#48. The Reality of Adoption

Michael Oher is a fine football player, who is an employee of the National Football League (NFL) and the benefactor of white people and their amazing altruism. We have previously written about Oher and the white family that nurtured him to a scholarship at Ole Miss, for nature dealt Mr. Oher a cruel blow as he never knew his father and was one of 13 siblings living in a poor district of Memphis:

“Among 13 siblings from the poorest part of Memphis, he never knew his father, whose murder he learned of months after the fact in high school. His mother, Denise Oher, was addicted to crack cocaine. The kids were scattered about.

Michael attended 11 schools in nine years. If not in a foster home, he lived with friends. He was homeless.

The Tuohys took in Oher, allowing him a safety net in their home in upscale East Memphis two blocks from the school. For months he came and went as he pleased, and Leigh Anne worried when he didn't spend the night. They hired a tutor to address severe academic deficiencies, paid his tuition and gave him a wardrobe and other essentials. Sean says the generosity was not the result of any epiphany or even as much as a family meeting.

"We think God sent him to us," Sean says. "Earthly explanations don't make sense."

Let’s be honest. Earthly explanations don’t make sense in this situation, for Memphis harbors one of the nation’s highest crime rates, thereby making the decision by the Tuohys one that was fraught with danger :

“On September 27, 2007, a headline in The Commercial Appeal, the city’s biggest newspaper, announced a dubious honor: “Memphis Leads U.S. in Violent Crime.” Local precincts had been seeing their internal numbers for homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery tick up since the late 1990s, starting around the time Barnes saw the first dead car. By 2005, a criminologist closely tracking those numbers was describing the pattern as a crime explosion.”

Perhaps this can be explained using the psychological theory of Stockholm syndrome, for although no-one has been kidnapped in this situation, the white family in question seems to exhibit signs that permeate the entire white population of the United States: a callous indifference to Hate Facts and a near defiance of their existence.

It might be fate that we near National Adoption Day (November 21) at a time when the movie canonizing the actions of the Tuohys’ family and the Oher merger is coming out. Also, it could be fate that SBPDL has decided to look into adoption at roughly the exact same time frame.

Now, were the white world full of Angelina Jolie’s, Madonna’s and Tuohys’, then the incredible population boom among the colored people of the world could easily be met with a warm embrace of TLC as ostensibly, only white people can provide.

Sadly, not everyone is as enthusiastic about white people adopting Black people and encouraging them to enter a world where Acting White is permissible and encouraged, while being the Token Black is a sign of prestige:

“Since 1972, the influential National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) has taken this stance, suggesting that interracial adoption is a form of "genocide" and that "black children in white homes are cut off from the healthy development of themselves as black people."

"Same race makes sense because it is what the child is accustomed to, what causes the least disruption in the child's life," says Toni Oliver, a chairman of the organization. "Oftentimes when people are looking at 'love is all it takes,' they seem to overlook the impact race has on our society. Somehow when it's a case of adoption, race suddenly doesn't seem to matter anymore."

The North American Council on Adoptable Children also has serious reservations. "It is probably optimal if children are placed in same-race, same-culture placements, but we do not condone delaying placement and preventing children from finding homes just to meet that optimal placement," says spokeswoman Diane Riggs.”

Now remember that more than 70 percent of Black children our born out of wedlock, thereby creating a much larger pool of potential children who could one day be up for adoption:

“Other data released last month showed the percentage of unwed mothers differs from race to race. While 28 percent of white women gave birth out of wedlock in 2007, nearly 72 percent of black women and more than 51 percent of Latinas did.

"With the publicity of our first family," meaning the Obamas, Henry said in a discussion group entry, marriage might "slowly become more of a norm for all."

Let’s take a quick look at adoption statistics by race:

“Opponents of race matching contend that the numbers now seem stacked against the possibility of same-race adoptions. Of the estimated 500,000 children in the U.S. foster home system, more than half are minorities. Of those available for adoption, 40 percent are black, although blacks represent only about 13 percent of the general population. What is more, according to the National Adoption Center, which keeps track of so-called hard-to-place children, about 67 percent of such children are black and 26 percent are white, while 67 percent of the waiting families are white and 31 percent are black.”

Yikes. That translates to being a high percentage of Black children that run the risk of never finding a family as generous as the Tuohys. Worse:

The most recent estimate of transracial adoption was performed in 1987 by the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The findings revealed that only 1% of white women adopt black children.

5% of white women adopt children of other races

2% of women of other races adopt white children (estimates include foreign-born).

More incredibly, it appears the high numbers of Black people eligible for adoption in the United States are disregard for Asian babies in need of adoption by white couples:

“Although available statistics are rough estimates, several sources show that the percentage of transracial or transcultural adoptions in the United States is significant. For example, one source estimates that 1,000 to 2,000 African-American children are adopted by Caucasian families each year.

Data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service show that U.S. families adopted 7,088 children from other countries in 1990. This means that there were roughly 8,500 transracial or transcultural adoptions in 1990. In that same year, there were almost 119,000 adoptions of all kinds.

Since approximately half of the adoptions in any year are stepparent or relative adoptions, in 1990 there were about 59,500 nonrelative adoptions. The percentage of transracial/transcultural adoptions (8,500 of 59,500) then, comes out to more than 14 percent.”

