Rating: 
Summary: Tells it like it REALLY is..
Review: No there are no deceptions here, nor is there any "pointing" of fingers. This book basically tells it like it really is when it comes to most of the modern day civil rights activists.After reading this book it is obvious that Rev. Peterson is seriously concerned with the future of African Americans in this country and makes his point very clear. It descibes how leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson are feeding their plush lifestyles by simply breeding hatred within the black community. After all if men such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are so concerned with the poverty issues regarding African Americans then why don't they offer more of their own donated funds to helping those in dire need within their communities? The Rev. Jesse Jackson alone has four (yes four) separate non-profit organizations, but how much of that money actually makes it back to the black community? Not near as much as you think. After all when Jackson spends nearly a million and a half dollars on travel expenses in one year alone, there's not much left over . I myself am African American and at one time I idolized men such as Jesse Jackson. However, I have begun to realize over the years what kind of man he really is. A self-righteous crusader who is making a living off the very people he is suppossed to be helping. If you are not of the African American race please keep one thing in mind, not all blacks agree with Jackson's and Sharpton's ideas. Some of us really do search for truth rather than use our race as a crutch and a weapon.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor scholarship
Review: Not only is this book poorly written, the clear lack of scholarship and command of the English language renders the text utterly incoherent and useless. While it is clear that the author holds very strong opinions, there is a clear inability to articulate them in the printed word, which is extremely painful. The publisher should have more respect for the reading public than to allow such gibberish to pass as a text under it's auspices. They should have hired a ghostwriter, as the prose seems to have been written by a semi-literate person at best or a wholly illiterate person at worst depending on what passage you read. It frightens me that one with such little grasp of the language can have such strong opinions, and to compound the graveness of the issue, actually find a publisher.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a devastating critique
Review: of black liberal, socialistic, left-wing, Democratic, progressive, communist, pundits like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters, etc. who spread their message of victimhood, racism, and hate. You'll read how the majority of blacks are "brainwashed" by the Democratic party, why the problem within the black community is not racism but a lack of moral character, why the problem isn't material but spiritual, why the problem isn't white vs. black, but right vs. wrong. Rev. Peterson not only states the problems, but offers a solution. SCAM is shamelessly conservative and Christian. Prepare yourselves!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Blacks Need No Leaders
2. The New "Massa"s
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
Rev. Peterson has faced hostility, name-calling, physical assault, and even threatened at gun-point because of his crusade for blacks. Here's an abridged transcript between Peterson and Dyson on the Hannity and Colmes show that graphically depicts what Peterson has gone through:
HANNITY: Jesse, let's see, you're claiming that Mr. Dyson and others called you ignorant, accused you of being the white man's boy, attacked your education, the way you spoke, said you were a pawn for the white man. I thought this was a conference where there's a free and open exchange of ideas. You can't have a different viewpoint without being personally assaulted and your character assassinated?
PETERSON: You know, I thought the same thing, Sean. I was invited there by the National Association of Black Journalists to debate the issue of reparations. And I was debating Michael Eric Dyson. There were about 300 or so black journalists there from across the country. Michael Dyson gets up. They gave him the first and the last word, by the way. Michael gets up and he presents his reasons for reparations. And it was the same old stuff you hear all the time. You know, the slavery and the white man.... I get up and I say that reparations is racist, it is divisive, and it's another way for the so-called leaders, black leaders, to use black Americans to gain power and wealth.... it was at that point, Sean, that they started screaming and calling me names and telling me that I'm... a white man's boy.
HANNITY: Jesse, I want to go to Michael Dyson.... you wrote this... "if you've ever wondered what a self-hating black man who despises black culture and worships at the alter of whiteness looks like, take a gander at the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson. In Peterson's mind, black rates of teen pregnancy, the breakdown of the black family, and black peoples' addiction to civil rights advocacy are the unerring symptoms of moral failures.
Michael, you know what? I didn't picture you as a mean-spirited person. What you wrote here is mean spirited.
DYSON: I don't think so, Sean. I respect your opinion, but had you been there to see the full volley of venom that Reverend Peterson directed toward black people, here you are, I think, trying to make the victim...
HANNITY: Worship at the altar of whiteness? Worship at the altar of whiteness?
DYSON: Reverend Peterson at the convention spewed some of the most venomous, vindictive, hateful venom...
PETERSON: Like what?
DYSON: ...toward black people that one might imagine.
PETERSON: Like what, Michael?
DYSON: He said we were totally reprehensible, we were immoral, we had no reason to argue for our own equal standing in African/American society.
PETERSON: Michael, you're not...
DYSON: Let me finish.
PETERSON: That's not what I said.
DYSON: Once black people then morally rehabilitate themselves then they will be available for that kind of thing. And I think that's reprehensible.
COLMES: Reverend Peterson, did you say to Michael Dyson, "Jesus does not speak to you." Did you say that to him?
