Martyrs, Civil Rights and Quenette Shehane: The Tale of Birmingham

Vulcan has stood tall over Birmingham's collapse

Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaches and with it the usual pronouncements and the glorification (deification?) of the Civil Rights struggle, though this righteous struggle is far from over. The continued battle for Black equality that transpires on a daily basis will be showcased on ESPN with the discussion of the Image of the Black Athlete, attempting to gloss over the thuggish personalities that comprise the bulk of the NBA and NFL rosters.

It is sports that provide -simultaneously - the best and worst examples of Black people for the inhabitants of Black Run America (BRA) to digest. For the past forty years, hearty helpings of the former have been all that those who watch sports decided to feast upon, though the spectacular talents of Black athletes is without question the only positive example one can find from the Black community.

The state of Mississippi hopes to introduce a required Civil Rights course for every grade level, K-12, in the next year. Nothing is more virtuous then learning about where 21st Century man has evolved from, the antiquated racism of the past replaced with a tolerant understanding for all races.

We once joked about the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and the lack of any historical Black figures that the two members of Wyld Stallions went back in time to retrieve. If this movie were made today, it would only be Civil Rights figures that these two figures went back in time to see and bring to the future so they could pass history.

Kids today learn only of fictional Black heroes in school, the rest of history littered with the exploits of oppressive white males who dared retard the inevitable creation of Black Run America (BRA). Every Black person who faced adversity in this long march to joyous extra-equality has become a martyr in some capacity, with a number of them enjoying virtual sainthood.

On Monday we celebrate the ultimate hero for BRA, Martin Luther King Jr. Those who fail to sufficiently grovel before this deity dare to incur the wrath of BRA's most vigilante enforces of civility.

Civil Rights ushered in a new era for the United States, the most vivid representation of this being the complete abandonment of major United States cities to Black people. The train stations that once deemed Black people second class citizens were the first to go, white flight sealing their fate to demolition.

We could discuss for hours the decline of a variety of cities across the nation, but today we focus on one that represented a South Africa for Black people. Nelson Mandela's ex-wife even compared this city to South Africa and the fate of both nations under Black rule are inextricably linked.

In a sane society, Birmingham would be a thriving metropolis. In the world governed by BRA, it is a crumbling city whose sky scrapers stand resolute as monuments to a people who once lived, died and thrived there.

You will hear a lot about martyrs of the Civil Rights movement, of those who died to make this country a better place. But the people you will never, ever hear about are those whites who were the victims of this extra-equal class that Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) strenuously protect today.

Birmingham is a city that once had a thriving business sector, though almost all Fortune 500 companies have moved their company headquarters out of the town. The city school system, nearly 100 percent Black, faces a $30 million budget shortfall.

Like DeKalb County in Georgia, the city will be forced to close many schools. Those Black people capable of fleeing the dying city are forcing the lily-white suburbs of Birmingham to move even farther out, though the poor credit scores keep many of these families from affording homes in these thriving cities.

Perhaps no better building or structure in the country serves as a metaphor for all that is wrong with BRA then the once magnificent Legion Field. Situated in an area of Birmingham that the Marines who battled in Mogadishu would be fearful of, the stadium was once the home of legendary Iron Bowl between the University of Alabama and Auburn University.

Both schools have since stopped playing the annual game there, with the stadium antiquated and falling into disrepair. But once, it resembled those edifices built at the World of Tomorrow fairs, heralding a new era of unimaginable prosperity.

The Civil Rights victory signaled the abandonment of Birmingham to the victors. The spoils were short lived.

Legion Field has a become a deadly joke, with one writer at The Birmingham News wondering if the city deserved a college football bowl game. Comments from those who attended the game failed to mention the Black aspect of the situation:

The city did a good job of moving the traffic to the stadium but once you get there you have to deal with the people that live around the stadium screaming at you and almost jumping in front of your car to get you to park in their yard. After I parked, I stopped and talked to 4-5 kentucky fans that were still outside the stadium sitting in chairs in the same yard I was parked in. Two were staying with the cars because they did not expect the game to be in this type of area. Like I said, I support the bowl each year but it is getting harder and harder to do so." -- bamamac2112

• "John: "Brusque and unapologetic" describes most service-type workers in Birmingham. Go to any food establishment and you can see it.

