Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America

By Jesse Lee Peterson

In this provocative book, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the most outspoken critic of the civil-rights establishment in America today, lays bare its corrupt leadership, courageously taking aim at the bigest names?Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, among others?claiming they are nothing more than scam artists profiting off the hatred and disorder they foster in the black community. Peterson insists it's time to throw off the oppression of the established black leadership and stand for the American ideals of freedom, personal responsibility, free enterprise, and moral principle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 2, 2005
• ISBN: 9781418518691

Book preview

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is a great American. He is a man of conscience with a bold prescription to make America a better place.

—SEAN HANNITY

"Scam is a devastating analysis and critique of how black politicians and the civil-rights establishment have delivered one disaster after another for black Americans. Indeed, it’s an account of what’s nothing less than a gross betrayal of those who gave their blood, sweat and tears to make today’s liberty and opportunities possible. Rev. Peterson’s solutions are just the simple commonsense of our ancestors, something all too rare today."

—WALTER E. WILLIAMS, Professor of Economics, George Mason University

"Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson has become one of the more principled black conservative moral leaders in our country. His tenacity and leadership is a throwback to the leadership of Booker T. Washington. Black America, all of America, needs more leaders like Rev. Peterson."

—NIGER INNIS,the national spokesperson

for C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality)

Bucking the racial stereotype is hard work. I know because I’ve been doing it for years. Allies in the fight to promote racial good health are difficult to find. The Rev. Jesse Peterson has what it takes to point America toward better race relations.

—KEN HAMBLIN, The Black Avenger

Jesse Peterson exemplifies two qualities rare in any age, and certainly rare in our own: a passion for truth and extraordinary courage.

—DENNIS PRAGER

I give the Reverend Peterson high marks for his unrelenting willingness to expose those media anointed and self-appointed black leaders who’ve made a long and lucrative career posing as the mouthpiece of blacks. Despite my deep disagreement with the Rev. Peterson on many issues, I salute him for having the courage to challenge the black establishment and for always remaining true to his beliefs.

—DR. EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON, nationally

syndicated columnist, author of The Crisis in Black and Black

SCAM

REV. JESSE LEE PETERSON

SCAM

HOW the BLACK LEADERSHIP EXPLOITS BLACK AMERICA

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Copyright © 2003 by Jesse Lee Peterson

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Current, a division of a wholly-owned subsidiary (Nelson Communications, Inc.) of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Nelson Current books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail].

GRANDPA (TELL ME ‘BOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS)

© 1985 Sony/ATV Tunes LLC

All rights adm. by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Sq. W., Nashville, TN 37203.

All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pet erson, Jesse Lee, 1949 –

   Scam : how the Black leadership exploits Black America / Jesse Lee Peterson.

      p. cm.

   ISBN 0-7852-6331-4 (hc)

   ISBN 1-5955-5045-3 (tp)

   1. African American leadership. 2. African Americans—Social conditions—1975– 3. African Americans—Politics and government. 4. African American politicians—Biography. 5. United States—Race relations. 6. Racism—United States. I. Title.

   E185.615.P438 2003

   305.896'073—dc22                     2003014466

Printed in the United States of America

05  06  07  08  09  BTY  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2

To Justice Clarence Thomas:

you are the example of what black

Americans should be.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

1. Blacks Need No Leaders

2. The New Massas

3. Blacks Are Not Suffering Due to Racism

4. A Church and Liquor Store on Every Corner

5. Instead of Reparations, How About a Ticket Back to Africa?

6. White Fear

7. Repudiating Jesse Jackson

8. Louis Farrakhan, American Hitler

9. Al Sharpton, Riot King

10. Boycotting the NAACP

11. The Father’s Role in the Family

12. The Attack on the Man

13. Why Black Women Are So Mean

14. Save the Children

15. How Black America Shall Overcome

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

Foreword

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I was born and raised in New York but came out to California to expand my construction business in the late eighties, which is how I put myself through college. I first became interested in talk radio during the Iran-Contra hearings. Tuning in to those hearings one day I became absolutely riveted. The next thing you know I was habitually calling in talk radio shows to passionately comment on what I was seeing, instead of taking care of my business. Soon I realized my future was in radio, not construction!

