The Eighth Day of Christmas at SBPDL - No Free Toys

Christmas 2009 is in the books, yet we haven't finished the 12 Days of Christmas at SBPDL.

The season of Christmas is a festive time of giving presents to others, in the hope of granting them a reprieve from the doldrums of the winter with gift-wrapped bliss.

Receiving gifts is wonderful, yet seeing the smile creep across the persons face whom you give a gift too is worth 100 of the best gifts ever given. Knowing you have brought joy to another person through a gift. To quote A Christmas Carol again:

"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour."

One of the supreme ways to induce laughter is by giving a family member, loved one or friend a wonderful gift - or perhaps an inside gift/joke - that strengthens your bond to them through the efficacy of a fantastic yule tide gift.

The idea of a "gift" is one that is vital to creating a sense of social cohesion and in establishing a proper equilibrium of community:

"A gift or a present is the transfer of something without the expectation of receiving something in return. Although gift-giving might involve an expectation of reciprocity, a gift is meant to be free.

In many human societies, the act of mutually exchanging money, goods, etc. may contribute to social cohesion. Economists have elaborated the economics of gift-giving into the notion of a gift economy.

By extension the term gift can refer to anything that makes the other happier or less sad, especially as a favor, including forgiveness and kindness."

And yet, Black people have for long been the beneficiaries of white peoples kindness and liberality, that they know take for granted "gifts" in any form and expect the societal obligations that white people must fulfill constantly to placate their Black rulers:

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. -- Police were called in Sunday when a charity toy giveaway turned chaotic.More than 1,000 people showed up at an event sponsored by Johnnie's House, a domestic violence non-profit group.Some parents were upset when their children only got one toy for a $10 registration fee.

"When you personally gave her your $10, she promised everybody a bag of toys, and we received nothing but one toy per child, and some children didn't even get nothing," said an angry Shermirrea Wright.Some of the toys were stolen before the families arrived."A lot of toys were stolen from the premises today," said Johnnie's House founder Johnnie Gaskins.

"That left us even shorter."Gaskins promised that more toys will be distributed when they are collected or registration fees will be refunded."

Video of this event can be found here.

Black people know that disingenuous white liberals will provide them with all the niceties and necessities to live a life far above the pathetic existence of the poor English who Wordsworth described in London 1802:

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Like the Salvation Army, people who donate toys so that others can enjoy happiness are trying to augment philanthropy throughout their community, and yet, some people are appalled by the lack of imagination in the gifts or the amount of such gifts:

Worse, Atlanta had another event where Black people found themselves deprived of free toys:

SMYRNA, Ga. -- A church pastor is accused of making questionable decisions involving a Toys For Tots program.Andrew Manning and his wife Gayle are furious. They have 9 granddaughters who will get nothing from 24/7 International Church on Cobb Parkway.The Manning's paid the church $1 in order to receive donated Christmas gifts through Toys for Tots.

“I think he should go to jail. He broke a lot of hearts and made a lot of promises that he couldn't stand up to be,” said Andrew Manning.Toys for Tots said the pastor of the church was running a scam by charging some people a $1 fee to make copies of drivers licences and social security numbers to verify their identities in order to prove how many kids they had.Maj. Tim Teed said,

"It's definitely running a scam If they are charging money for free toys, yes, that’s a scam."Teed added, "They requested eight requests for 13,000 toys going to one organization. If that one organization is going to charge a dollar per request, that could possibly be $13,000 that they are going to profit."Pastor Segun Masha said he was not running a scam.Masha defended the charge.

He said, "If you had a copy, you didn’t need a dollar, it was a choice. You could go to Office Depot or bring it from home. We gave them the option."Masha said the reason he submitted eight requests for toys is he was working as a middle man, helping Spanish churches who didn’t know how to sign up.Five-year-old Ashanti and her 4-year-old brother Jason have a short wish list. All she wants is a Barbie doll and all he wants is a toy truck, but this Christmas they won't get anything.

Their grandmother Betty Montgomery said, "I just tell them I can't afford it this year. I wasn’t even able to get a Christmas tree this year."Montgomery is on a fixed income and kids' mom just lost her job. Montgomery and dozens of other people were hoping to pick up a couple of free gifts at 24-7 International but they all left empty handed.Smyrna police said the pastor's actions were unethical, but not criminal because the $1 that was charged is said to be a donation and not a fee.

Video of this event can be found here.

Of course, not all people wait until the gifts are ready to be handed out and it convenient to procure them when no one is looking (no suspect has been named in this case as of yet, and it would be misguided to paint them with a Black brush just yet):

REVERE, Mass. -- Police in Revere are trying to solve a crime against children.

73 presents were stolen from the First Congregational Church in Revere over the weekend. The stolen toys would have helped out 46 families in need.

“I know people are having a hard time this time of year, but to steal from children? That's awful,” said a local resident of the crime.