Having attended an event at Legion Field, we at SBPDL can tell you the area around Legion Field is all-Black, save for the gated campus of Birmingham Southern. A veritable fortress, Birmingham Southern once had a libertarian attitude to the Black people who encircled the campus in their domiciles. This was until the rape and murder of a white coed there named Quenttee Shehane:

On a cold evening in Birmingham 30 years ago, a recent college graduate volunteered to go buy salad dressing for a party on campus. Leaving the nearby convenience store, she was abducted.

Her nude, frozen, bullet-riddled body was found the next evening.
 
The trip to the store on Dec. 20, 1976, ended with the murder of Quenette Shehane, but it would mark the start of the victims' rights movement in Alabama, a crusade led by her mother, Miriam Shehane of Clio.
 
Easing the pain
Victims of Crime and Leniency, or VOCAL, was organized in 1982 after Miriam Shehane had begun to find that the overwhelming pain of her daughter's killing was compounded by her experience as the three men charged in her abduction, rape and murder were tried in court — twice each for two of the men, three times for the third.
 
During the five years after the murder, she had to relieve the agonizing testimony in seven trials. She didn't want others to endure the same and began tirelessly lobbying for laws aimed at helping the families of victims of crimes.
 
Despite all her success in easing the pain of others, three decades have not lessened her loss.

"It's not worth it," she told The Dothan Eagle in a recent interview. "I'd rather have my daughter back."
 
Quenette Shehane, 21, had graduated from Birmingham-Southern College with a degree in elementary education. She had visited her family in Clio and was back on campus for a party with friends. She would soon be enrolling in graduate school at Auburn University and looked forward to a career teaching.
 
Justice served?
But around 5 p.m., with darkness falling, she was abducted in the parking lot of the convenience store, her car loaded with Christmas presents was stolen, and her life was taken.

After the seven trials, the man believed to have pulled the trigger, Wallace Norell Thomas, was sentenced to death and executed in 1990. Eddie Bernard Neal was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Jerry Lee Jones, convicted three times, had his death sentence commuted and is eligible for parole again in 2008.

All three men mentioned above are Black. The only memory of Quenette Shehane is her mothers continue crusade on her behalf, and the fence erected around Birmingham Southern to keep out the population. 


No school system discusses her death in text books, no college devotes hours of lecture time discussing what her death represents. Only a silent fence surrounding Birmingham Southern is a reminder to those that she once lived.

Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of other people like Quenette Shehane have had their stories censored, because it doesn't conform with the world view as advanced by DWLs, Crusading White Pedagogues and the adherents of BRA.

Birmingham is now the killing fields, where Black-on-Black crime is an every day occurrence. Worse, it operates a school where only 52 percent graduate high school and few dare discipline students:

Something is very wrong when:
-- Students in Birmingham schools are being arrested at a rate that far exceeds the arrests in similar- or larger-sized school systems like Jefferson County.

-- Principals and teachers are calling on police officers -- known as school resource officers -- to break up schoolyard skirmishes or calm down angry students.

-- A 16-year-old boy is pushed to the ground, sprayed with Mace and handcuffed for yelling a curse word in a school hallway. 

-- Young kids -- 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds -- face criminal charges for behavior that would not be considered illegal outside the school building.

Yes, something is terribly wrong. But, as News reporters Marie Leech and Carol Robinson reported last week, city and school officials know the current city schools disciplinary system is broken, and they're trying to fix it.

How serious is the problem? Consider that Birmingham, with about 25 percent of the public school population in Jefferson County, accounts for 82 percent of the arrests that are referred to the Jefferson County Family Court. And if an 18-year-old is arrested at school, even for a minor infraction, he ends up in jail, not at Family Court.