Worse, Black children stay in Foster care homes at a rate that far exceeds the time white kids stay in homes:

“The study, which was endorsed by seven national child welfare groups, analyzed the 1994 federal law, and found it has not led to equity in adoption rates for children. Black children still stay in foster care an average of nine months longer than white children, it stated.

Multiple forces may be at work. Black children are over-represented in the child welfare system. In Florida, a 2007 federal government oversight study found black children are over-represented at a rate of almost twice their proportions in the population. In explanation, it pointed to higher rates of poverty, hurdles in tapping support services and racial bias and difficulties in finding permanent homes.”

Moving forward in the discussion is a statistic that SBPDL finds troubling, considering the massive implications the stubbornness it exhibits:

“The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) is the only national source of data on voluntary relinquishment for adoption. According to the 1995 NSFG, ¹ less than 1 percent of children born to never-married women were placed for adoption from 1989 to 1995 (Chandra, Abma, Maza, & Bachrach, 1999).

• The percentage is higher for White never-married women (1.7 percent) than for Black never-married women (near 0 percent).
• Relinquishment by married and formerly married women is rarer still, and percentages are not available.

About 1.4 million children were born to unmarried women in 2003, comprising 34.6 percent of total births (Hamilton, Martin, & Sutton, 2004). If the relinquishment rate measured by NSFG in 1995 for never-married women were applied to all unmarried women who gave birth in 2003, this would mean that fewer than 14,000 children were voluntarily relinquished in 2003.”

Black women must be commended for their desire to keep their child – instead of voluntarily relinquishing their child for adoption – for more than 70 percent of Black children our born out of wedlock, which means roughly that same percentage is raised by a single parent. Where is Tyler Perry’s Madea when you need her?

SBPDL would like to point out the relative few Black people who adopted white people, yet despite the dearth in numbers we find this practice admirable. We live in a Black world and it is important to subject white babies – since Newsweek deemed them all evil racists anyways – to the future at an early age.

It is our hope all white babies will be removed from their families henceforth and introduced to Black families – of which only 27 percent operate in a nuclear family setting – so that they can better prepare for life in the Black world now.

Of course, the problem of not wanting the child does occasionally pop up from time to time, as white parents do have buyers remorse:

“The "Today" show on NBC did a shocking segment on Anita Tedaldi, "a woman who adopted a child and then gave him up 18 months later." Tedaldi is a writer who originally told this story on The New York Times' Motherlode blog.

She and her husband have five biological children and decided that they wanted more. After going through the approval process, she was able to adopt a baby who was found by the side of a road. Despite her pre-adoption belief that she would "be able to parent this little boy the same way I had done with my biological daughters," she terminated the adoption after 18 months.

Because she couldn't bond with him, she said.”

A Black writer from the Washington Post posed the question that SBPDL asks now, “why do white people love to adopt non-white(but non-Black) babies”:

“All the same, I can't understand why so many white American couples go overseas to adopt, ignoring the plight of black children in the United States, such as the hundreds in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia awaiting adoption.

One person at a state agency I talked to said one word -- "Madonna" -- when I asked why more people don't adopt black children in the United States.

The well-publicized examples of Madonna and Angelina Jolie to the contrary, however, fewer children are adopted from African countries than, say, from China or Russia. Of the 27,000 children Americans adopted from overseas in fiscal 2005, only 441 came from Ethiopia, the African country with the largest number of international adoptions. Nearly 8,000 came from Russia and more than 4,500 from China, according to the National Council for Adoption.”

The answer is obvious: Disingenuous white liberals love to adopt non-white babies, as long as the baby isn’t Black. They get a chance to show that they are working to eradicate the vicious strain of racism (i.e. white babies) from the universe with the addition of non-white babies to their herd. Again, Newsweek comes to rescue with a great piece on interracial adoption:

“Riding's challenge hints at a persistent social problem. "No country in the world has made more progress toward combating overt racism than [the United States]," says David Schneider, a Rice University psychologist and the author of "The Psychology of Stereotyping." "But the most popular stereotype of black people is still that they're violent. And for a lot of people, not even racist people, the sight of a white child with a black parent just sets off alarm signals."

Part of the reason for the adoptive imbalance comes down to numbers, and the fact that people tend to want children of their own race. African-Americans represent almost one third of the 510,000 children in foster care, so black parents have a relatively high chance of ending up with a same-race child. (Not so for would-be adoptive white parents who prefer the rarest thing of all in the foster-care system: a healthy white baby.) But the dearth of black families with nonblack children also has painful historical roots. Economic hardship and centuries of poisonous belief in the so-called civilizing effects of white culture upon other races have familiarized Americans with the concept of white stewardship of other ethnicities, rather than the reverse.”

Stuff Black People Don’t Like is shocked that the White Man’s Burden continues to be attacked, when, were it not for these benevolent people, Michael Oher would be on the street or worse, in jail:

“More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released Thursday.

Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation’s 2 million prison and jail inmates in 2006. Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent.”

Newsweek is wrong, for white stewardship – as the case of Michael Oher shows – is vital at this delicate juncture in American history for the future of Black people to be secured. It’s like the plot of the Terminator in reverse: Black women should give up their children – remember more than 70 percent our born out of wedlock – to white families so that the future for Black people can secure.

We can call it the Michael Oher Act: removing Black children from at-risk families (since more than 70 percent of Black kids live in a single-home and are at risk) to white families for guidance.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the reality of adoption, for without the magnanimous nature of white stewardship, the Black incarceration rate would be higher and we would be deprived of the Michael Oher story, which coincidentally is something Black people like even less, because it proves it doesn’t take a village to raise a child… just a loving white family is the only ingredient necessary.

