Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to breakpoint, a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. Years ago, after visiting the National Museum of African American History and culture in Washington, D.C. sociologists and civil rights leader Bob Woodson wrote about a display that he said, stop me in my tracks. The 1980s were, according to the exhibit, years of paradox. While many blacks pursued advanced degrees and entered the professions, others existed in poor neighborhoods filled with drugs and violence. So who or what was to blame for this stark contrast? Well, according to the museum, the answer was Ronald Reagan because he cut too many social programs. Woodson, who founded the Woodson center in Washington, D.C. to, quote, empower low income communities to solve their own problems, did not buy that take. Is it truly institutional racism and heartless policies that resulted in the conditions today? He asked. Well, on Wednesday, the Woodson center announced that Robert Woodson, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship, a Presidential Citizens Medal, the Freedom Leadership Award from Hillsdale College, and the 2018 William Wilberforce Award, among many other honors, had died at the age of 89. As the center wrote in their announcement, and I quote, from his early days as a civil rights activist to his decades at the Woodson Center, Bob built a body of work that reframed how America thinks about poverty, race and community. He stood steadfast for the nation's founding values and virtues, including faith, hard work, personal responsibility, the foundational importance of healthy families and communities, and the ability of everyone to shun a victimhood mentality and become agents of their own uplift. He's left behind a generation of leaders, revitalized neighborhoods, and a civil rights tradition centered on the people it was always meant to serve. He didn't just build an organization, he built relationships. And those relationships built a movement. Well, what's in question? The dominant narrative about race and oppression and instead champion innovation, entrepreneurship, personal responsibility and family as the key to economic empowerment and community restoration. In fact, the 2018 Wilberforce Awards Ceremony featured academic luminaries, political heavyweights, and former leaders of rival gangs, all honoring what he had accomplished. Woodson's approach was fact based, not ideological. He once asked the question, if the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws are responsible for the decline in marriage and the rise in poverty and out of wedlock births in the black community, then why during the Great Depression did blacks have the highest marriage rates? And also during decades when blacks had little political power and faced legalized discrimination, did they still make significant economic progress? Woodson thought it was because prior to the 1960s, African Americans tapped their internal capacity. Hard work, cooperation, academic performance, moral excellence were the elements of a strategy to achieve, he wrote. He pointed to the history of black churches and civic institutions as models of what African Americans could achieve. When denied access to banks, they built their own. When insurance companies turned them away, black churches created burial societies and mutual aid societies to assist the poor. But tragically, Woodson said, that rich history of self determination was abandoned in the 1960s. So the only way forward, he concluded, was a return to a culture based on self determination, personal responsibility and strong moral values. And Woodson didn't just talk about these ideas, he put them into action, founding the center for Neighborhood Enterprise, which became known as the Woodson Center. The best way to help the poor become self sufficient, he believed, was by placing control of community development not in the hands of faraway bureaus, but in the hands of community leaders. And so Woodson center programs spread all over the country, including the Violence Free Zone, which sent young adult advisors into schools to mentor youth. At one Richmond, Virginia high school, arrest of students dropped 38% after adopting a VFZ program. A Dallas high school that recorded 133 gang incidents the year before bringing in VFZ reported zero the year after. Woodson center programs transformed the lives of former drug addicts, prostitutes and the homeless. According to Bob Woodson, the secret to his success was that faith in God transforms the inside and that faith transforms the outside. Well, the faith of Robert Woodson that brought so much transformation to both the inside and outside for so many has become sight. Please learn more about the Woodson center mission, vision and programs@woodsoncenter.org for the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with Breakpoint. If you appreciate these daily commentaries, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources or to share this with others, go to breakpoint.org
- [05:03]
B
Christian Educators this is Billy Hutchinson with Colson Educators. As a former teacher myself, I know you're busy and I know you want to teach like a Christian, but not just be a Christian who teaches well. That's why we created the Colson Educators App. You can get practical worldview training wherever you are, complete courses on your schedule, earn CEUs, and connect with a community of like minded educators. Download the Colson Educators app on the Apple App Store or Google Play.