My first on-air gig (unpaid!) was at my college radio station at UC Santa Barbara, and one of my first guests was none other than Jesse Lee Peterson. He was just putting BOND together at that time. Jesse made a great guest, even back then. He always had courage and the insight to know that something was very wrong in the African American community—and, more importantly, the knowledge of what to do about it.

Later, I was hired by a station in Huntsville, Alabama, and guess who I interviewed there? Jesse Lee Peterson. Jesse reciprocated, and had me on as a guest on his radio show. It was always fun working with Jesse because he never backed down, but never got upset either. He had a light touch, which was refreshing in this world of syndicated radio.

One day I got a big break—the chance to host in a Top 10 market (Atlanta). Then WABC in New York, and of course Hannity & Colmes. Jesse was there with me every step of the way.

Jesse always treats my liberal TV counterpart, Alan Colmes, well even though the two of them almost never agree! He does a fantastic job every time.

As you probably know, I’m a big believer in family. My wife Jill is the love of my life, and I believe my two children are the greatest gift God has ever given me. I am always concerned about the kind of world we will leave our children. Supporting the family has never been more critical, and Jesse and BOND are at the forefront of this movement. I heartily salute them.

Along the way I became a member of BOND’s National Advisory Board and even received their prestigious Booker T. Washington award, for which I am very proud.

My latest book is titled Deliver Us From Evil, and I used that title for a reason: There is evil in the world, and it means to do us harm. I go to church with families who’ve lost family members at Ground Zero, so I am continually reminded of the tragic effects of evil. Make no mistake, we must confront evil. We cannot afford to fail in that mission.

One thing I love about Jesse Lee Peterson is that he gets it. He too can see the cold reality of evil, and how we must confront and overcome it. Remember the words of the old spiritual—"We Shall Overcome." Just as Dr. King knew Americans had to confront the evil of his day, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson knows we must confront the evil of this day.

In 2003, Jesse’s bombshell book, Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America, was released. I was proud to offer a blurb that appeared on the front jacket of the book. It read, A man of conscience with a bold prescription to make America a better place. I meant every word because those who lead America to its better self will be those men and women of conscience who refuse to remain quiet in the face of evil. Men like Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson.

You are reading an updated version of Scam, and this book has never been more important to the future of America. The truths written in this book are powerful and life-changing if you have the heart and courage to view this book with open eyes and an open heart. Even if you end up disagreeing, Scam will one day be remembered as a bold and audacious book—a classic—and I believe a turning point in a monumental struggle for the hearts and minds of African Americans.

A profound, positive change is in the air for America, and Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is not only at the forefront of this movement, but also helped pioneer its return—a return to the character of great Americans like Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Harriet Tubman. This is where the hope for the future of black America resides.

I am proud to call Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson my good friend. We share the same love for America and the same hope for its future.

Sean Hannity

  August 2005

Introduction

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Black Americans have been scammed; what’s worse, they’ve been scammed by their own folks. What you are about to read in this book is the truth about who the scammers are, how they’ve conned black America, and what can be done about it.

Over a decade ago, I began to realize that the so-called black leaders like Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, and others were lying about why blacks are in trouble today. If some blacks wonder why things don’t improve despite this leadership, they need to wake up to the fact that these leaders profit by creating hatred and animosity between the races. In fact, it is imperative for these leaders to continue creating problems even where none exists. If they don’t, they’re out of business. And they’re definitely not that—their business is flush. They’ve been running a scam on black Americans since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died that fateful morning in Memphis. Dr. King did indeed have a dream, but Jesse Jackson has turned it into a nightmare.

Former slave Booker T. Washington, author of Up from Slavery, is one of my heroes. He was dealing with his own version of Jesse Jackson back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He warned about problem profiteers who make their living by causing racial strife:

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.¹

Sound familiar?

These leaders have been brainwashing blacks since Washington’s day, blaming white Americans for all of our problems. Sometimes these problems are created, sometimes just exacerbated, but always paraded to create racial hatred against whites. The big problem here: if a person can get you to hate, this person can control you! You never shake the genuine problems and you get shackled to suffocating resentments. I became a free man for the first time in my life by giving up hatred. If other blacks could understand this, they’d be free, too.