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#510. 'Brothers' Being Hassled in Akron

Words are important in the Black community. Take for instance the term “Brother”, a fine greeting that Black people toss around freely to describe an individual of close relation whom they feel a certain fondness with and admiration for.

The interesting early 2000 film Zoolander perfectly describes this phenomenon in a scene you can find here, when Derek Zoolander discusses the importance of the term “Brother” in the Black community:

“Rufus, Brint, and Meekus were like brothers to me. And when I say brother, I don't mean, like, an actual brother, but I mean it like the way black people use it. Which is more meaningful I think.”

Yes, the term “Brother” has a deep, almost religious connotation in the Black community that binds all Black people together in a battle against the nefarious MAN, for Black people have long been at war against their oppressors. This unnamed struggle would leave Henry V at a loss for words, for the Band of Brothers that induces people in their cars to their lock doors at the mere sight of them, exercise an incredible power over nearly 200 million Americans.

White people joke amongst themselves about inner-cities being dangerous and speak in code so as not to offend the true masters of the universe – Black people. White people – when they are prepared to make a politically incorrect statement – will always look around two or three times in the anxious hope a commissar of Hate Facts isn’t around to brand them a bigot.

It’s akin to crossing the road: look both ways before you get cross so you don’t get hit by a car, but when unloading a politically incorrect statement about Black people, white people always look around in a 360 degree radius to assiduously ascertain that no offending ears are present.

A new phrase that can be added the growing list of offensive statements white people can make towards Black people is, "watch what you're doing":

“A Kent State student is hospitalized in critical condition after a brutal attack that witnesses say was unprovoked.

Kent Police say 23-year-old Christopher Kernich was walking home on East Main Street with two friends early Sunday morning, when they were nearly run over by a car.

Witnesses say one of the students yelled to the driver "watch what you're doing".
Police say the car then pulled ahead of Chris Kernich and his friends, and two men, 20-year-old Ronald Kelly and 21-year-old Adrian Barker jumped out and began beating the three students.

Members of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity saw what was happening and tried to help Kernich and his friends.

Kent State Senior Shawn Mullins says "this kid ended up getting beaten up and then they started stomping him in the street and he was by himself really."

By the time the members of the fraternity got to Chris Kernich's side, he was laying in the street.

Mullins says "it didn't look like he was breathing whatsoever and his body was like limp so we had to physically pick up out of the street."

While a couple of the fraternity brothers summoned medical attention for Chris Kernich, the others kept Ronald Kelly and Adrian Barker from fleeing until Kent Police arrived.

But they almost ended up being victims themselves.

Shawn Mullins says "when we chased the kid off, they tried to hit us, the guy, he came out from the driveway over here somewhere and he tried to hit us with the car too."

Akron, Ohio again, the same place where it was decided that this is a Black world, now:

“It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend's home in South Akron.

Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ''This is our world'' and ''This is a black world'' as they confronted Marshall and his family.”

Like the word “niggardly” and merely boarding a school bus in St. Louis, white people have been forewarned about the dangers of offending the palate of Black people, for the taste of white indifference toward Black people is a most indigestible fruit.

Many words exist that offend the auditory system of Black people, yet we are entering exciting new times when a phrase such as “watch what you’re doing” is the impetus for a Pier Six Brawl.

Of course, merely disagreeing with Black people is grounds for a swift punch to the face even if you’re a professor at Columbia. Avoiding a moving vehicle and admonishing the driver to “watch out” is hereby grounds for a pummeling henceforth.

We live in a Black world. To deny this is to brandish the laws of gravity a triviality.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like views Akron, Ohio as the epicenter for interesting activity that confirms the dispossession of the majority underway across the nation. It also views this as another example of SBPDL: ‘Brothers’ being hassled in Akron.

A Band of Brothers indeed.

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The Jayson Blair Award goes to Chris Matthews

Sarah Palin is able to arouse the most venomous anger from disingenuous white liberals, because she represents MARs anger unlike any other political figure.

At a recent book signing for her new tome, Palin was victimized by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and pilloried the crowd as being an all-white affair, or in his words 'monochromatic':

MATTHEWS: I think there's a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people. I think she's very smart about this....

Of course, Black people have a monolithic view of life in America - everything is Black vs. the rest - and our encouraged to practice tribalism at every turn by the media, academia and politicians.

According to Gallup, Obama's approval rating among Black people is at 95 percent (for the week of November 9 -15), which is a six point swing from the week before (we guess bowing to a foreign head of state is a big boost of energy for Black people).

And remember, according to exit polls, 95 percent of Black people voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election.

The question is what Chris Matthews hopes to gain by his sycophantic rants about Mein Obama, for his love of our president is reaching new boundaries of obsession and his journalistic integrity is comparable to Jayson Blair. Remember him? He is now a life coach in Virginia, but before his decision to mentor troubled individuals and give them positive direction, he was a rising star at The New York Times until this happened:

“After a summer internship at The New York Times in 1998, Blair was offered an extended internship. He indicated that he had to complete some coursework in order to graduate, and The New York Times agreed to defer it. He returned to The New York Times in January 1999, when "everyone assumed he had graduated. He had not; college officials say he has more than a year of course work to complete." That November, he became an "intermediate reporter."