Why even point out this story? Because when you juxtapose the kindness of strangers who then have their toys stolen, with the entitlement mentality of the Black people in Atlanta demanding more and more toys, well, you get a picture of a community in dire need of help.

Interestingly, Canada has the same problem, and Black people there find the same enjoyment out of stealing toys meant for kids.

Even when rappers, like Shawty Lo, try give back to the community by giving out presents, some people find this in-group display of generosity weak and displeasing.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes no free toys, for Black Friday only comes once a year and free toys from generous individuals attempting to build a community with gifts just isn't enough to pacify Black people around Christmas.

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#714. Trick or Treating

On the 31st of October, children dress in their ghoulish best and go forth in their respective towns to knock on neighbors doors in hopes on receiving delicious treats.

Trick or Treating is the ultimate source of community building - a fact Mein Obama should have taken into consideration during his days as a community organizer in Chicago - for parents sending their children alone into the night is not a common practice for people who live on the other side of the tracks or in rough where crime is rampant.

Obviously, Whitopia's are the worst area for Trick or Treating to occur, for the hallmark of these cities is the high amount of crime and disunity that follows white people wherever they go. Wait, Whitopia's are the cities that offer the best places for children to safely Trick or Treat, without fear of molestation or gang rape.

Where does Trick or Treating come from, you might ask? Is it part of the Out of Africa theory, the continent where anything and everything good and decent has originated. To be frank, no. It comes from that dour continent where only evil, blue-eyed devils were conceived, and it is these Ice People who came up with the oustanding tradition of community building through the honesty-inducing practice of sending children out into the night unsupervised:

"Trick-or-treating is a custom for children on Halloween. Children proceed in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy, or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The "trick"is an idle threat to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property, such as eggs and flour being thrown at householders windows if no treat is given....

The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.

Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona
(1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a
beggar at Hallowmas."

The custom of wearing costumes and masks at Halloween goes back to Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them, in Scotland for instance where the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white."

Interestingly, Trick or Treating is practiced in most European countries, as well as Australia and the United States, but little knowledge of the tradition being celebrated in Africa is documented. Perhaps African people employ the Trick method much more frequently then the Treat method, as evidenced by the interesting career of Robert Mugabe and the white farmers of Zimbabwe.

Again, it is in Robert Putnam's study on diversity that we understand the truth of why Trick or Treating is a phenomenon in only Whitopia's, for the idea that children being safe to explore the vast cityscape of Washington DC, Memphis, New York City, downtown Atlanta or Richmond High School in California alone is a hard pill to swallow:

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about releasing his new research, and understandably so. His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities.

Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more
diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. This proved true
in communities large and small, from big cities like Los Angeles, Chicago,
Houston, and Boston to tiny Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota, and the
mountains of West Virginia. In diverse San Francisco and Los Angeles, about 30
percent of people say that they trust neighbors a lot. In ethnically homogeneous
communities in the Dakotas, the figure is 70 percent to 80 percent.

Diversity does not produce “bad race relations,” Putnam says. Rather, people in diverse communities tend “to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.” Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.”

Few words are needed to elaborate on why the practice of Trick or Treating will die out in the America of 2042 then the ones that preceded this sentence, for Putnam's study is a damning critique of the future of Trick or Treating. The practice will be forced to seek refuge in Whitopia's and forever remain a holiday that acts as an immutable bond for white children to understand their attachments to their community.

Sadly, the joys of diversity will never come to Trick or Treating. For if Diversity is our Strength, then Trick or Treating should be a shared practice in all communities:

"Two-thirds of parents say their children will trick-or-treat this Halloween, but fewer minorities will let their kids go door to door, with some citing safety worries, a poll shows.

The survey found that 73 percent of whites versus 56 percent of minorities said their children will trick-or-treat on Wednesday.

That disparity in the survey is similar to the difference in how people view the safety of their neighborhoods, according to the poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Lower-income people and minorities are more likely to worry that it might not be safe to send their children out on Halloween night."

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Trick or Treating, for this practice is just too white to bring into the Black community and can only work in cities that have a solid amount of trust and altruistic-sense of pride in their citizens.

In a phrase, Trick or Treating is just too much of an Acting White proposition for Black people to add to their lives.

For next year, utilize Zillow.com, an excellent website that has tabulated the best places in major cities to Trick or Treat for kids, based on a variety of variables, including safety:

"The folks at Zillow.com have created their first Trick or Treat Housing Index, which draws on the site’s real estate data to determine the top-five neighborhoods in Seattle and Los Angeles to maximize candy intake this Saturday.

"How’d they do that? “There is a common belief that wealthy neighborhoods are the Holy Grail for harvesting the most Halloween candy,” blogs Zillow’s Whitney Tyner. But to provide what it calls a more holistic approach, Zillow factored in home values alongside additional data on population density, neighborhood walkability, and local crime. “Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least walking, and minimum safety risks,” she wrote."

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