PETERSON: Michael was quoting the scriptures, right? And I said to him that he has the words of the bible, but he doesn't know God at all because there is no way you can know God and teach this type of hatred.
DYSON: Sean, what do you think about that? What do you think about that, Sean?
COLMES: That's pretty attacking.
PETERSON: You can't have love and hate in your heart, Michael.
DYSON: No, no, no, I don't have any hate in my heart. Here's my point.
PETERSON: Yes, you do.
DYSON: Those...
PETERSON: You hate white people.
DYSON: OK, I hate white supremacy. I hate black bigotry. What I'm telling you if those firemen who are coming home from New York, if you say to them, look, you made some mistakes on 9/11. Therefore, you are to blame for what happened on 9/11. That would be ludicrous. That is comparable to what Mr. Reverend Peterson said to African-American people. And that is self-hating and self-abnegating... Here's a man who's telling me as a minister that I don't know even God. Telling me I don't know God.
PETERSON: You don't.
COLMES: But what they're saying is that you went beyond that. You went on to talk about how immoral black people are, how hateful they are of black Americans. They deserve no kind of positive treatment until they get away from civil rights leaders.
PETERSON: I didn't say that, Alan.
DYSON: Yes, you did.
PETERSON: I didn't say that. I said that unless we restore the family, unless fathers and mothers come back to guide their children in the right way to go, no money will solve that problem.
Rating:
Summary: Courageously articulated and accurate penetrating views
Review: Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson believes that "blacks are not suffering due to racism," but rather, "the lack of moral character is the number one problem in the black community today." Peterson contends that the poverty, crime, drug use, and STD's characterizing many black communities are not due to white racism, but can be attributed primarily to a lack of values, character, morality, and fathers.
As if these courageously articulated and accurate penetrating views aren't provocative enough, Peterson further writes, "Blacks see racism everywhere they look, even though by most accounts there is really very little racism left among whites- certainly not among those with much power and influence. The sad truth is that black racism is far more pervasive today than is white racism." Unfortunately, if a white person made these very same observations in our fanatically politically correct society in which truth is subverted lest anyone be offended, he'd be deemed an outright racist.
While there is certainly room for improvement in abolishing remnants of racism still lingering in our great nation, America is not the racist country college professors and others on the Left make it out to be. As Rev. Peterson makes abundantly clear, if blacks want to truly better themselves, it is absolutely imperative they remove their "victim mentality" and address the actual causes- a lack of character, values and morality, not white racism- to many of their problems.
The book also lays out a damning case against the so called "black leaders" of today, including Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan 'American Hitler,' and Al Sharpton 'riot king.' That Sharpton, whose deplorable resume is replete with bigotry and anti-Semitism, chronicled by Peterson, was welcomed into the tent of the Democratic Party as a legitimate candidate for president, is telling. Peterson also indicts the NAACP for "becom(ing) little more than a tool of the racist, elitist Democratic party" with a sensible list of ten reasons to boycott this organization.
Peterson is not only a man of immense courage, boldness, reason, common sense, and wit, but, most importantly, he is a devout Christian, a man of faith whose spiritual insights are essential to his recipe in Chapter 15 for "How Black America Shall Overcome: A Blueprint For True Freedom." To quote one paragraph from this chapter, and a fitting excerpt for concluding this review: "I was ready for change. It was thirteen years ago, and I heard a Jewish minister on the radio say that if you want to overcome your problems, shut up, be still, and let G-d direct your life."
G-d bless you Rev. Peterson for all that you do.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT A CROC!
Review: Rightly so, Jesse Lee Peterson is one of the most hated men in the black community. He has called black people immoral because they voted for Bill Clinton; then he modified his position by saying most black people are immoral.Anyone who engages in hasty generalization and demonizes a group of people is intellectual irresponsible and his book belongs in one place--in the trash. Which is what I did after reading the first chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson: America's Best Kept Secret
Review: Scam is one of the best books I've ever read in my entire life. Rev. Peterson does a tremendous job in presenting facts and truths about the plight of black Americans that the civil rights establishment is in denial of to keep our people in mental bondage. He challenges the group identity, that all blacks have to believe, vote, and think alike and why we often behave like we do. The standard is biblical morality and personal responsibility. I'm a black pastor, who's Republican, and I've read excerpts of this book while preaching sermons, particularly at Men's Conferences so black men will know that they've been deceived and have been loyal to culture and not to truth. It is the truth that we know that makes us free. Every black person in America who's literate should read this book. It will challenge and change your life where other liberal blacks will not have to do your thinking for you, but you can think for yourself.
Bennie E. Calloway, III
Douglas, Georgia
Rating:
Summary: The truth shall set you free!!! Fantastic!!!!
Review: Simply put the truth has set me free form the deception that Jesse Jackson had on my thinking. Thanks for getting out the truth.