The reality check comes from Brian Huff, the presiding judge at Jefferson County Family Court: "(W)e're arresting children for offenses no one should be arrested for."

Police records show that more than 250 arrests have been made in Birmingham schools from August through February. During the same period in the larger Jefferson County school system, there were only 54 arrests.

The solution starts with simple common sense. As Huff points out, the school system's zero-tolerance policy "is a horrible idea. It should be judged on a case-by-case basis."

 Birmingham is a Black city. It's problems are based on that Black population. A fence around Birmingham Southern is because of the actions of three Black people who preyed upon a white girl whose name is scarcely remembered today.

She played for the losing team in the struggle team in the Civil Rights struggle, only because she was seen as collateral damage.

During the media bombardment of Civil Rights talk, we at Stuff Black People Don't Like remember Quenette Shehane. Like countless others, she has no voice to represent her in BRA. She is just another uncounted statistic.

Birmingham is another statistic, lost in the struggle as BRA was created. Legion Field, the home to memories still fresh in many peoples mind, will be torn down one day since it is obsolete and in an area of Birmingham few dare travel into with armed guard.

The dead have no voice, unless they were killed by venomous white racists. Then and only then do they become an asset to the continued propaganda used to maintain BRA's hegemony. Everything else is liability.

On Martin Luther King Day we honor the memory of Quenette Shehane. We remember those that BRA deems collateral damage.

#43. The Reality of Prince George's County

In the United States, one city is known as the Black Mecca – Atlanta. Though the demographics are changing rapidly, the rampant corruption found throughout Hotlanta won’t go away anytime soon. A massive scandal in the city school system – led by Black principals – is threatening the accreditation of that district.

Once you go Black...

What other county in Georgia recently lost its accreditation? Clayton County, a once thriving suburb that is now the mortgage default capital of the United States:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s analysis of hundreds of thousands of county tax appraisals across metro Atlanta, compared with actual home sales prices, turned up an extraordinary phenomenon in Clayton: Of the 1,302 sales last year, 581 were “bank sales” — transactions in which a lender has taken back a home and resold it.


The county’s chief appraiser, Rodney McDaniel, said the declines in Clayton’s 2010 property valuations surprised even him.


“I didn’t think we could go much lower than we did last year,” McDaniel said. “But the foreclosure sales are really driving the assessments this year.”

For property owners, the plague of foreclosures has injected even more uncertainty into an uncertain market, particularly when it comes to county tax appraisals.

 Clayton County is a Black county, run by Black people, who – upon taking power- fired all of the white police and had snipers on the roof of the police precinct as they were being escorted out. This was in 2007, an updated look at what Jim Crow must have been like only in reverse.

Atlanta is home to what many people claim to be the top county for Black people to live in, in all of America – DeKalb County. We have covered the status of that county before and, well, it’s not exactly a shining example of a thriving community.

Other majority Black areas (here is Wikipedia’s list of cities with the largest percentages of Black residents) fair about the same, with the sad news of Camden highlighting the growing problem of Black people relying on the government for jobs and what happens when the money runs out:

His family was a sample of the bloody consequences being felt in the Black and Hispanic families in minority communities throughout New Jersey as a result of the scorched earth policies of the Republican governor, and former New Jersey U.S. attorney.

Christie had suddenly transformed the streets and corridors of cities like Camden, Newark and Trenton into killing fields of minority dreams. Through his brutal programs Christie was rapidly shaping himself into a Republican and tea party presidential contender as well as a feared governor in New Jersey. He was considered by some in Camden to be a “bully,” using the weak to ram through his budget cuts.

The impoverished city of Camden, located in one of the wealthiest states in the nation, has long been a subject of futile revitalization efforts by a long line of Democratic and Republican governors before Christie. But now its head was on the chopping block along with the necks of numerous other urban areas.

