Minister wants blacks back on plantations

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Published time: January 18, 2012 22:59
Edited time: January 19, 2012 03:00

“One of the things that I would do is take all black people back to the South and put them on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working.”

No, that’s not the latest rant from Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, the candidate who recently said that the black youth could benefit from low-wage positions on the janitorial staff of schools. No, that quip comes courtesy of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, who is not just a support of Gingrich, but an unusual one at that.

Rev. Peterson, founder of The Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), says that black culture in America could benefit by going back to the plantations and installing a hard work ethnic in young African-Americans. Peterson says he should know — he was once a young black kid working on the farm.

Peterson says that the majority of blacks discredited Gingrich’s statement and are often irked by similar commentary that labels African-Americans as lazy and unmotivated. They shouldn’t be, he stressed, however, because that’s nothing but fact.

"People don't want to hear the truth,” Peterson tells the Huffington Post. "Newt was 100 percent correct," Peterson says. "Newt said that he would have black children, minority children work as janitors at school. Working as a janitor would build character, more so than the handouts so many of them like."

If he has his way, Peterson knows exactly what he’s going to do: "I'm going to put them all on the plantation. They need a good hard education on what it is to work."

Peterson insists that blacks in America aren’t getting a good education or career because they aren’t working for it. "I know some people take it personally because a whole lot of folks don't like hearing the truth; they like to be in denial," he tells HuffPo. "Not all black people, but most black people know, and white people know, and black people say it more in private than they would in public, but for the last 50 years or so, generations and generations of black people have relied on the government or someone else to take care of them."

The reverend was responding to Gingrich’s comment that black should demand jobs, not food stamps. When Fox News commentator Juan Williams asked the former House speaker recently if he could understand why so many people felt offended by his remark that black children should enlist as classroom janitors, he stood by his statement.

“Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?” Williams asked Gingrich during Monday night’s GOP debate.

“No. I don’t see that,” responded Speaker Gingrich — to a round of applause.

When Williams responded by warning the candidate that he had been “inundated with people of all races who are asking if your comments are not intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities,” the debate audience in South Carolina heckled the pundit.

Gingrich remained unwilling to admit that his remark could be considered in poor taste, instead insisting that he will “continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job,” because the Obama administration isn’t doing their part.

Rev. Peterson thinks that if that message catches on, more blacks will realize how disenfranchised they are from the Democrats and join the GOP.

"I hope that once [black people] hear the truth, they will pull away from the Democratic Party and their godless leaders," Peterson tells the Huffington Post.

According to the New York Times, the number of black Republican voters that participated in both the 2012 Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary rounded to 0 percent in both instances.