Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert came under fire yesterday after making “reprehensible” comments to a teenager on a public online forum.The comments were part of a debate sparked by Mr Furbert, on his move from the United Bermuda Party to the governing Progressive Labour Party.After a white 18-year-old involved in the exchange told the Tourism Minister he hadn’t voted for the UBP and never would, Mr Furbert posted: “When you were in your mothers wound (sic) you were born to vote against the PLP.”By yesterday morning, the comment on the Bermuda Election 2012 page had been deleted.The teenager later told The Royal Gazette he was offended by the statement, which he described as racially fuelled.When contacted, Mr Furbert admitted he could have chosen his words better. He said he was referring to statistics that show the UBP and the One Bermuda Alliance have received overwhelming support from the white community.“There was no racist remark by me,” he said. “I was stating a fact based on statistical information of voting patterns, and this is where our problem begins.“In hindsight, yes, I could have phrased it another way.”The debate started after Mr Furbert posted a link to a Letter to the Editor by Patricia Ferguson, that appeared in The Royal Gazette.She was critical of his switch from the UBP to the PLP Mr Furbert “tagged” the teenager, and asked why he and Mrs Ferguson didn’t talk about those who left the UBP to form the OBA.“I think he tagged me because, days earlier, I had made a seat prediction that he would lose constituency six,” the teenager said. “Mr Furbert was not provoked in this case, unless you can say that Pat's letter provoked him.”The teenager mimicked Mrs Ferguson in his response to the Tourism Minister, describing the move from one party to the next as “political prostitution”.Mr Furbert again asked the teenager about the other MPs who left the UBP for other parties.“Honestly, as an 18-year-old first-time voter, I told him that I neither care about the UBP nor have I ever voted for them, and, since the UBP are no longer around, I also won't be voting for them in the future,” he told The Royal Gazette. “This comment prompted Mr Furbert's inane and reprehensible remark, in which he implies that whites are genetically predisposed to voting against the PLP in their mother's ‘wound’.“I cannot condone racially-fuelled comments, especially those from our Tourism Minister, who, in all senses, is the face of Bermuda worldwide. While I am not asking for an apology personally from Mr Furbert, an apology in general would be appreciated since he offended many more people than just myself.”Asked about the deleted comments, Mr Furbert said: “In my Facebook post, I was referring to the fact that 90 percent of the white community have supported the UBP, now the OBA, regardless of the state of the economy, regardless of the platform and policy positions and regardless of the calibre of candidate.“It is a fact, that race plays a major factor in the outcome of elections in Bermuda, with the swing vote, the only vote that moves, being drawn primarily from the black community.”