Council President Frank Moran argues that the governor should give Camden authorization to implement a wage tax for the thousands of outside workers who come into the city each day to work at the numerous state, county, religious and nonprofit institutions. He said because of these facilities that are tenants in Camden, close to 56 percent of the city’s real estate is tax exempt, leaving the city with no way to expand its revenue income.

To make matters worse, much of the city’s shortfall resulted because Camden’s political establishment miscalculated pension obligations.

Moran points out Newark and other larger municipalities than Camden have wage taxes and that a special exception should be made for Camden because of all the governmental, religious and nonprofit facilities it hosts…


Moran suggested that Delgado and other Camden residents direct their protests to Gov. Christie. The price tag is $69 million in so-called “transitional aid.”

Williamson, leader of the rank and file of the police department, FOP said that the city as well as minorities were being made whipping boys by the Christie administration to make it appear that they are taking aggressive action and resorting to austere measures.

He said the cuts will only make the city’s plight worse by making outsiders afraid to come into the city to do business or set up business.

“The attack on public safety and the educational system will not make anyone more comfortable to move into the city to help jumpstart the city’s economy ... It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that most of the cities hit are Black, Hispanic and Asian.”

 It is sad that Camden is forced to make these cuts and that, like DeKalb and Clayton County, the citizens of the city have few businesses capable of squeezing taxes out of and few employment opportunities (save the post office, government and barber shops).

Perhaps Detroit provides the best glimpse of the future for these three areas with the city beginning a complete rollback of all government services (with a 25 percent graduation rate, the city schools long ago stopped providing academic services). A town without a major chain grocery store is being allowed to go back to the wild.

We’ve discussed Newark - a town that cherishes the celebrity of its mayor to bring in donations to keep that city solvent - but one area that has escaped an honest look at SBPDL is the penultimate Black place to live in America: Prince George's County.

Prince George's County epitomizes the problems that are obvious in the aforementioned cities (and ones found in the archives), but the primary problem afflicting the county is a reliance on high-paying government jobs to fund their version of the American dream. What happens when those jobs go away?

Sadly, the majority of residents in this thriving Black area rely on high interest home loans to fund their dream. These loans mean a lot of these residents are saddled with debt:

Residents of majority-black Prince George's County are much more likely to be saddled with high-interest home loans than residents of predominantly white areas in the rest of the region, placing them at greater risk of financial distress and foreclosure. 

About 43 percent of Prince George's County residents who refinanced their homes in 2005 received high-cost loans, compared with 24 percent of homeowners regionwide, according to Federal Reserve data compiled for The Washington Post by the Consumer Federation of America. Similarly, 43 percent of people buying homes in the county in 2005 financed their purchases with high-cost loans, compared with 20 percent regionally. 

High-cost loans are a large slice of the subprime mortgage market, called such because the loans' terms are less desirable. Fears about escalating problems in the subprime market have shaken broader financial markets in recent days and raised concerns that if foreclosures rise significantly, it could hamper economic growth. The government defines high-cost loans as those with interest rates 3 percentage points or more above a certain market rate…

Housing and civil rights advocates have long said that blacks are pushed to costly loans by mortgage brokers who mislead them into believing those are the only loans they can qualify for. 

"It's sad, but I'm not surprised," Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, said of the Prince George's data. "It's the same issue all over the country." 

Lending industry trade groups deny race is the only reason for high rates. Doug Duncan, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said people pay more for loans if they have poor credit, large student loans or want to make a lower down payment. Wright Andrews, a lobbyist for subprime lenders, has acknowledged differences between loan rates but has blamed them on underlying "economic disparities."
Industry officials have acknowledged that predatory lending exists and have urged uniform national lending laws. 

People can find themselves with high-cost loans for many reasons. Prince George's County is the nation's wealthiest majority-black jurisdiction, and housing costs there are high. If homeowners also have high car payments, student loans or credit card balances, that could raise their debt-to-income ratio, forcing them into costly loans. Overspending or paying bills late can also hurt people's credit. 

