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Robert Woodson...Conservative Values Is The Way To Rebuild Black Family & Community · Gil I Am

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  Speaker 1: There is a prayer that I utter each time that
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  Speaker 1: I speak, and I commend to you Lord, give me
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  Speaker 1: the strength to tell and pursue the truth, especially when
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  Speaker 1: it's inconvenient to me. George Bernard Shaw asked rhetorical question,
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  Speaker 1: must of Christ die and torment at every age to
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  Speaker 1: save those at lack of imagination? Einstein said, imagination is
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  Speaker 1: more important than knowledge. In other words, ladies and gentlemen,
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  Speaker 1: if you want to go someplace you haven't been, then
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  Speaker 1: you've got to do something you haven't done. Doctor King
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  Speaker 1: said that the strongest point is to be self critical,
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  Speaker 1: the ability to be self critical, and we as a
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  Speaker 1: conservative movement must examine ourselves what we have done and
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  Speaker 1: what we shouldn't do. If the Conservatives right now we're
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  Speaker 1: fighting the Second World or an invasion of Normandy, you
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  Speaker 1: would have an air force and a navy, but no
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  Speaker 1: marines and no soldiers. Because most of your assaults against
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  Speaker 1: what the left is doing is an aerial assault.
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  Speaker 2: There's no ground strategy.
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  Speaker 1: The left has a very effective ground strategy that I
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  Speaker 1: would like to outline, and then I want to talk
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  Speaker 1: about what should our strategy be to counteract it. I
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  Speaker 1: am an activist, I'm an empiricist, so academics called me,
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  Speaker 1: so I'm going to talk about concrete steps. I'm talking
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  Speaker 1: to talk about a political and social alliances that we
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  Speaker 1: need to form in order to take action to move
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  Speaker 1: We are not going to push back against what the
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  Speaker 1: left is doing by having conferences, issuing white papers and
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  Speaker 1: condemning what they're doing. We have to demonstrate to the
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  Speaker 1: American people that the values of our founders, the one
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  Speaker 1: that we stand for, can produce improved individuals, redeemed communities,
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  Speaker 1: and transformed lives.
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  Speaker 2: We have to demonstrate that to people.
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  Speaker 1: As a civil rights veteran, I became disenchanted in the
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  Speaker 1: sixties when I led demonstrations because a lot of the
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  Speaker 1: people who sacrificed most didn't benefit from the change. We
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  Speaker 1: led a demonstration outside of a pharmaceutical company and on
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  Speaker 1: our picket lines where janitors, headdressers, ordinary folks, and when
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  Speaker 1: they desegregated, they hired nine black PhD chemists, and when
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  Speaker 1: we approached them, they said, we got these jobs because
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  Speaker 1: we were qualifying. I also left the movement on the
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  Speaker 1: issue of force bussing for integration. I think the opposite
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  Speaker 1: of integration of segregation is not integration. It is desegregation
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  Speaker 1: with plurality. I want the ability to go wherever I
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  Speaker 1: choose without restrictions. I don't want to be told to
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  Speaker 1: And so for that I was sort of pushed out
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  Speaker 1: of the Civil Rights and I began to work on
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  Speaker 1: behalf of low income people of all races to promote
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  Speaker 1: their self interest.
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  Speaker 2: But let me tell you that the Black.
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  Speaker 1: America is often the moral barometer of the country, and
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  Speaker 1: the left uses the birth defect of slavery and Jim
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  Speaker 1: Crow as a battering ram to undermine the founding principles
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  Speaker 1: of this country.
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  Speaker 2: And one of the biggest lies that I'd like.
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  Speaker 1: To challenge is that somehow the disorganization, the crime, the
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  Speaker 1: out of wedlock bursts, all of the disarray that you.
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  Speaker 2: See going on in these urban centers.
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  Speaker 1: Over the last fifty years that had been run by
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  Speaker 1: liberal Democrats, that somehow.
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  Speaker 2: That's a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
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  Speaker 1: This is a lie, because if you look at the numbers,
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  Speaker 1: if poverty and racial discrimination were the principal causes of
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  Speaker 1: the challenges that we have today, certainly during the ten
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  Speaker 1: years of the depression between nineteen thirty in nineteen forty,
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  Speaker 1: when racism was enshrined in law. When the unemployment rate
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  Speaker 1: among whites was twenty five percent and forty percent in
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  Speaker 1: the black community. Certainly we should have gone to Hell
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  Speaker 1: in a handbasket under those circumstances. But the reality was
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  Speaker 1: that the marriage rate of Black Americas doing the depression
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  Speaker 1: was higher than any other group in the nation. Our
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  Speaker 1: religious institutions exercise exerted a control over us so that
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  Speaker 1: elderly people could walk safely in their neighborhoods without fearing
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  Speaker 1: assault by their grandchildren.
