The triumphs of Joseph

The Triumphs of Joseph is a tribute to a contemporary miracle - neighborhood healers of the inner city who exemplify the imagination, the courage, and the self-help ethic necessary to renew our communities. Robert L. Woodson, Sr., sees Joseph as a prototype of the men and women who battle daily to change lives in our poorest neighborhoods. While many such modern "Josephs" exist, Woodson argues, their efforts are too often ignored or disparaged by "Pharaoh's courtiers" - the people who have a vested interest in the existence of poverty and racial tensions and have drawn attention away from solutions to the problem. Woodson concedes that racism and discrimination exist, but he insists that they are not the primary and most lethal cause of social disintegration in black communities. According to Woodson, drug abuse, theft, and gang activity are merely the localized evidence of a moral disintegration that is rampant in all walks of American life, white and black, rich and poor alike. This powerful appeal for the revitalization of American society shows that solutions exist in the vision and deeds of the street-level Josephs whose efforts and voices we must heed.