Credit and credit standards are both included in SBPDL (along with paying back student loans, both upcoming entries) and maintaining good credit to ensure that home loan rates will be low is a risky, acting white proposition. Paying bills in a timely manner is a move that only the token Black dares make, thus why the mortgage crisis has been a minority fueled meltdown.

In a country governed by the rules of Black Run America (BRA), forcing Black people to take riskier loans because they have, on average, worse credit scores and represent a higher probability of defaulting on loans is merely perpetuating racism:

“Federal officials launched an investigation Wednesday to determine whether 22 mortgage lenders have been discriminating against qualified African-American and Latino borrowers by denying them government-insured loans.


The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said the inquiry is in response to complaints filed Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition accusing 22 banks nationwide of violating fair housing laws.

The coalition said the lenders denied Federal Housing Administration-insured loans to borrowers with credit scores that met the federal standard of 580 to be eligible for the insurance against default, but the lenders set higher credit score thresholds.

The Washington-based NCRC claims those requirements disproportionately harm black and Hispanic communities, since many minority borrowers’ credit scores fall between the federal threshold of 580 and the higher benchmarks set by the banks.”

 We have seen the future and it will be. The mortgage crisis brought on by aggressive attempts to increase home ownership to Black people and the subsequent failure of these same Black people to pay the mortgages (many times with no down payments, low interest rates and small monthly payments) is actually the fault of evil white male bankers, who were secretly plotting to bring down AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

Now these banks are being sued by Black people, whose poor credit regrettably made them ineligible for low-risk loans.

Tea Party enthusiasts must understand that the principles they promote run directly anathema to those of BRA. There is a reason the Tea Party is monochromatic; a lot of Black people rely on the state for their well being. Cutting that off, as we see in Camden, is grounds for nothing but nasty words toward the Republican governor of the state.

Prince George's County, long the destination of mobile Black people, relies on a steady supply of government jobs to maintain the growth and keep its citizens employed. Even this isn’t enough:

“Back in the 1970s, Woodley Timberlake was part of the mass migration of black Washingtonians to Prince George's County, an exodus fueled by the quest for the American dream -- a home with a back yard, quality schools and a safe neighborhood.

Timberlake, now 65 and a retired federal worker, felt proud as blacks captured political and economic power in the once-majority-white county. But two years ago, when his daughter and her husband planned to return to the area with their baby girl, Timberlake urged them to move to a safe community with good public schools -- not Prince George's. His daughter chose Fairfax County. 

A generation ago, civic leaders and scholars cast Prince George's as a rising mecca for middle-class African Americans, a place where they could pursue an affluent suburban lifestyle that had long been the province of whites…

Prince George's is also recovering from a recession that has driven foreclosures to the highest levels in Maryland. Although county leaders are hopeful about rising math and reading test scores and last year's dramatic decrease in crime, Prince George's public schools remain among the worst-performing in Maryland, and the number of homicides, robberies and car thefts rank near the top in the state.”

Cities rise and fall. They can be burned to the ground, rebuilt and a mighty conflagration can bring ruin yet again. But once a city changes hands from the population that built and sustained it, and turned over to a different population, the results are simply as outlined above.

Mall envy exists for a reason. Public transportation is failing for a reason. And a lack of retailers in predominately Black areas happens for a reason:

Prince George’s County – sometimes derisively abbreviated as “PG” – is the undisputed Mecca of the Black middle class.  It holds the largest concentration of affluent and educated African Americans in the nation, well ahead of Black cultural hot spots like Atlanta, Philadelphia or Chicago.  Income is high due to a settled federal workforce in a Washington, D.C. suburb and countless government contractors with job stability.  In recent years, before recession took hold, Prince George’s County was in the midst of economic revival from the explosion of town centers showing off name brand retailers to the ambitious development of an awe-inspiring National Harbor on the Potomac.  It is where many professional Black folks move.


Most recently, Prince George’s finally got its wish: the opening of a brand new, fully-stocked Wegmans grocery store.  Residents had, understandably, complained for years about the lack of prominent, organic food retailers in the county, citing a pattern of racial redlining that forced the county’s majority Black population to travel miles into predominantly White counties to shop at spots like Whole Foods, Wegmans and others.