Despite recurring criticism of his performance, he was assigned to the Beltway sniper attacks, in particular because he knew the area and seemed "hungry." Blair wrote 52 stories during the sniper attacks. His reporting errors were so serious that one led a prosecutor to hold a press conference to denounce the claim that "all the evidence" pointed to Lee Boyd Malvo being the shooter. The error rate of Blair's material again became an issue internally. In another instance, Fairfax County, Virginia prosecutor Bob Horan claimed that 60 percent of a story written by Blair, in which he was quoted, was inaccurate.

Despite such accusations and many corrections the paper was forced to make in the wake of his reporting, Blair continued to cover critical stories for The New York Times, moving from the sniper attacks to national coverage of the War in Iraq. In his four years at The Times, Blair wrote more than 600 articles.

The Blair scandal also stoked much controversy and debate over affirmative action hiring. Landman told the Siegal committee he felt the fact that Blair was African-American played a large part in his initial promotion to full-time staffer. "I think race was the decisive factor in his promotion," he said. "I thought then and I think now that it was the wrong decision."

Newsweek reporter Seth Mnookin similarly said that Blair was fast-tracked because of the Times's desire for a more racially diverse workforce.”

Matthews has the credibility of Blair at this point, which conversely are mirrored in his dismal ratings for his show and for MSNBC in general.

Sarah Palin represents the tip of the iceberg of MARS anger, and Matthews knows this. To discredit her constantly and attack her crowd for its monochromatic hue is a flagrant attempt to demean and discredit her.

Palin’s book will sell a lot of copies, because people are clamoring for hope.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like won’t be reading Palin’s new book, but we will keep close eyes on how she is treated during her book tour. The media might have to bring back Blair from his vocation of life-coach to try and come up with fascinating new manners of character assassination, because he even has more credibility than Chris Matthews at this point.

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#891. The Demise of the Pontiac Silverdome

Black people love sports. Years of watching sports have helped people from across the United States develop favorable images of Black people, through vast consumption of sports, which is explained with the process of "Mainstreaming":

"A corollary of cultivation theory, the concept of “mainstreaming” implies that heavy television viewing contributes to an erosion of differences in people's perspectives that stem from other factors and influences.

It is based on the argument that television serves as the primary common storyteller for an otherwise heterogeneous population. As the source of the most broadly shared images and messages in history, television represents the mainstream of the common symbolic environment into which children are born and in which we all live out our lives."

We have documented the amount of time people spend watching the National Football League (NFL), college football and other professional sports, and with this repeated viewing of 13 percent of the population dominating the airwaves on Saturday and Sunday, the concept of 'mainstreaming' has created a false dichotomy of the world.

Fall Saturday's and Sunday's both serve as Holy Days in America and the worshiping of the new Gods from Olympus occurs. The only sacrifice made in 21st America comes from the pocketbooks of taxpayers, for they must fit the bill for erecting these massive structures that will play host to the religious gatherings, as the book Field of Schemes outlines:

"Field of Schemes is a play-by-play account of how the drive for new sports stadiums and arenas drains $2 billion a year from public treasuries for the sake of private profit. While the millionaires who own sports franchises have seen the value of their assets soar under this scheme, taxpayers, urban residents, and sports fans have all come out losers, forced to pay both higher taxes and higher ticket prices for seats that, thanks to the layers of luxury seating that typify new stadiums, usually offer a worse view of the action."

A fantastic blog detailing this pervasive technique that rivals Scientology in its excesses can be found here, as the authors of the book work prodigiously to document continued abuses of stadium erection at the tax payer expense.

It is in these Holy sites that occupy hundreds of acres in every major city that Black people have temporarily utilized the power of 'mainstreaming' to garner a hypnotic effect over the entire country, for their exploits are fodder for ESPN junkies and account for countless hours of wasted productivity from these citizens.

Perhaps this is why the sudden demise of the Silverdome is such a shocking blow to the continued 'mainstreaming' of a new social order:

"The town of Pontiac, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, sold the 80,300-seat Silverdome on Monday, along with 127 acres of nearby land. The massive stadium complex, which once hosted the Detroit Lions, the Detroit Pistons, and the Michigan Panthers, cost more than $55 million to build in 1975.
Its selling price in 2009? $583,000.

Of course, Detroit's decay extends beyond its residential areas. As upsetting as it is to see once-beloved Victorian homes and beautiful apartment buildings sinking into disrepair, the loss of industrial space is even more significant. The hulking ruins of auto buildings like Fisher Body 21, the Packard Plant and the Piquette Plant (where Ford's (F) Model T was first built) seem to suggest not only a local loss of population but a larger loss of purpose."

Yes, the Detroit Silverdome was sold for a mere $583,000, less than 1 percent of what it was built for in 1975:

"It cost more than $55 million to build the Silverdome football stadium in Pontiac, Michigan. Yesterday, it sold for the price of a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

The former home of the U.S. National Football League’s Detroit Lions sold at auction for $583,000, or about $7.25 per seat, as the debt-ridden city of Pontiac sought to raise cash.

The area’s unemployment rate is 35 percent and emergency financial manager Fred Leeb was hired in March as Pontiac faced a $6.5 million deficit on a $100 million general fund budget, plus $103 million in bond debt, Leeb said."

Let's take a quick look at the census of Pontiac, Michigan's population:

"As of the census of 2000, there were 66,337 people, 24,234 households, and 15,267 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,318.2 per square mile (1,281.3/km²). There were 26,336 housing units at an average density of 1,317.3/sq mi (508.7/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 39.09% White, 47.92% African American, 0.58% Native American, 2.40% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 6.47% from other races, and 3.50% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.76% of the population."

