Jesse Lee Peterson: The Civil Rights Movement Made Black People ‘Immoral’

Right-wing commentator Jesse Lee Peterson told radio listeners this morning that black people use to be “moral people” before the civil rights era, but have become “immoral” since gaining more equal treatment in American society.

On his radio show this morning, a caller asked Peterson to elaborate on earlier claims he made about interracial children, when he asserted that having children with white people would “make blacks better.” The caller asked Peterson how mixed children “back in the slavery days” bettered themselves, to which Peterson answered that those children were able to achieve success because “they were not told they were victims, they were not told that white people were trying to hold them back.”

“Black people were moral people back then and they are immoral now. Since the civil rights movement, they have been relying on the government, they feel like victims, they blame everybody else for their weakness,” Peterson said.

Peterson is occasionally drafted to be a pundit in mainstream right-wing media to criticize the black community and to give cover for Republican scandals involving racism.