When the County seemed to move forward, even as unemployment and foreclosures gripped it, news of an unfolding political scandal took it two steps backward.  Federal prosecutors accuse County Executive Jack Johnson of engineering sophisticated kickback schemes with various developers and businesses in the county.  It got worse when Johnson and his wife were caught on wiretap allegedly flushing a $100,000 check down the toilet when FBI agents knocked on the door of their Mitchellville home.  Leslie Johnson, federal court documents allege, stuffed nearly $80,000 in her bra.

It tells you all you need to know about the state of Black America when the top county for Black people (Prince George's) can't even get a major retailer to set up shop within its borders. It tells you something about the state of Black America when the top Black county has a population with such poor overall credit that special loans had to be made in an effort to ensure home ownership in the first place.

It tells you all you need to know about the state of Black America when Prince George's has schools that consistently put up poor marks and ranks as one of the worst academically in all of Maryland. 

Poverty isn't the cause of crime, though conversely, a cities well-being does reflect its demographics.With segregation at a purported all-time low, one would expect a nation living in harmony. Such is not the case. Stuff White People Like (SWPL) white people live highly segregated lives far away from Black people.

Here is an awesome Web site that breaks down the top cities for SWPL white people and points out how few Black people are to be found. 

Black areas - as we have learned today - aren't a hotbed for thriving economies. 

In many cities, Black people rarely live in areas with white people.

So here is the ultimate question we can ask from the information available to us: does a majority Black city or county exist that is thriving? If not, is this why cities or counties that see massive white flight eventually turn into facsimiles of Clayton County?

As the nation becomes increasingly brown, white people surreptitiously look for areas with little diversity. Mobile Black people look for safe places to raise families and frequently select former whitopia's.

In time, those whitopia's become just as unappealing as the cities those mobile and economically viable Black people escaped from, only perpetuating the cycle of ruination.

Perhaps this is why that joke from The Boondock Saints resonates so deeply...

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the reality of Prince George's County. If the best county for Black people in America isn't that different from a place like Clayton County, then what does that truly mean?

Watch a video on Prince George's County here.

Birmingham 2010: "The Killing Years" vs. "The Wonder Years" of Days Past

Early in March of 2010 Nelson Mandela’s former bride, Winnie, spoke to a crowd of well-wishers in Birmingham, Alabama. Spewing the normal platitudes about the Civil Rights movement, the former Mrs. Mandela stated:

"Birmingham has always been an extension of our struggle," Mandela said. "I was stunned by the similarities of the methods of oppression . . . The apartheid regime must have come here to take notes."

Birmingham, Alabama is a favorite city of SBPDL. Once the jewel of the South, it is now one of the first major cities on the verge of bankruptcy and insolvency in the United States. All of this – like South Africa now – is thanks to the glories and sound leadership of Black people.

Jefferson County, Alabama was once (like South Africa) a city comprised of visionaries, men and women who worked hard together to build a community and municipality that the entire world envied.

However, white flight – coupled with Fortune 500 companies fleeing – turned Birmingham into a city with far more similarities between what South Africa has become now than what it once was so long ago.

Sadly, South Africa never became the beacon of Democracy so many thought it would when the Black majority was handed power from the white minority who created the nation. In fact South Africa got Democracy good and hard, showcasing how this form of government offers no inspiration when it is implemented, but an ongoing tragedy that is uniformly ignored by the nations of the world.

Birmingham is much the same way. Once, a magnificent train station was in the center of the city acting as a foundation for commerce, business and personal travel: a signifier that the city was a thriving metropolis. The station – Terminal Station - has since been torn down, as it was a horrifying reminder of past discrimination to those Black people in power now that were denied entry into the building when it stood.