SBPDL has friends with houses worth 4 or 5 times the amount of what the Pontiac Silverdome went for, and is shocked that the stadium even fetched $500,000.

In a town where raccoons are now seen as a delicacy, Detroit can be proud to know the stadium that once hosted the Lions is now worth less than a studio apartment in Manhattan.

The Silverdome played host to Superbowl's, Wrestlemania's, major concerts and even an episode of Home Improvement in the 1990s. Now, the ghost of these events haunt the empty building and the 20 acres the massive structure sits upon.

Detroit has seen better days. The fall of the Pontiac Silverdome has a distinct correlation with the collapse of that city and what it portends for the rest of America, as Pre-Obama America is eradicated throughout the land:

"By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services. The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.

That's because the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse. It's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about our future?"

Black people see the writing on the wall in Detroit. A city that is run by Black people (indeed, Detroit is one of the Blackest big cities in America) is in complete and utter chaos. Some people have envisioned razing Detroit and turning it into farmland.

And through it all, the Pontiac Silverdome will stand as a sorry example of social engineering run afoul and worse, what happens when government attempts at creating a sports utopia backfire:

"The Silverdome opened in 1975 and cost taxpayers $55.7 million to build and $1.5 million a year to maintain, Leeb said. By contrast, the New York Giants and the New York Jets will play next year in a new stadium estimated to cost $1.6 billion."

This could happen in your town. In fact, chances are, it will.

Stuff Black People Don't Like must include the demise of the Pontiac Silverdome, for the less than $600,000 sale of a building that would cost $220,000,000 million to build today is just a perfect example of what happens when you live in a Black world.

Not even Hulk Hogan slamming Andre the Giant could save Detroit now.

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#301. Braving the End of the Line

Call it the Rosa Parks syndrome, but Black people hate to wait at the back of anything, be it a bus or a line.

With Black Friday approaching quickly, the fear of people being trampled to death as Black people fight for the merchandise marked down to 70-80 percent off its original price, is percolating throughout every department store and especially Wal-Mart.

Remember, it was last year that a poor Wal-Mart greeter was greeted with an untimely visit by the Grim-Reaper as Black people trampled him to death:

"A stampede of shoppers in a Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Friday morning left one worker dead and at least three patrons injured after an impatient crowd broke down the store doors and trampled the seasonal employee, Nassau police said.

Jdimytai Damour of Jamaica, Queens, was pushed to the ground by the 2,000-plus crowd just before 5 a.m. as management was preparing to open the store, which is located across from the main Green Acres Mall building. Hundreds stepped over, around and on the 34-year-old worker as they rushed into the store.

"This crowd was out of control," said Nassau Police Det. Lt. Michael Fleming, whose squad is investigating.

"Nobody was trying to help him," said shopper Nakea Augustine, who was in the line. "They were rushing in the store, rushing, rushing, rushing."

It makes you wonder who might be the ultimate PeopleofWalMart.com, for Black people fit one of the molds of Wal-Mart core demographic perfectly:

Wal-Mart has gone to great lengths to define and identify each category of shopper:

Price-Value - The poorest among us. Loyal to Wal-Mart, to a fault. Primarily young, rural, Baptist women. Uneducated beyond high-school. More worried and in poorer health than average. Watches Lifetime and ABC Family. Reads Better Homes & Gardens. Drives a used car which he/she still owes money on.

Brand Aspirational - His/Her image does not fit with the reality of his/her economic situation. Often a racial minority. Less technologically savvy than other demographics. Sports oriented, with a skew towards the NFL. Watches Fox Sports and reads automotive, athletic and fitness magazines.

Price-Sensitive Affluent - Highest income category. White, male, over age 45, highly educated. Very technologically savvy. Will compare products on the internet then purchase them for a better price in a retail store. Watches PBS and The History Channel. Reads National Geographic. Owns a completely paid for vehicle that is a newer model and was new when purchased."

So, what does waiting in line have to do with Black people you ask? Everything. Just look at the strange case of Heather Ellis and Wal-Mart:

"Nearly three years after Heather Ellis switched checkout lines at a southeast Missouri store and touched off what she calls a racially charged dispute with white customers and authorities, the young black schoolteacher faces a trial that could send her to prison for 15 years.

Witnesses have told authorities that Ellis cut in front of waiting customers at the Walmart in Kennett on Jan. 6, 2007, shoved merchandise already placed on a conveyor belt out of the way, and became belligerent when confronted, according to court filings.

Ellis maintains she was merely joining her cousin, whose checkout line was moving more quickly. She claimed in a written complaint to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that she was then pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by Kennett police officers.

Police say in court documents that Ellis refused requests to calm down and leave the property, allegedly kicking one's shin and splitting another's lip while resisting arrest. Her trial on charges of assaulting police officers, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace begins Wednesday in Dunklin County Circuit Court. Syracuse, N.Y.-based Your Black World Coalition is organizing a Monday rally in Kennett.

A few choice quotes from the story:

"What a shame the system can destroy a young person's future like this because of bad cops," Ellis wrote to the NAACP in April.

Let's be honest: We live in a Black world now, so Ellis is obviously the good guy in this situation that only Wal-Mart could play host too, for centuries from now, historians will excavate these stores around the remains of the United States of America and postulate that these mega-buildings were holy ground for 21st century boobs.