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  Speaker 2: The incarceration rate up from that time up until.
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  Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty six, Blacks were incarcerated only about twelve percent
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  Speaker 1: above their president in the population, and so up until
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, eighty five percent of all Black households
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  Speaker 1: had a man and a woman raising children. And that
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  Speaker 1: is because of the controls we exercise.
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  Speaker 2: So racism slavery never destroyed.
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  Speaker 1: Those were external. But the left's ground game started in.
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  Speaker 2: The sixties.
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  Speaker 1: Because prior to the nineteen sixties, pathology was never associated
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  Speaker 1: with poverty. People who were sharecroppers in rob folks or
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  Speaker 1: rob banks to do things like that. Poverty was never
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  Speaker 1: associated with aberant behavior. What happened was in the nineteen sixties,
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  Speaker 1: and the outer wedlock births occurred starting in the sixties
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  Speaker 1: with the poverty programs in the welfare state. The welfare
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  Speaker 1: state became an invading army into the black community when
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  Speaker 1: you look at Cloard and Piven, those social scientists at
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  Speaker 1: Columbia University School of Social Work got together and they
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  Speaker 1: wanted they were socialists. They said, the ways that we
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  Speaker 1: can emphasize the contradiction of capitalism is this flood the
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  Speaker 1: system with welfare applicants and we will bankrupt it. Because
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  Speaker 1: in the black community up inuntil nineteen sixties, there was
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  Speaker 1: a stigma associated with being on relief. So they had
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  Speaker 1: to remove the stigma. So they said, one of the
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  Speaker 1: things we can do is, first of all, let's read
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  Speaker 1: the term the luclear family as being eurocentric and therefore racist.
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  Speaker 1: The women's movement aided in that because it made the
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  Speaker 1: man redundant. The Black power movement also chimed in and
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  Speaker 1: they added, so you had the cultural setup for this change,
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  Speaker 1: but it's not enough to put a policy in place.
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  Speaker 1: You have to have a ground game, a structure to
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  Speaker 1: actually carry out.
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  Speaker 2: So the poverty.
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  Speaker 1: Programs came along and they opened up poverty offices all
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  Speaker 1: over New York lover Chicago, and they were actively recruiting
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  Speaker 1: people onto the welfare So Cloud and Pivot read their work.
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  Speaker 1: They said, if we can separate work from income, it
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  Speaker 1: will make a man redundant, high school a dropouts, will occur,
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  Speaker 1: drug addiction, family disintegration. And then so what happened was
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  Speaker 1: they removed the stigma. It moved from social insurance and
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  Speaker 1: down to reparations. When the welfare department used to demand
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  Speaker 1: that a woman declared paternity, that they saw lawsuits said
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  Speaker 1: it's the violation of the privacy rights of a woman.
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  Speaker 1: So that was eliminated. And so what you saw then,
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  Speaker 1: exactly was that the three to.
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  Speaker 2: Four million people.
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  Speaker 1: In New York City and others flooded into the welfare
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  Speaker 1: system because welfare became more generous than working. At a
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  Speaker 1: time when the unemployment rate for black men was four percent,
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  Speaker 1: we had this huge influx.
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  Speaker 2: And what Cloud and Pivet predicted began to occur. Out
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  Speaker 2: of wedlock based verse.
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  Speaker 1: Began to soar in that community and with the attendant
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  Speaker 1: crime and.
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  Speaker 2: What have you. So you saw the disintegration. That's warfare.
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  Speaker 1: You have more blacks today killing other blacks than were
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  Speaker 1: killed in one year than was killed in the seventy
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  Speaker 1: years of the clan raids that were lynched. These are
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  Speaker 1: hard facts of people to accept, and so this is
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  Speaker 1: the situation. So the left had a ground game and
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  Speaker 1: it's working. They demonized the country. The very people that
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  Speaker 1: created this problem are the ones who received the twenty
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  Speaker 1: two trillion dollars that we spent fixing the problem. So
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  Speaker 1: they started a fire and they got money to put
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  Speaker 1: the fire out. So seventy cents of every dollar for
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  Speaker 1: the last fifty years that of the twenty two trillion
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  Speaker 1: spent on poverty went not to the poor, but those
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  Speaker 1: who served poor people. They asked not which problems are solvable,
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  Speaker 1: but which ones are fundable. So what we must do,
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  Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, to recognize that conservatives have strategic interests
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  Speaker 1: that are compatible with that of the poor, because you
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  Speaker 1: don't benefit from having a group of poverty.
