“Whenever you generalize about a group and then try to apply remedies to that group, it always helps those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom … Affirmative action is part of the whole race-grievance narrative. The assumption is that in order for blacks to achieve, then we must dumb down the entry standards.”
Bob Woodson, founder and president of the Woodson Center, shares his thoughts about the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action programs at universities.
“I’m just absolutely delighted with the court’s ruling, because it ends the presumption that black America is intellectually inferior, and therefore can only achieve and advance if special privileges are extended to us,” he says. “So, I’m really glad that it ends this presumption of incompetence and it will go back to the whole issue of equality of opportunity.”
Woodson believes that, historically, set-asides and government programs have taken the place of discipline and hard work, which has harmed black communities. He says that personal responsibility, religious faith, and commitment to the nuclear family are what served to protect those communities during the hard times of slavery and Jim Crow.
“And yet, in the last 50 years, we got more blacks killing other blacks in one year than the Klan killed in 50 years. Tell me how affirmative action and these kinds of patronizing programs are going to address that crisis,” says Woodson. “The helping hand of government has destroyed these communities. All you have to do is look at these cities. The great promise of the civil rights movement [was] if you appoint blacks to run these cities, then conditions will improve. Well, conditions have deteriorated every year that these policies have been in place.”
Woodson proposes a de-racialization of race, whereby we begin to address what he calls a “systemic incompetence” and a crisis of meaning and hope among black minorities.
