Chicago City Wire

Woodson Center founder Bob Woodson has no use for the growing talk of reparations.

"First of all, it's insulting," Woodson said during a recent appearance on Chicago's Morning Answer. "I would prefer the old-fashioned bigotry than the bigotry of low expectations and diminished standards as a way of pandering to blacks. It is most insulting to lower the bar and assume that to assume fairness and justice, the bar must be lowered in order for blacks to achieve."

Woodson said that's precisely the impact programs like the Restorative Housing Project in Evanston, which has set aside a $10 million reparation fund for black residents, stand to achieve.

"People talk about systemic racism, but in many of the urban centers, blacks are running those systems they are alleging confirm systemic racism," Woodson said. "How does systemic racism work when the superintendent of schools in those urban systems are black, the principal is black, the school board, everybody? I've got to find that remote control device."

Woodson said he finds the cause behind so much black suffering to be fueled by something entirely different.

"What happened is the government in 1960s with their urban renewals, and poverty programs did more to undermine the moral, spiritual and cultural fabric of the black community," he said. "With the welfare systems separating work from income and making fathers redundant, millions flooded into the welfare system. What government policy did in the '60s was more injurious to the interests of blacks than anything that happened after slavery up until the 1960s.