The Fourth Day of Christmas at SBPDL - Snow

We've had the distinct pleasure of introducing you, dear reader, to the inimitable Leonard Jeffries before and we find this auspicious moment a perfect opportunity to rekindle that intimate relationship.

A "White Christmas" has befallen a good portion of the United States and left a wintry residue upon the ground to welcome Santa and his eight reindeer on the 25th of December.

Why bring up this important point? One simple reason, for Mr. Jeffries has constantly railed against the insidious "Ice People", those devilish white people who enjoy building snow men and throwing hardened balls of snow at one another:

"Blacks are "sun people," Jeffries explains, and whites are "ice people." New York Newsday quoted Jeffries as telling his students last year, "Our thesis is that the sun people, the African family of warm communal hope, meets an antithesis, the vision of ice people, Europeans, colonizers, oppressors, the cold, rigid element in world history." Jeffries believes melanin, the dark skin pigment, gives blacks intellectual and physical superiority over whites."

Ice People, white people must be, for the distribution of Black people throughout the United States shows an aversion to areas to experience how levels of snow fall throughout the year (an incredible map that show geographic concentration of Black people in the United States can be found here).

The states with smallest Black population have an interesting correlation with the states that also have the highest snowfall per yer.

Jeffries might be correct in his "Sun People" theory, for 54 percent of the United States Black population resides in the southern portion of the nation, which has a humid subtropical climate.

A website, The Quintessential Negro, has an interesting commentary and hypothesis about this data and comes to a simple conclusion: Black people don't like cold weather.

Jeffries would like everyone to believe this is because White people are the descendants of "Ice People", which has some scientific basis:

"Some theories advanced before the 1970s tended to be racist, and others were less than convincing. White skin, for example, was reported to be more resistant to cold weather, although groups like the Inuit are both dark and particularly resistant to cold. After the 1970s, when researchers were presumably more aware of the controversy such studies could kick up, there was very little work at all. "It's one of these things everybody notices," Jablonski says, "but nobody wants to talk about."

Perhaps no event illustrates Black people and the winter of their discontent better than the Olympic Winter Games, an event that one individual stated:

"So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the winter games look like a GOP convention."

One movie dares showcase what transpires when Black people enter the monochromatic world of the Olympic Winter Games - Cool Runnings - to predictably hilarious results:

"Irving "Irv" Blitzer is an American bobsled double gold medalist at the 1968 Winter Olympics, who finished first in two events again in 1972 but was disqualified for cheating and retired in disgrace to Jamaica, where he leads a destitute life as a bookie. He is approached by top 100m runner Derice Bannock, who failed to qualify for the 1988 Summer Olympics when another opponent, Junior Bevil, tripped at the trials, and pushcart driving champion Sanka Coffie, who both wish to use his previous experience as a coach in order to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympics as bobsledders. Irv had been good friends with Derice's father, Ben, a former sprinter whom Irv had tried to recruit for the bobsled team years ago. Yul Brenner, another runner who was tripped at the qualifier by Junior, also joins the team. After Irv is convinced to coach the team, the three months of practice begins, initially resulting in embarrassment. However, the four men acclimate to the sport and travel to Calgary and the Olympics.

The Jamaicans' first day on the track results in, once more, embarrassment, and a last-place finish. The second day proves better; the Jamaican team finishes with a fast time which puts them in eighth position. For the first half of the final day's race it looks as though they will break the world bobsled speed record, until tragedy strikes; their sled, due to one of the blades falling off, flips on its side coming out of a turn towards the end of their run, leaving them meters short of the finish line. However, the team lifts their sled up and walks across the finish line to rousing applause from onlookers. The team, at the end, feels accomplished enough to return in four years to the next winter Olympics. A brief epilogue states the team returned to Jamaica as heroes, and upon their return to the Winter Olympics four years later, they were treated as equals."

Yes, Jamaica had a bobsled team, even though snow has never graced their wonderful island:

"The Jamaican four man Bobsled team debuted at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. There they became a fan favorite due to the novelty of having such a warm country compete in a cold-weather sport. They did not finish because they lost control of the sled and crashed during one of their four runs. However, they showed significant improvement throughout the games and impressed observers with some fast starts. After crashing, they famously got out of their sled and walked with it to the finish line to great applause."

Black people find this story worthy of admiration, yet they also find snow a most unfortunate weather phenomenon to be stuck in and - as we have shown - live near.

However, some Black people are trying to enter the cold climate that only "Ice People" dare enter, as the National Brotherhood of Skiers is attempting to dispel horrid notions that "Sun People" don't like ice:

"The National Brotherhood of Skiers, one of the largest skiing groups in the U.S., has returned to the place of their first national summit.

“We are a collective Jackie Robinson, we gotta steal home base,” Brown said, referring to Robinson’s gutsy move during the 1955 World Series when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player to end baseball segregation.

“I wish I had gotten started earlier. Growing up I always heard ‘Black people don’t ski,’” she said.

Jahi agrees that this is the common conception of both blacks and whites, but the stereotype should disappear this week as the slopes of Snowmass are much more colorful.

Sponsors of the NBS summit include Anheuser-Busch, Black Enterprise Magazine, BET, American Airlines, Upscale Magazine, Avis, Budget and Christy Sports in Snowmass."

The NBS is constantly trying to melt away misconceptions of Black people and snow, working overtime to turn ski slopes into an amazing collection of "Black Ice":

"For years, the inconvenience of getting to resorts was a barrier to blacks, who mostly lived in urban and southern regions. The high cost of lift tickets, equipment, and lessons didn't help. Cultural habits have also played a role. According to David Becher, a senior researcher for Colorado marketing research firm RRC, the number of African-American skiers still remains low, at 2 percent. Four percent are Asian, 3 percent are Latino, and 1 percent are Native American.

"I want to ski with black folks," said Maxine Morgan, 44, of Queens, N.Y., as she rushed off to pick up lift tickets. "I know it sounds trite, but it's true. Skiing is a white thing, and you always stand out."

Added Elise LaMotte, 40, of Stoughton, who skis with the Boston Ski Party: "People are looking to have a good time with people who look like them."

Okolo Schwinn-Clanton, 31, of Methuen has been a member of the National Brotherhood of Skiers since the age of 3, and coaches young skiers to race. He said he often travels to competitions to represent "the only black face in the crowd" to cheer them. Schwinn-Clanton has seen the number of new skiers grow, but said he doesn't believe the industry is maximizing the potential of the black market. "If [the ski industry] understood the Tiger Woods phenomenon and how many blacks started playing golf, the ski industry would be doing everything they could," he said."

Sadly, golf never saw an actual Tiger Woods effect, and skiing isn't likely to see an influx of Black people to the slopes anytime, for Stuff Black People Don't Like includes snow, that horrifying white stuff that falls from the sky and envelopes the world in its quieting madness, an atavistic reminder to all "Ice People" of their true origins.

A "White Christmas" isn't one that Black people find conducive to a great Christmas, which is why most Black people try and have Christmas in Dixie, where it is usually quite warm.