Rating: 
Summary: Some problems
Review: The basic premise of the book is a good one, that is, that blacks as a group do not need their own "leaders" per se and he exposes the evils and trickery of the current so-called leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. But I must agree with the reviewer who said that the book is poorly written. It sounds amateurish and Peterson devalues his own ideas by calling others "stupid" or "crazy." I found this unprofessional even when I disliked the same people.
He also gets into peripheral issues that don't pertain to the issue of black leaders, for example, blaming homosexuality as a force in weakening black culture, anachronistic arguments that the man is the president of the house and the woman the vice-president or that Jesus Christ should be the basis of black men's values. These are his own values and don't necessarily pertain to the premise of the title.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful, brutally honest, but a bit radical at times
Review: The book title is very succinct. If for nothing else, everyone should read this book for a healthy dose of perspective - you sure won't get it from journalists, politicians or academics because as Reverend Peterson notes, serious dialogue on racial issues has been hijacked, replaced with political dogma, and enforced through political intimidation tactics. Peterson offers a stinging look into black politics as it is conducted today, focusing upon the activities of self-appointed black "leaders" such as Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Maxine Waters and Al Sharpton (it's a shame he left out Shiela Jackson-Lee, there's so much material there too). I had no idea they were so crooked and, in the case of Farrakhan, kooky. He is so right that Dr. King's vision has been perverted by these leaders into a message of divisiveness, blame and hatred. Just read Dr. King's "I have a Dream" speech and then listen to some of these black "leaders" as they give their speeches - does it *sound* like they share his vision? Peterson puts a voice to the feelings and skepticism that many whites have about black political issues, but are reluctant to publicly discuss for fear of being called a racist. His scathing attack on the concept of "slavery reparations" shows it for what it really is: A grab by a small elite for money, attention and power, at the likely cost of a vastly increased racial divide. He has the unenviable task of trying to convince people that they can let go of their victimhood status, shed their hatred and affect their own destiny. Unfortunatley, the concept of personal responsibility as opposed to social or collective responsibility is very much a right-wing concept and will likely fall of deaf ears for many left-wingers. His section on corporate shakedowns ala Jesse Jackson is a must-read. I had no idea this kind of racial blackmail was going on at such a level and was so well organized. He offers a very interesting perspective on Kwanzaa and the Black Congressional Caucus as well. He has a very important point about how blacks are becoming slaves to the democratic party, giving the dems little incentive to really serve blacks since the dems know blacks would never vote republican. The only downside to this book is that as Peterson's list of blacks categorized as "Leftist, racist America-haters" grows, one begins to feel that he has really oversimplified the world into a dichotomy. As far as solutions go, he's quite nostalgic and one has to keep in mind that he is a reverend when he preaches that modern societal decay is due to black fathers not being strong and responsible enough, while mothers are not subservient enough. Nonetheless, the underlying message of strength through family unity is a postive one despite the fundamentalist delivery. I don't agree with him on a number of points and its unfortunate that some of his less popular religiously-motivated opinions will alienate more secular audiences, especially left-leaning ones. If you consider modern racial dialogue shallow, divisive and often hypocritical, you will find this book enlightening. Peterson is brash, bold and refreshing all at once. I strongly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: This is the most firey polemic in the past 40 or 50 years
Review: This book is destined to be the greatest polemical topic of 2004. Mr. Peterson takes great pains to show us the myriad ways in which some of the best known 'leaders' of Black America have personally profited from every major piece of civil rights and social welfare legislation that has come down the pike, siphoning off megabucks from Federal, State and Local government programs into their own personal pocketbooks. Second, he focuses on the personal immorality and hypocrisy of the so-called reverends who constitute the majority of black leadership. It's a pretty devastating track record. Not much better than that of an evil Priest from Boston. One of the prime targets of the book is Jessie Jackson, although Al Sharpton gets hit plenty, and he is savagely exposed. I'm afraid that there isn't much Rev. Jackson could say in his own defense. Mr. Peterson sticks closely to the best documented and most public scandals of Jessie Jackson's career. These provide ample ammunition. Mr. Peterson doesn't really need to reach for the more complex and more doubtful cases, but he does anyhow. The biggest question this book poses and answers is the following: Why has Black Leadership gotten a free pass from both law enforcement and the media? Because they are masters of creating and exploiting a false sense of guilt in white people. It is a false sense of guilt, says Peterson, because there is no longer any substantial amount of racism in the white race; and certainly not enough to hold the Black race down. Black leaders have mastered the art screaming "racism" whenever they are called to account. This cry stops white folks in their tracks even if it is ill-founded. This begs the question: If there is no longer any substantial amount of racism in the White community, why has the Black race not risen to a state of full parity with the White race? This is where the nuclear melt-down will occur in 2004, and where the fires will rage for some time to come. Mr. Peterson could not be more blunt in stating his conclusions: The reason why Blacks continue to have trouble with the law and fail to rise to higher stations in life is a pure lack of moral and ethical character. Yeee-ooouuuccchhh!
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