Activist, speakers put civil rights focus on self-determination, reject ‘victimhood’
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- Conservative civil rights activist Robert Woodson of the Washington, D.C.-based Woodson Center, right, addresses a crowd at Weber State University on Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Sen. John Johnson of North Ogden, left, served as moderator.
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- Conservative civil rights activist Robert Woodson of the Washington, D.C.-based Woodson Center, not pictured, addressed a crowd at Weber State University on Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Also speaking, from left, were Letroy Woods, Ron Williams, Lucy Shirisia, Cari Bartholomew and John Harvey.
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- Conservative civil rights activist Robert Woodson of the Washington, D.C.-based Woodson Center, right, addresses a crowd at Weber State University on Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Sen. John Johnson of North Ogden, left, served as moderator.
OGDEN — Conservative civil rights activist Robert Woodson maintains that the traditional civil rights movement is on the wrong track, causing more damage than good.
“As the veteran of the civil rights movement, I am appalled that the Black community and its rich legacy of the civil rights movement is being used as a bludgeon to destroy this country,” he said during a visit to Weber State University. “They’re using it as a bludgeon.”
More particularly, Woodson — founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Woodson Center — blasts the notion that the legacy of slavery should figure so big in the civil rights movement. Many civil rights activists maintain that racism represents the continued legacy of slavery, and some — like The 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones — say African-Americans are owed financial reparations due to that legacy and the uncompensated work of their enslaved ancestors. Hannah-Jones addressed Weber State on March 30, offering a different take on the civil rights movement.
Traditional civil rights activists maintain that because racism and slavery “was a part of (the United States’) past, that it should be forever defined by the worst of what we were in the past rather than be defined by what we’ve become,” Woodson said. He addressed a sympathetic crowd at the Val A. Browning Center at Weber State, the same place where Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine writer, spoke.
Woodson, though, faults that line of reasoning, saying it encourages Black people to focus on victimhood, which can have the effect of holding them back, rather than the force of self-determination in improving their lot.
The civil rights movement “has morphed into a race grievance industry, and therefore it has lost its moral footing because they accept the limits being imposed by progressives who are saying that Black America should be defined by its victimization,” he said. “When you’re talking about self-determination, it is frowned upon. They will cuss you out if you talk about individual self-determination.”
Underlying a focus on victimhood, Woodson went on, is a belief that “all you have to do is just show up, and because you’re Black, you deserve to get reparations.” He rejected the idea.
“I would rather have an old-fashioned bigot than to have someone who patronizes me and tells me you are incapable of performing and therefore, unless we guilty white people do things for you, that you are unwilling or unable to do for yourself, then you can’t possibly achieve anything,” he said.
Several other conservative Black Utahns shared the stage with Woodson, offering a similar message. Utah Sen. John Johnson, a conservative Republican from North Ogden, moderated the event.
Ron Williams, a pastor and bodybuilder, said racism takes the form of slavery, Jim Crow laws, the inability of Black people to drink at the same water fountain as white people. “That’s not the case today. Today there are so many opportunities,” he said.
Moreover, Williams maintains that while racism continues to exist in the country, “it’s not systemic.” He, too, said the ability to succeed doesn’t live or die with the legacy of slavery but in the ability of the individual to overcome.
“The thing about it is, I don’t feel like you need to give me anything. Just give me a chance. I just need a fair chance,” he said. “This is the land where you can accomplish anything you want to, but you’ve got to believe it. If you believe it, you can have it.”
John Harvey, who runs the “Modern Conservative” podcast, lamented that the race question has evolved into a debate he says is designed to make white people “feel guilty for being white.”
He, too, said the ability to succeed is on the individual. “You have a right to succeed. You have a right to fail. That is on you. That’s equality,” he said.
Also addressing the group were Letroy Woods of Path Forward Utah; Cari Bartholomew, host of the podcast “Be Not Afraid”; and Salt Lake Community College instructor Lucy Shirisia. Conservative Americans for Equality and Path Forward Utah organized the event in conjunction with Weber State.