Since Wal-Mart does have 8,000 stores worldwide, these future historians will speculate as to the religious meanings of these massive structures and the cult that was worshiped in the many doors were the elderly once greeted every customer with a happy smile.

In the new America, Black people shouldn't have to wait in the back of the line for anything, let alone a minor purchase of goods at Wal-Mart.

Interestingly, two videos showcase what happens to people when they dare maintain that order and civility be maintained and that importance of lines be established and accepted to ensure that civilization be perpetuated.

For without lines, man is but an animal, rushing into the wilderness of life - leaving order behind - and descending into an endless sea of chaos where the line for waiting is but remembrance of things once done.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes braving the end of the line, for Rosa Parks ended Black people sitting in the back of the bus once and for all. This, naturally, carried over into every facet of life, for Black people never wait at the end of US Post Office lines, movie lines, amusement park lines, etc., for this would mean the rule of civility applies to them.

As the two videos below show, they do not, and to even consider rules applying to Black people is grounds for being a racist.

After all, if someone objects to a Black person cutting in front of them, then the easy and simple explanation for their behavior is that they are insensitive and a racist.

A problem exists though, for she failed to do one crucial thing that exacerbated the situation, cooperate with the police, and this left her in the situation she faces now:

"Police say in court documents that Ellis refused requests to calm down and leave the property, allegedly kicking one's shin and splitting another's lip. Her trial on charges of assaulting police officers, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace begins Wednesday in Dunklin County Circuit Court."

So remember, waiting in line can save you 10-15 years of your life.

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#553. Vigilante Movies

We live in a world where the printed word is fading in popularity. Visual stimulation through the medium of movies and video games has supplanted reading and led to a significant decline in readership throughout the country.

The National Endowment for the Arts has an incredibly somber analysis of the situation available to read here.

Video games generate more than $17 billion a year in sales (68 percent of American households play video games each year), and movies and DVD sales bring in more than $45 billion each year, and yet, remember:

"According to a fascinating, if frightening, report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts, more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book — fiction or nonfiction — over the course of a year."

These movies and video games represent fiction and mere entertainment, an escape from reality. By spending countless hours watching movies and delving into the fictitious world of video games, people create a sense of cognitive dissonance that enables from living in world dominated by unpleasant hate facts about the real world.

Take the popular television show Law and Order and the false world it delivers each week:

"For years, Law & Order, which is filmed in Manhattan, advertised its episodes as being "ripped from the headlines," a claim Wolf and star Jerry Ohrbach still make in interviews. But instead of depicting reality, Wolf's scriptwriters take high-profile crimes committed by blacks, and replace the bad guys with whites, and invent white racist monsters that bear no relation to anything seen in New York during the past 100 years.

And so, while according to NYPD crime reports, over 89 percent of suspects in violent crimes are black or Hispanic, L&O presents a looking-glass world in the grips of a white crime wave."

One popular form of story-telling that has been with us throughout human history is the revenge-tale (from Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Dumas, etc.). A character wronged by a villain and then left for dead - who endures what Joseph Campbell called "a heroes journey" - ends up vanquishing his foe at the end of tale, exacting revenge.

These are the stories that stay with us, for they resonate deeply in our minds and hearts, painting an image of evil being defeated so that good cannot only survive, but endure.

Yet, shows like Law and Order, and American cinema depict something strange in movies, as all plots and stories center around a glaring falsehood: Pre-Obama America never ceased to exist and all criminality is performed by evil white people, at the expense of Black people.

In the real world, watching the nightly news brings the grim nature of Black people and their strong propensity to commit criminal acts to the surface, for in the world of entertainment the truth of Black people and crime is but a pernicious myth laying at the bottom of a murky ocean where only hate-fact wielding Nazi's dare swim.

However, despite the myths that permeate the entertainment industry, most people are cognizant of the reality of Black-on-white crime and the need for Whitopia's.

No movie has yet to be filmed that showcase the heinous murders that have taken place in every city where whites and Black people co-exist, that paint the unhappy - yet true - picture of Black-on-white crime.

Yet, hardly a month goes by when a movie isn't introduced that depicts evil white men attempting to subjugate Black people and permanently make them a second-class.

How many times has a movie been made that accurately shows Black people committing a crime against white people, and then shows said white person demanding justice (that is what happens in A Time to Kill, but it is reversed)?

Think about revenge movies for a moment - since so few people read anymore - and consider what every classic vigilante movie offers: husband and wife have a charmed life with perfect kids; some form of evil (always a white person) disrupts this equilibrium and inflicts great harm (possibly death) on a family member; distraught husband decides to take matters into his own hands when the justice system fails him.

This could be the plot of so many films, from Death Wish, Death Sentence, The Exterminator, The Punisher, Batman, The Boondock Saints, etc.

In Death Wish, Charles Bronson stars as a liberal whose paradigm is destroyed when white muggers rape his wife and daughter, killing the former and sending the latter into a state of psychological paralysis. He doesn't don a mask and scurry over rooftops in Gotham City, but he does confront muggers and potential murderers by engaging in vigilantism, turning New York City into a safer place in the process.

Bronson's character has a conversation with his son-in-law that is riveting:

Paul Kersey: Nothing to do but cut and run, huh? What else? What about the old American social custom of self-defense? If the police don't defend us, maybe we ought to do it ourselves.