Like South Africa, the city of Birmingham is plagued with the pernicious element of Black criminality and this infection strikes politician and commoner alike. Indeed, the governmental buildings in Birmingham have installed a revolving door directly to the state penitentiary where mayors, city councilmen and women and other officials routinely venture during or after their stay in office.

Most notably, ex-Mayor Larry Langford was sentenced to jail for bribery, among other charges. Jail has become a long-running traditional post-mayoral residence for Black mayors in Birmingham. The blame for the sewer crisis that threatens the solvency of the city rests squarely on the shoulders of the Black leadership that turned the so-called “Magic City” into the “Mundane City”.

The Birmingham News has compiled a study entitled “The Killing Years” which helps articulate what Birmingham has become since the advantageous creation of Black Run America signaled the need for white flight from the city:

When people are murdered in Jefferson County, chances are the killer was a male under 25 using a gun.

More than half of the accused killers in the county were 24 or younger, according to a Birmingham News analysis of homicides from 2006 through 2009.

Nine times out of 10, the victims were shot to death.

The percentage of homicides with defendants under age 25 who used guns in Jefferson County substantially exceeds the national average, statistics show.

In Birmingham, where nearly three-quarters of the county's murders occurred, the disparity was even worse from 2006-2009.

Ages 16 through 24 are the killing years here.

The toll was especially harsh on black families. A substantial number of young black men in the city and county wound up in prison or a coffin.

Statistics show:

>> Black males were 80 percent of the homicide defendants in majority-white Jefferson County and 89 percent in majority-black Birmingham. The national average was 57 percent.

>> More than 70 percent of the victims in Birmingham were black males, versus 43 percent nationwide in 2007, the only year a comparison was possible.

>> Guns were used in 86 percent of Birmingham homicides, and 83 percent in the county as a whole, versus 68 percent nationwide. Birmingham's rate is higher among defendants ages 16 through 24.

Some families suffered both ways in Birmingham and Jefferson County. Otis Towns, 18, was gunned down in 2006. In March his brother, Cortez Towns, went to prison for a murder committed when he was 17.

Murder rates are dropping nationally and locally, including a 39 percent decrease in Birmingham 2006 through 2009.

Homicides by white offenders also dropped substantially in Alabama and the nation from 2000 through 2007, according to a study by Northeastern University professors James Allen Fox and Marc L. Swatt.

But the rate of homicides involving both black male offenders and victims under age 25 rose in the nation and state in that period, the study showed.

“The Killing Years” – perhaps the finest piece of journalism published in The Birmingham News ever depicts the morbid world of Black criminality with utter finality. When crime is committed in Birmingham, you don’t even need to turn on the local nightly news to know the offender was a Black male. Strangely, the rate of violence perpetrated by white offenders is dropping everywhere, but Black crime is rising with the rapidity of the oil spill that endangers the gulf area.

The Los Angeles Times also put out a study similar to the one The Birmingham News compiled and the results are similar. Is it wrong to publish the truth when it comes to crime and race?

One study on Chicago crime and media coverage stated that the constant images of Black criminality on TV creates a false reality between white criminals and Black criminals:

Chicago’s television news programs feed racial anxiety and antagonism by giving dramatically different treatment to African-American and white criminal suspects. While white suspects usually appear on the news as individuals, black suspects often appear as the incarnation of a threatening and anonymous underclass, according to a new study by a Northwestern University researcher.

The Chicago Reporter obtained an advance copy of “The Images of Blacks on Chicago’s Local TV News Programs,” a study by Northwestern University Associate Professor Robert Entman that was commissioned by the Human Relations Foundation of the Chicago Community Trust.

Entman, who specializes in communications and political science, found racial bias in local television’s treatment of criminal suspects; his report suggests that TV stations encourage what researchers have called “modern racism” – the continued, though muted, antagonism between races. In their attempts to overcome “traditional racism,” stations actually sustain racial hostilities, the study concluded.

However, the white crime rate is plummeting (indeed, looking at the photos The Birmingham News published has 11 white people out of a sea of Black faces and these white faces appear to be shielding brains with obvious mental retardations) and Black crime is rising.