REVEALING THE LIE

I was raised on a cotton plantation near Montgomery and Tuskegee, Alabama, in the late ’40s and early ’50s and worked side by side with my grandparents in the sweltering heat, picking cotton. I would start to work early in the morning, take time off in the afternoon, and then continue picking cotton until the sun went down. When it was harvest time, I missed school in order to work. Despite having to endure backbreaking work in the fields, no one in my family blamed the white man for our plight. In fact, I don’t recall anyone in my family expressing anger at whites for our economic condition. We knew that we had to make a living, and we were grateful for having jobs, regardless of how difficult it may have been for us.

I grew up in Alabama at a time when public schools were still segregated, when blacks were refused service in restaurants and had to use different restrooms. I understand the evils of segregation and believe it was important for black leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for the abolition of this social evil. But today, as I look back on my life and the condition of the black family during those times, I am convinced that by many different measures blacks were actually better off then than they are now—after forty years of the civil rights movement and the agitations of so-called black leaders like Jesse Jackson.

Back then, by and large, we had good black schools, fine black universities, safe and well-groomed black communities, and intact families. Today, by most measures, the black family is in shambles: black communities are drug-infested, single parenthood is the norm, and crime is rampant in the black areas of our major cities.

In a way, my life was a preview of much to come for many black Americans. I was born into a broken family in the tiny town of Comer Hill, Alabama. I did not know my father, and my mother had left me with her mother when I was a toddler and moved to Gary, Indiana, with another man.

I first met my father when I was about thirteen. One day he just showed up at my grandmother’s house in Comer Hill. When he told me who he was, I was incredibly excited he had come to see me. As I studied him, I felt completed, like a missing piece of my life had been supplied to me. I immediately felt the natural awareness that a father is critically important to a child and that a boy needs his father to help him grow into a man. He told me to come visit him in Indiana where he lived. Since I sometimes spent summers with my mother, who also lived in Indiana then, I did get out to see him but had to do it behind her back. For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, she hated my father and tried to prevent me from seeing him. During those summers I began to understand why my mother and stepfather had always been so cold to me: I looked too much like my father. That likeness—along with her anger for my father—caused her to reject me. My stepfather tried hard to be kind and loving toward me, but I wanted my father, and my stepfather was no substitute. To both my stepfather and my mother, I represented an unpleasant memory.

When I was eighteen years old, I left Alabama and moved to Los Angeles to start a new life, having no idea what my future would hold for me. Unfortunately, I began listening to the teachings of men like Jesse Jackson, NAACP leaders, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. As a result of listening to these scam artists, I developed a hatred of the white man for what were actually my own personal failings, and I became even more confused about my own purpose for living. I began to use drugs as a way of coping with my inner turmoil. I also learned to think of welfare as an entitlement that America owed me for years of slavery and segregation.

In fact, I found it amazingly easy to get on welfare and simply live off the system. I signed up in Los Angeles and started receiving $300 a month. In addition, the system paid my rent and supplied me with food stamps, free medical coverage, and other benefits. I was making the white man pay me back for all of the oppression I thought I’d been subjected to in the past. So I partied with that money, caroused with women, and lived a fairly degenerate life. I thought I had it made.

But while on welfare, things didn’t get better. They got worse. The more money I got from welfare, the less desire I had to work. It became spiritually and morally suffocating.

Looking for answers, I started to realize that I was being held back in life because of my own anger. It wasn’t the white man who was oppressing me; it was my own anger, resentment, and hatred. It wasn’t white racism keeping me on welfare; it was actually my own racism that was keeping me enslaved to a system as evil as slavery was before the Civil War. I also began to realize that much of what passes for religion or Christianity today in black churches is nothing more than the corrupt leadership of men. They rarely preach the truth about God; instead, they preach race hatred, vain philosophies, and liberal politics. Once I uncovered the lie, I broke out of the shackles, and I’ve been trying to help others break free ever since.

SPREADING THE TRUTH

My message to the black man and to the black community is one of hope and encouragement, not one of anger and despair. I firmly believe that we blacks are our own worst enemies. By listening to the problem profiteers and blaming white America for our difficulties, we’re handicapping ourselves and living unproductive and self-destructive lives. It is time to stop the excuse-mongering, claiming that whites are crippling our ability to get ahead. If blacks do not abandon this mentality and this rage against white America—if we do not accept responsibility for our own failures—we will forever remain defeated.

America is the land of opportunity; it gives blacks a greater chance for social and economic advancement than anywhere else in the world. Blacks should adopt the ideals of success, hard work, saving money, sustained effort, and self-restraint. They must maintain their mental health by adopting love as the controlling attitude in their lives rather than resentment and rage. In America, individuals control their own destinies. Those who want to succeed will do so, while those who choose to pity themselves and blame others will continue to fail.