Jack Toby: We're not pioneers anymore, Dad.

Paul Kersey: What are we, Jack?

Jack Toby: What do you mean?

Paul Kersey: I mean, if we're not pioneers, what have we become? What do you call people who, when they're faced with a condition or fear, do nothing about it, they just run and hide?

Jack Toby: Civilized?

Paul Kersey: No.

The vast majority of people killed by Bronson's character in the Death Wish series happen to be white people, thus conflicting with the reality of crime in major cities.

A 2007 Kevin Bacon film, Death Sentence, shows a perfect suburban family ruined by a multi-cultural gang (a Hollywood creation, for all gangs are racially united). Bacon's character realizes the law is inadequate and fights back against those who took away his idyllic life.

Remember, impressionable minds watch movies and our manipulated by what they see on film, and to show the truth of crime in America would create a serious amount of cognitive dissonance that would have far reaching effects on the amount of sports consumed in this country and could flicker some sort of brain activity among the individual indulging in countless hours of SportsCenter on ESPN.

Perhaps Hollywood's most interesting character that has been so poorly executed in three different films is the Marvel comic character, The Punisher:

"The Punisher is a vigilante who considers killing, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, threats of violence and torture to be acceptable crime-fighting tactics. Driven by the deaths of his family, who were killed by the mob when they witnessed a gangland execution in New York City's Central Park, the Punisher wages a one-man war on the mob and all criminals in general by using all manner of weaponry.

His family's killers were the first to be slain. A war veteran, Castle is a master of martial arts, stealth tactics, guerrilla warfare and a wide variety of weapons."

Strangely, Castle's enemies always seem to be Italians or other various white people, mobsters, etc. Never Black people, for you see, in movies, we still live in Pre-Obama America where 90 percent of the population is white.

Consider The Boondock Saints, and the infamous joke that film contains. The righteous brothers in that film decide to be God's agents of eradicating sinners on earth, and engage in a brutal war against - like the Punisher - white people.

Even though these movies, from Death Wish to The Punisher depict a white dude blowing away other white dudes, Black people get uneasy, for many Black people know the truth of crime in America.

These films offer mere escapism for all involved who view them, but Black people are well aware of the undertones of such films as Dirty Harry and Death Wish:

"Most irresponsible was the 1974 release of Death Wish which went on to repeat itself in 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1994. Death Wish featured the diminutive and fading actor Charles Bronson, impressive in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), but now reduced to the depraved Paul Kersey, a white everyman driven to take revenge against street scum when his family is wiped-out.

Playing to such paranoia, which continues to be manipulated by the National Rifle Association, made a raving gun-nut out of the actor Charleston Heston. Over-rated as an actor, Heston never hesitated to mention the Los Angeles Watts Riots of 1965 as chief among his reasons for owning a gun."

Roger Ebert decided to bestow upon Dirty Harry the title of fascist:

"But wait a minute. The movie clearly and unmistakably gives us a character who understands the Bill of Rights, understands his legal responsibility as a police officer, and nevertheless takes retribution into his own hands. Sure, Scorpio is portrayed as the most vicious, perverted, warped monster we can imagine -- but that's part of the same stacked deck. The movie's moral position is fascist. No doubt about it."

Dirty Harry was but a movie, and crime has gotten much worse since 1970, no thanks to the film and fine police work of Officer Callahan in stopping all those real murderers.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes vigilante movies, for even though Black are never the antagonists in these films, the unpleasant reality of nightly newscasts leaves most Black squeamish. Vigilante movies show normal reactions to melancholy experiences and the natural desire for self-preservation and revenge unfolding in celluloid beauty.

The real-life passivity of white people when confronted with criminality and the Black world that they live in now, is incredibly unnatural. Science can't explain it.

The United States will continue to descend into chaos, caused by massive inner-city crime and black-on-white as well as horrible black-on-black violence.

It is in the movies we will escape to find fictional solutions, and relax in the cheerful words of Travis Bickle:

"Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."

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#271. Designing Video Games

What are people doing nowadays to occupy their precious time? Well, enough people are cumulatively playing video games to warrant its inclusion as a 5th television network:

"Americans as a whole spend more time playing video games than they do watching the CW television network. And video games -- the real “5th Network” -- may even be closing in on NBC.

According to the data derived from Nielsen’s National People Meter in Q4 2008, usage of console video games (defined as systems connected to users' TVs) accounted for 64 billion minutes in December."

Were Shakespeare alive today, his famous speech from Macbeth might sum up the world that video gamers live in:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth

Don't laugh though. Video games represent a massive cottage industry for those in the game, as sales in 2007 were more than $17 billion dollars. So the virtual games being played might be even more meaningless than the life Macbeth was talking about, but they amount to a whole lot of money for the companies designing, distributing and selling the games:

"This holiday season's biggest entertainment blockbuster likely will be a sequel to a popular franchise, with jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil. It could easily rake in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for "The Dark Knight."

But this blockbuster is not a movie.

It is "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," a video game that Activision Blizzard Inc. is releasing Tuesday. Fans worldwide are expected to spend at least half a billion dollars on the game in the first week.

That would at least match last year's "Grand Theft Auto IV," which was the most successful video game release in history and might have been the top entertainment launch ever."

Well, Call of Duty did $310 million in business its first day out - comparable to major movie openings - shattering every record in the video game industry and proving that this multi-billion dollar industry is just beginning to reach its potential, for it is no brief candle flickering in the wind.

