black America to achieve against the odds and build institutions and banks and insurance companies and hotels.
It's that attitude of support for family.
It is ironic that the radical left is subverting those values upon which Black America They resisted oppression, and yet they're saying they're doing this in the name of helping blacks.
But this latest incident at Smith is but one iteration of that perversion.
And so, to answer your question, 1776 has to emerge as a force to push back against this perversion of civil rights And we are trying to mobilize America to come together in the spirit of the civil rights movement renewed so that we can begin to again judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
I really think they're Marxists.
Their agenda is really to subvert this country.
They don't care about Black people.
They don't care about the very fact that Teachers now are failing to teach children the Star Spangled Banner.
They're denigrating all symbols.
Frederick Douglass' statue was torn down.
Even another more outrageous example of the perversion is one young man was writing an essay with Dr.
King and it was forbidden.
Because they said that Dr.
King is banned because he uses the word Negro.
So white America is now going to define what it is proper for black folks to define themselves.
And so is Dr.
King's statue going to come down next?
And I'm really worried about this march towards the dissolution and denigration of the values of this nation.
We are going to be a force to push back against that.
So, Bob, you just mentioned something I want to kind of build on a little bit.
It's something actually that you taught me that I couldn't believe, but then I did my own fact check and it was quite remarkable.
Under Jim Crow, basically, Black America, relatively speaking, was doing better than it is now.
It goes directly against a lot of these kinds of narratives that we've heard, and I found that fascinating.
I'm wondering if you can develop that a little for me.
One of the biggest myths that is being perpetrated is that the kind of decline that you see in our urban centers in Black communities where there's a 70% out of wedlock births, in some cases in New York it's up to 90% of young women under 24 years old, and the number of abortions is almost equal to the number of live births.
That shows you the decline and the inner cities.
And so what the leftist is contending is that that's a consequence of the legacy of slavery and discrimination.
But what we've done in 1776 is we look at the plight of blacks the first hundred years after slavery, the century after slavery, during the era of Jim Crow.
In education, 1920 to 1940, We built 5,000 Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington schools.
Rosenwald was the CEO of Sears.
He partnered with the Booker T. Washington and put up $4 million.
The black community raised $4.6 million to match it.
And they built 5,000 Rosenwald schools and they were able to close the education gap from three years to six months in the course of 20 years.
We went from a 75% illiteracy rate after slavery to a 25% in less than 50 years.
Unprecedented in the world.
And even our scholars looked at the records of six major plantations, looking at the family composition of slaves, found that 70% of all those slave families had any man and a woman raising children.
So marriage, and they rushed to marry afterwards.
And so there's a whole history.
We built colleges, universities, we had our own railroads.
But if you look at the inner cities today, You will see nothing but decline.
So what I say is when whites were at their worst, blacks were at their best.
So it's important for Americans to realize the real cause of the decline has nothing to do with slavery or discrimination.
It has everything to do with the perversion of federal policies generated in the 60s that replaced the family with welfare, And that promoted dependency, where we spent $20 trillion on programs to aid the poor, with 70% of it going to professional providers of service.
So we monetize poverty.
And that's why we have this disconnect between work and income.
But as long as those leaders of those cities, and they've all been led by liberal black democratic politicians for the last 50 years, and so they use the whole institutional racism charge or systemic racism charge So that they can deflect attention away from important, difficult questions for them to answer.
And that if racism was as pervasive as they say, explain why black people are failing, low-income blacks are failing in systems run by their own people.
When under segregation we ran those institutions and we prospered.
And one other point, we talk about the high incarceration rate.
If you look at the turn of the century up until the 1960s, blacks were 13% of the population.
The 80% of the prison population were white men.
Only 20% were black.
But the prison population soared beginning in the late 50s and early 60s.
So it is important for us to report and respond to facts.
Someone said, if we do not rely on fact-based truth, then lies will become normal.
Bob, we're in the midst right now of the Derek Chauvin trial.
This is something that's on a lot of people's minds.
How do you feel all this is progressing?
I really think that it's important to make sure that the police execute the laws fairly because they have the power of the state and they should be held to a higher standard.
But what I find most troubling is that the only time that there is public outrage is when a white police officer kills Or gets involved in the death of a black suspect, which only happens, I don't say only, I don't mean to minimize it, but less than 20 a year, if that many.
But since George Floyd died, 64 blacks were killed by other blacks from that time to now, and many of them were small children.
And yet, we don't know the names of those children.
So again, I think the left is exploiting this.
They're calling for defunding the police.
Well, at the Woodson Center, we've brought together 2,500 Black Mothers, the Voices of Black Mothers United.
And these mothers of fallen children are pushing back against defunding the police.
They say, we want more police.
We want responsible policing in our community.
82% of black people polled are against defunding the police.
And many of the people who are advocating this don't have to live with the consequence of their advocacy.
Like the chairman of City Council of Los Angeles, who passed a bill to defund the police while she enjoyed police protection at her home.
We were talking about due process and looking at the facts, as you just mentioned.
And so, of course, there's a trial should go through, justice should be served, due process should be followed.
However, in these sorts of situations, we're describing politicization of all of these issues of race, of police and so forth.
I've seen in social media people saying any Basically, anything less than a full guilty verdict will result in mass rioting and these kinds of things.
