A civil rights veteran who went viral for denouncing reparations on “Dr. Phil” accused reparations supporters of trying to drum up support for the 2024 presidential race.
“My more cynical self says this is more about the 2024 election than the 1619 reparations,” Robert Woodson, founder and president of the Woodson Centerhe told Fox News Digital.
The call for reparations has gained momentum in the United States, as local, state and federal officials are considering creating programs to give payments to qualified black Americans in an attempt to address America’s dark history of slavery.
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Despite polls showing reparations remain unpopular, Democratic lawmakers introduced a resolution calling for $14 trillion in reparations, and the California Reparations Task Force recommended $1.2 million in payments to every northern black -qualified American
“It’s a ploy,” Woodson said. “It’s just holding us all at our throats and it’s being cynically used by people who are really trying to undermine the core values of this nation.”
“With the president’s numbers dwindling, they have to do something to keep the black community in line, and race is a safe strategy because when someone is in a constant state of grievance and agitation, it’s much easier to control,” he said. .
Bob Woodson, president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, arrives at the Trump International Golf Club on November 19, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. (Drew Anger/Getty Images)
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He accused the reparations movement of abusing “the rich legacy of the civil rights movement” and being driven by “guilty whites” who are “demanding absolution for crimes they never committed.”
In his interview with “Dr. Phil” that got millions of views last month, Woodson criticized reparations, noting that free African Americans also owned slaves.
“It’s much more complex that all white people were the oppressors and black people were the victims,” he said. “If you dissect it, you find there were about 3,703 blacks who owned 12,000 slaves—black slaves.”
“The question is, do the descendants of those free blacks who owned black slaves pay?” he asked.
Civil rights activist and author Bob Woodson criticizes the idea of reparations in an episode of Dr. Phil. (CBS)
Woodson told Fox News Digital that the repairs are a huge “distraction” and a “waste of time and energy.”
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“To solve a problem, you have to diagnose correctly, and reparations are not an answer to the challenges that large numbers of black people face in these cities,” he said. “It is lethal to continue to direct attention away from the critical issues and challenges facing Black people.”
“More blacks are killed in one year by other blacks than were killed in 40 years by [Ku Klux] Klan,” Woodson added. “So tell me how reparations could address this critical crisis.”
Woodson said handing out large sums of money to the descendants of slaves would not improve their lives, drawing a comparison to lottery winners.
“What has it meant in their lives?” he asked. “Seventy-eighty percent of them said they wish they had never gotten it because any time you separate work from income, it has a disastrous effect on the recipients.”
Fox News interview by Robert Woodson (Fox News Digital)
Woodson also said he doesn’t think reparations can work logistically because of the difficulty in accurately tracing family ancestry.
“Some people can’t even say who their parents are today, let alone trace their ancestors,” he said. “The time and energy we can devote to tracing our history should be devoted to repairing the healing wounds that exist in our own community.”
“They’re doing it by using social justice for black people as bait, and then they’re really using the values that allowed black America to achieve black America,” Woodson added. “The great story in Black America is not that we suffered under slavery and Jim Crow, it’s how we achieved great things in the face of that oppression.”
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A Survey 2021 found that nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose reparations. Woodson said he didn’t find that surprising.
“Most Americans are sensible, they know it’s a ridiculous idea,” he said. “They know someone is using a bogus solution that has no answer because it can keep people in a state of agitation, grievance and anger.”
Click here to read more about Woodson’s take on reparations.