Yet, the video game industry is need of a thorough SBPDL fact-checking exercise, so this week we will look at this multi-billion dollar industry and how Black people embrace this form of entertainment. Let's take a look at a weird Nielsen Entertainment study done on emerging trends in video games and consumers:

"Women, Hispanics and African-Americans are an underserved and emerging market for interactive entertainment;

While Caucasians report spending the most money per month on DVDs,African-Americans and Hispanics report spending more money per month on games and mobile services.

"While this reinforces the industry's traditional targeting towards these groups, women between the ages of 18 to 24 show relatively high entertainment expenditure and time availability, suggesting there are opportunities for publishers to target this consumer," said Emily Della Maggiora, Vice President of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment.

"African American and Hispanic gamers appear to be a potentially lucrative (and currently under-served) consumer target for publishers as these gamers are spending more money to purchasegames and more time to play them compared to total gamers, in general."

Wait, so what is Nielsen saying? Black people consume vast amounts of video games, but could still consume more and more, thereby further enriching the developers and video game companies?

Wait... Black people purchase video games at a greater rate than their white counterparts, yet the video game companies aren't doing enough to actively engage that community? It gets better though, as a study was conducted (tomorrow's entry) that states Black people are vastly underrepresented in video games:

"Imagine a world in which 85 percent of the people are male and 80 percent are white. A world in which women and members of other races are a token presence, with most assuming passive, subsidiary roles.

In "The Virtual Census," a paper just published in the journal New Media & Society, a group of researchers led by Dmitri Williams of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication analyzed an array of best-selling video games and the characters who populate them. They found that, compared to the demographic makeup of both the gaming community and the nation as a whole, whites and males are strikingly overrepresented in this hugely popular entertainment medium.

The researchers considered the most likely explanation for these findings is a combination of developer demographics (a 2005 survey found 88 percent of game developers are males) and "perceived ideas about game players among marketers" (who tend to think of game players as young white men).

"From a business and marketing viewpoint, game developers (appear to) be missing substantial opportunities for making games for different audiences," they write. "Women, at 38 percent of game players but only 15 percent of characters, are the most underserved. Latinos, who play more per day than whites and form 12.5 percent of the population, are only 2 percent of characters."

What business and marketing opportunities are developers missing, when the video game industry is swimming in cash right now? Black people love to buy video games and play them with the same religious fervor that other races do, regardless of Mario's race.

However, the ability to close the racial learning gap has been identified by Williams - who conducted this study - where he postulated this intoxicating hypothesis:

"Latino children play more video games than white children. And they're really not able to play themselves," Williams said. "For identity formation, that's a problem. And for generating interest in technology, it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.

"Ironically, they may even be less likely to become game makers themselves, helping to perpetuate the cycle. Many have suggested that games function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math."

Virtual racism is to blame for minorities poor ability at math, technology and the hard sciences, for playing as white characters, such as the plumbing brother duo Mario and Luigi leaves Black people at a loss for conquering Euclidean Geometry and the Pythagorean Theorem or even basic algebra.

The primary problem for Black people is the complete lack of a designing voice they give in the video games conception from start to finish:

"A 2005 video game industry demographics survey by the International Game Developers Association found that only 2% of game developers across all disciplines are black. Contrast that with the national demographics of the countries that participated in the survey (Australia, Canada, United States, and United Kingdom) who have a combined 9% black population (aggregated from each country's population and demographics data on Wikipedia)."

So wait... less than two percent of video game designers are Black people, and yet it was Black people whose ancestors had their knowledge and wisdom stolen by the Greeks and passed off as their own?

Now, the same people who built the Pyramids are incapable of designing video games to entertain the masses? What happened to all that brain power? Worse, having so few Black designers ensures that video game characters are all white people - yet as the numbers will show, Black people play video games more than white people - and that Black characters (outside of sports games) will be few and far between:

"If Blacks and Latinos are always portrayed as the villains, or as the victims who get killed often and easily, that is code for powerlessness," said Kansas State University psychologist John Murray, who's studied violence and stereotypes in the media for the past 30 years. "These image persist because too few minorities are in the industry. Roughly 80% of video game programmers are white... Some in the industry believe race in games is a serious issue that has been ignored for too long. The video industry claims that educated, young white males create games for other educated, young white males and not minorities.

Regardless, games are an expressive medium. They are an art form, just like movies, theater and literature. We're seeing, to a large extent, that the games that are being designed unconsciously include the biases, opinions and reflections of their creators. And obviously, whites see Blacks and Latinos as criminals and gradually that's how our children see themselves and behave according.

A 2006 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that Black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day - almost 30 minutes more than white youths. And Latinos play about 10 minutes more per day than whites."

Of course Black people don't commit any crime. That is just a figment of white peoples incredible imagination - since white people design all the video games, they must have vivid imaginations - and has nothing to do with reality...

Insightful interviews with video game designers who also happen to be Black people can be found here.

Black people are missing out on a billion dollar industry, for though they consume video games with the love of a Lotus-Eater, for some reason this hasn't translated into a pipeline for gainful employment in the video game designing industry.

Thus, Stuff Black People Don't Like includes designing video games, as Black people will part with their money for the chance at living vicariously through the eyes of Link, Mario and other video game characters, but to design these games is still uncharted terrain for Black people.

Yet another barrier that must be brought down, for life may signify nothing, but it must signify Black people portrayed properly.

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