A black pastor and activist says the black community is careening towards disaster unless it stops seeing racism as the root of its problems and focuses on rebuilding the black family with God at the center of it.
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is the founder of Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, or BOND, and is author of “The Antidote: Healing America from the Poison of Hate, Blame and Victimhood.”
In the book, Peterson rips liberal activists and politicians for fanning the belief among many black Americans that ongoing racism is responsible for their economic and social conditions. He says it’s something much simpler.
“The worst thing that can happen to children is not to have a good father in the home, where while they’re growing up they can look at and observe and see the right way to go, the right way to deal with life. Most of these children don’t have fathers in their homes. Seventy-three percent of black babies are born out of wedlock today,” said Peterson.
He says the negative impact of fatherless homes runs very deep.
“They’re angry because in their souls, in themselves, they miss their father. There’s a longing for their father. There’s anger because most of the mothers are turning them away from their fathers by telling them their father’s no good, that he doesn’t love you. There’s a void there and they’re spoiled because their mothers are spoiling them,” said Peterson.
When those “angry” young people reach adulthood, Peterson says deceptive politicians and activists that he calls “alchemists” are ready to manipulate that frustration.
“Instead of helping them to overcome their home life, they tell them that it’s racism, that white people are against them and try to hold them back. Many blacks believe that because when you’re angry, you can’t believe the truth,” he said.
Peterson says to goal of the “alchemists” is not to improve lives but to exploit them for political purposes.
“(Today’s) civil rights movement, Barack Obama and liberal white are controlling black Americans for personal gain, to gain power and wealth and to really change America into a socialist society,” said Peterson, who believes Obama feeds into the narrative because he’s part of it after growing up in a broken home himself.
“He doesn’t have the same respect for God. He doesn’t have respect for the country. He is in that same fallen state that these black radicals that you look at every day on TV running white people away from their jobs, accusing white people, cursing and carrying on. Obama has created that environment even more so because he’s in the same state of mind,” said Peterson.
Peterson says the black family was already struggling to stay together when Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was introduced in the 1960’s and government programs began sending checks to single mothers for food, welfare and other needs.
“When the civil rights movement started, they took the fathers out and the government became the daddy,” said Peterson.
This is not theory to Peterson because he’s lived it. He was born on a plantation in Jim Crow Alabama. His mother and birth father split and she married someone else by the time he was born. He says his mother, stepfather and grandparents instilled in him the values of hard work and the importance of not hating anyone because of their skin color.
Despite having a more stable home life than many young black men, Peterson says he struggled mightily when he ventured to California to start his own life.
“I grew up with a void. Even though I had a stable environment, I still had a yearning for my father. I wanted my earthly father. My mother would try to turn me away from him whenever I would ask for him. She was saying he’s no good so I resented her for that,” said Peterson.
Then came the “alchemists.”
“I started listening to Jesse Jackson and others and they said that white people was my problem. Because they were in the forefront, were adults and popular, I thought they were telling the truth. I ended up, for the first time in my life, hating white people and my life went to hell in a handbasket. I ended up on welfare,” said Peterson.
Peterson says he still had white friends but would bristle over any sort of disagreement, particularly about race, and consider them racists. While he was still trying to cope with the absence of his earthly father, he turned to his heavenly Father.
“I asked God to let me see what was wrong with me. He allowed me to see that the resentment that I had for not having my father and for my mother was holding me back in life, It separated me from God,” said Peterson.
“He also showed me that I needed to forgive so I went and forgave my father. When I forgave my father and mother, God forgave me. He took away all that anger, all the confusion, the doubt, the fear,” said Peterson, who adds he now has an “excellent relationship” with his earthly father.”
Peterson admits a Herculean effort is required to turn conditions around. But he says it starts with simply saying no to people who believe their victimhood entitles them to whatever they want.
“The first thing that white Americans need to say no to is this notion that you’re a racist. Let them call you whatever they want but you speak the truth to the issue,” said Peterson.
Next, he says are the government programs that he believes makes millions willing to perpetuate their bleak condition.
“We need to get away from Affirmative Action based on color. We need to stop giving these people free welfare, free Affirmative Action, free everything. You’re corrupting their nature when you do that. They lose all sense of hope and the ability to do for themselves,” said Peterson.
From there, Peterson says we need to build the family back up again, starting with a right understanding of what a family looks like.
“There’s a spiritual order to life. That order is God in Christ, Christ in man, man over woman, women over the children. It’s not a competition. It’s just a spiritual order. When the wife and the children love the father who loves God, then life works well,” said Peterson.
A major priority is getting men to acknowledge and live up to their responsibilities as husbands and fathers, something BOND has been doing for years.
“We are rebuilding the father by rebuilding the man. What we’re doing is getting men to turn back to God, love Him with all their heart, soul and might, and then get married and start guiding their families in the right way to go,” said Peterson.
Peterson says this effort is of the utmost importance because a culture filled with hatred and division will not last very long.
“Unless we muster up enough courage to tell the truth about this anger that starts in the home first and not with white people, there’s no hope for this country. How can God help us when we refuse to speak the truth about what is wrong. The problem is the destruction of black families and not white racism. I guarantee you that,” said Peterson.
