Robert Woodson: If All Whites Moved Out of USA, How Would It Solve Inner-City Problems?

(CNSNews) - The solution to poverty begins in the neighborhoods and the people affected by it, says Robert Woodson, the founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.

"You always have to begin with a solution in mind," Woodson told CSPAN Tuesday morning in a discussion on poverty. "I tell people, what is your solution? If all whites tomorrow were to move to Canada and Europe, tell me how it would affect the black on black crime rate, how would it it affect the out-of-wedlock births, how would it affect the spread of AIDS? How would it affect those issues?" he asked.

"What I'm saying to Black America, we must stop victimization. We must stop complaining about what white folks have done to us in the past. We must go into ourselves, as Dr. King said, and find indelible ink -- our own emancipation proclamation."

Woodson's organization goes into low-income communities and seeks out leaders and "moral mentors" to help solve the problems they understand so well.

"When you bring people together where you are motivated by solutions and not complaining about what others have done, it is amazing how much entrepreneurial energy exists within these high-crime neighborhoods," he said.

"Young men who have been to prison...if they can drive, it means they can drive taxicabs in high-crime areas. My point is, we should be using all of our energy to try and promote innovative approaches to poverty rather than just trying to find excuses. There's nothing more lethal than a good excuse for failure -- institutional racism, whatever that means.

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