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  Speaker 2: But if your jobs.
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  Speaker 1: And your income dependent upon working in a poverty industry,
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  Speaker 1: then your well being is at odds with the poor.
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  Speaker 1: And so since we have strategic interests, let me lay
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  Speaker 1: out a four part strategy. I think we as conservatives
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  Speaker 1: can be First of all, in order to win the
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  Speaker 1: Second World War, we had to rely upon insurgents inside
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  Speaker 1: of France and Italy. We had to supply them with money,
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  Speaker 1: with communications, with help, because we could not have won
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  Speaker 1: the war if we didn't have allies, low income leaders
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  Speaker 1: that the Woodson Center supports around this country, some three
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  Speaker 1: thousand grassroots leaders.
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  Speaker 2: They need allies.
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  Speaker 1: They are the insurgents today. They are the ones that
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  Speaker 1: could could need the help. And what do these insurgents do.
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  Speaker 1: First of all, if we say, as a lot of
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  Speaker 1: our conservative scholars do, that seventy percent of people in
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  Speaker 1: these high crime neighborhoods are raising children that are dropping
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  Speaker 1: out of school, on drugs and on jail, which means
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  Speaker 1: that thirty percent are not. What the Woodson Center does
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  Speaker 1: is go in and look at the capacity of the
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  Speaker 1: people who help themselves lowther words. Scholars both left and
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  Speaker 1: right never go into low income neighborhoods and ask about
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  Speaker 1: their capacity because we are oriented towards dysfunction. So what
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  Speaker 1: the Woodson Center does is go in document the fact
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  Speaker 1: that people are in poverty, but not of poverty. We
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  Speaker 1: call them the Joseph's, and they are raising children are
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  Speaker 1: not dropping out of school. But nobody that you do
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  Speaker 1: not see in the literature and accounting of the resilience
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  Speaker 1: of people. People are motivated to change and improve when
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  Speaker 1: you show them victories that are possible. But we as
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  Speaker 1: conservatives are always reminding people about disasters to be avoided.
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  Speaker 1: But why don't we turn our energies in to establish
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  Speaker 1: these strategic partnerships with the people inside. One of my
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  Speaker 1: biggest heroes to one that was Julius rosenwah Julius Rosenwaal
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  Speaker 1: is the CEO Sears who partnered with Booker T. Washington,
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  Speaker 1: and together they went into the South and they he
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  Speaker 1: put up half the money, the black community matched it,
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  Speaker 1: and they and built five three hundred schools.
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  Speaker 2: That taught about three fourths of.
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  Speaker 1: All low income black children in the South to read
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  Speaker 1: and to write. As a consequence, between nineteen twenty and
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty, the education gap between whites and blacks was
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  Speaker 1: eighth grades for white's fifth grade for blacks. Because of
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  Speaker 1: the Rosenwall Booker T relationship and the building of these schools,
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  Speaker 1: that gap closed within six months. If people in the
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  Speaker 1: circumstances at those times could close the education gap under segregation,
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  Speaker 1: why can't we do it today?
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  Speaker 2: We can do it. Let me end by saying, what
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  Speaker 2: we need to do.
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  Speaker 1: Is apply the principles that operate in our market economy
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  Speaker 1: should operate in our social economy.
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  Speaker 2: The people I.
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  Speaker 1: Described to you who are those in poverty but not
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  Speaker 1: of poverty. Others were in poverty but through God's grace,
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  Speaker 1: had become redeemed, and their witnesses to others that redemption
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  Speaker 1: is possible.
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  Speaker 2: And so what we need to do.
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  Speaker 1: Is to provide they are the social entrepreneurs. In our
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  Speaker 1: market economy, only three percent of the people who are
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  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs that they generate seventy percent of the jobs. Entrepreneurs
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  Speaker 1: tend to be C students, not A students. A students
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  Speaker 1: come back to universities and teach C students in vow
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  Speaker 1: and so our grassroots leaders are social entrepreneurs, but what
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  Speaker 1: they need is a relationship with venture capitalists as a
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  Speaker 1: As one of my favorite first black millionaires, JD. Gaston
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  Speaker 1: from Alabama, he was one hundred and six when he died.
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  Speaker 1: He had a six rade education. He said, it's better
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  Speaker 1: to say I is rich than I am poor.