With our current crop of black leaders in positions of power, it is unlikely that the plight of blacks will improve any time soon. I prefer to heed the wise words of Booker T. Washington: I would permit no man to drag down my soul by making me hate him.² I’d take Booker T. Washington’s advice over any current black leader who has a financial and political interest in creating and sustaining racial hatred in this nation.

It is time someone stood up to Jesse Jackson and organizations such as the NAACP, to world-class racist Louis Farrakhan, and to Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and many of America’s black preachers, who are fleecing the flock instead of leading them to spiritual and physical freedom.

Saying such things isn’t popular. Believe me, I know. I get called nigger quite a bit—and Uncle Tom and sellout—usually by fellow blacks. I’ve had guns drawn on me, my privacy and property grievously threatened—you name it. Do I enjoy that? No, I don’t. But do you know something? My life is an absolute blessing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Among many other things, I am known as the man who started the National Day of Repudiation of Jesse Jackson, which my organization, BOND (Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny), hosts every year. We’re also actively boycotting the NAACP. At BOND we’re rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man: building character in this and the next generation of men (and women), while boldly standing for truth in the public square. With all the racial hustlers and agitators who pit people against each other for profit and status, there’s an incredible amount of cleanup to do. But at BOND we’re taking care of business.

These leaders need to be unseated, removed, boycotted, bounced, dismissed, junked, and jettisoned. Black Americans don’t need leaders. We need individual responsibility, love of God and neighbor, the freedom to succeed or fail, and a life unshackled by hatred or resentment.

That’s what this book is about: freeing blacks from the stranglehold of our so-called leaders and their poisoned words and deeds so we can stake out our true position in this land and recapture the stolen dream of Dr. King.

1

Blacks Need No Leaders

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The day of the leader must end—

the dawn of the individual must arise

Black Americans do not need the kind of self-appointed leaders they currently have. I don’t recall the entire black race in this country taking a national vote to elect Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, the NAACP, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Congressional Black Caucus, or liberal black preachers as our leaders, yet they’ve seized the mantle of leadership and claim to speak for all blacks in this nation.

Their leadership, however, has proven to be disastrous. These arrogant elitists have given us a continuous diet of racism, paranoia, affirmative action programs, and higher welfare checks; and many display little or no personal integrity in their own lives.

These self-proclaimed leaders have helped grow a welfare system that has resulted in the elimination of the black man as head of the family and placed the government as the daddy in most black families today. As a result, civil rights leaders have become the head of the people.

Nearly 70 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock.¹ The welfare system was originally set up to pay recipients money for each child, so this provided incentives for welfare moms to have more children rather than to care for those they already have. (The Welfare Reform Act passed in 1996 has helped encourage moms to get off of welfare, but this process is far from over.)

Current black leaders preach racial hatred and welfare dependency, not peace and independence. They earn their fat salaries by stirring up the racial pot and portraying blacks as the hopeless victims of racism. Unfortunately, most blacks have accepted these men and women as their new slave masters and have allowed these individuals to speak for them. We don’t need their leadership.

It is a dangerous thing for a person to blindly put himself under the leadership of any man or woman. Blacks who allow themselves to be led around like sheep by the likes of Jesse Jackson are forfeiting their independence and free will. These leaders almost inevitably exploit their followers. These current black leaders tell blacks how to think, whom to vote for, and how to live their lives.

By preaching race hatred and the cleverly packaged ideology of socialism, these leaders have convinced millions of blacks that white America owes them special treatment: welfare checks, affirmative action programs, and even different grading systems in our nation’s universities. Black educators have even created a fictional Afrocentrist history that pushes phony notions of black racial superiority in our nation’s schools. Other educators have devised what they call critical race theory, which claims that there’s no such thing as objective reality—that rationality is simply a tool of white males and is designed to oppress minorities.

Black preachers who have been seduced by these deadly attitudes and political philosophies are perpetuating a cycle of hatred and violence within the black community. They, too, have given up any reason or logic in their preaching and simply parrot the latest politically correct opinions from the Jacksons and Sharptons.

These pastors maintain control of their congregations by instilling a sense of fear in them. Black churchgoers are told that if