I'm even wondering, in the current situation, how you could have due process happen at all.
I don't have an answer to this.
I'm wondering if you've been thinking about it.
I have, but I just think that the hard left is looking for any reason to riot.
They will use any excuse at all to riot.
They don't really care.
They've been rioting every day in Portland, Oregon, and there's no precipitating incident there.
They're tipping their hand right there.
They don't really care whether there's a precipitating incident.
They're just looking for the right spark.
So that they can riot.
The fact that they burned out all those Black-owned businesses, which means this is an attack on capitalism, this attack on democracy, but they're using the cover of racial justice, and they are really parasites.
And that's why I blame Black leadership, the Congressional Black Caucus, the civil rights organization.
Where are they in all of this?
Why are they silent?
As the civil rights legacy is being perverted and debased and debunked, where are they?
They are the ones who should be standing in front of those stores and saying that do not use justice for blacks as an excuse to destroy this nation.
That moral authority has to be withdrawn from them and only Black America can withdraw that moral authority.
That's why in the Black community it is important for people to step up and step forward and oppose the perversion of the civil rights legacy.
We must take it back from the hard left that have misappropriated that legacy and using it against The values and virtues of this nation.
We must take it back.
And that's what we're trying to do with 1776.
We're having an event on the 6th of April with J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, and Clarence Page, who were both raised in Ohio.
And so we're coming there because we believe America has to desegregate poverty And de-racialize race.
And we hope to, by establishing a forum where blacks and whites can come together to not talk about our differences, but talk about a common ground.
Because the biggest challenge facing America is not racial, it's class.
It's an elite from both the left and the right against those who are marginalized as a consequence of their condition, not their race.
And so low-income blacks and low-income whites and Hispanics and others have more in common than they do differences.
But if we have to look at each other through the prism of race, it prevents us from coming up with effective solutions that will help uplift Both of those communities, and that's what the goal of 1776 is to provide the means for this nation to heal and build on 50 years of successfully fighting against racism and discrimination.
Build on what we've accomplished.
Not go back retroactively and condemn America for what it did.
None of us wants to be judged by our birth defect or the worst that we ever did as a young person.
We ought to be judged by the promise that we have.
And we really think America's interest is best served by setting aside race And beginning to promote remedies that reaches across class and race lines to heal this nation.
Bob, 1776 is a relatively recent initiative, but you've actually been working on these issues with the Woodson Center and even before that for decades.
As we finish up, I'm wondering if you could just speak to that work a little bit, because it's just one of these things that I find too few people know about.
What we're trying to do at the Woodson Center have been for 40 years Is to work among the people suffering the problem to help them to develop solutions to crime, violence, and family dissolution by looking to the real experts that the sickest part of the body draws the strongest antibodies.
And we believe that these communities can be healed If we look in the right places for the right healing agents, grassroots leaders are people in these neighborhoods who live there, they're raising their families there, and they are the ones providing leadership in developing solutions to problems in the community.
They're embedded.
Low-income leaders are people who are embedded in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods Many of them are raising their children that are not dropping out of school or in jail and drugs.
They have found a way to achieve against the odds, but a lot of their accomplishments go unnoticed, unrecognized, and therefore underutilized.
And so what we do is come in and provide support for these indigenous healing agents.
All we need to do from the outside is bring resources to the table But resources that are on tap are not on top.
We should not be directing what people do, but we must come alongside them because they are the healing agents.
They are the social entrepreneurs.
And like a good venture capitalist, what they do is they bring capital, but also they bring administrative knowledge so that the entrepreneur is able to take their invention From their garage to become a Fortune 500 company.
We need the moral equivalent of that in our social economy of building on the strength and innovation of low-income people so that they can help develop cures for the problems of violence and family dissolution so that we can then heal this nation from the inside out, the bottom up.
No, and Bob, you've had incredible, incredible success stories which we've profiled in previous versions.
I encourage people to go into the American Thought Leaders archive and look up some of the previous interviews with Bob because some of that work is highlighted there.
Bob, so 1776 Unites has actually developed, I was just looking on the site, has been developing this educational curriculum.
You know, a number of interviews ago I was asking, hey, where is that educational curriculum?
Well, I found it recently, and I'm just wondering if you could tell people where they could look this up and some examples of what's in there.
Yeah, we have education curriculum.
We have the first four lessons That we released several months ago.
We had over 8,000 downloads within a period of three weeks, many of them.
And what you will find are stories of courageous people who have achieved against the odds.
Biddy Mason, a woman born into slavery, illiterate in 1818, walked behind a wagon of her master all the way to Salt Lake City, Utah, Ended up being freed in Los Angeles and became an entrepreneur and died a millionaire and a philanthropist and the founder of the AME Church.
So her courageous journey is profiled in one of our curriculum.
That's just one example of what you'll find in our curriculum, 1776unites.com.
You can go and download our curriculum.
Bob, any final thoughts before we finish up?
This is a very troubled time.
And it looks bad.
But I really believe that I love this nation.
My father fought and died as a veteran for this nation.
And I think our best days are ahead.
But we should not despair.
If people are saying they feel bad, as I said, I remember David and Goliath.
I remember who won that fight.
Bob Woodson, such a pleasure to have you on again.
Thank you.
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