Indeed, Black youth have three potential outcomes when they grow up, and two of these are incredibly tragic: jail or dead. The other, thankfully, is a scholarship to play college football or basketball at a Predominately White Institution (PWI).

We at SBPDL think it is time to institute the Michael Oher Act now, before this generation of Black youth makes Birmingham and many other major cities unlivable. Plus, like Michael Oher, major colleges need Black players to sustain their prestige and power in college football. White players aren’t as talented as Black athletes and even though they might not be able to produce sufficient grades to warrant enrollment, Black players sure can run the football with gusto.

After all, without sports, where would Black people be?

This must be stated… Black people have “The Killing Years” and white people have “The Wonder Years”. Pre-Obama America is gone. Welcome to the new America.

The Killing Years can be viewed here at The Birmingham News. We do not live in "The Wonder Years" anymore.

South Africa has rugby. America has college football. South Africa and Birmingham are more alike than the former Mrs. Mandela could ever imagine.

The Impending Collapse of South Africa and the Implications for the 2010 World Cup

We at SBPDL went on record that a Nelson Mandela death prior to the 2010 World Cup would ruin the chances of a successful futbol (soccer) tournament in that downtrodden nation.

But two months away from the first kick, soccer fans everywhere are counting down the moments until their beloved nations compete for the FIFA World Cup Championship from the haven for criminality or, the nation of South Africa.

SBPDL has been reading the unworthy tome A Country at War With Itself: South Africa's Crisis of Crime, and were it not for our knowledge of the racial makeup of the nation the reader would be unaware that the crime is committed almost entirely by the liberated Black people. The writer rarely discusses race is in book, hoping the reader still maintains the view of South Africa as depicted in Lethal Weapon 2.

The author assiduously avoids mentioning the unmentionable and seemingly immutable bond between crime and race, inadvertently denying the reader the knowledge that Black people have turned the once relatively peaceful South Africa into a nation that even John Carpenter would have grave difficulty having Snake Plissken escape from in one piece.

South Africa will host the 2010 World Cup, but it will also continue to be host to a murder rate of nearly 50 people per day. Compound that shockingly high murder rate with the influx of hundreds of thousands of tourists sporting cash and other tangible goods on their person and we at SBPDL expect a 30 - 50 percent increase in the murder rate during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa (already, soccer fans from countries participating in the World Cup are afraid of the crime rate and will stay at home in droves, denying a major economic impact to not only merchants in South Africa, but looters and muggers as well, not to mention prostitutes).

Two recent stories showcase life under Black rule in South Africa. One, includes the war against White farmers that the African National Congress (ANC) has been waging since the takeover (handover) of that nation in 1994:

THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tyres, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers.

Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room.

As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest.

In his death throes he would have seen his killers and then his children standing over him, screaming and crying.

The attackers, who were drug addicts, simply disappeared into the night. Cillier’s murder, at Christmas, was barely reported in the local press. It was, after all, everyday news.

Death has stalked South Africa’s white farmers for years. The number murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994 has passed 3,000.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, a campaign of intimidation that began in 2000 has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, but has left fewer than two dozen dead.

The vulnerability felt by South Africa’s 40,000 remaining white farmers intensified earlier this month when Julius Malema, head of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) youth league, opened a public rally by singing Dubula Ibhunu, or Shoot the Boer, an apartheid-era anthem, that was banned by the high court last week.

The Times Online of the London mentions the song Shoot the Boer, and yet another story discusses the egregious refusal of the ruling Black people to denounce the signing of this song, only further fanning the flames of racial violence by the ruling Black people against the dwindling white population whose ancestors dared to build a nation out of the wilderness of Africa:

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling party on Tuesday defended the singing of an apartheid-era song with the words "Kill the Boer" in a row that has raised fears of increasing racial polarisation.

The African National Congress dismissed a ruling by a regional high court last week that uttering or publishing the words would amount to hate speech and violate the constitution put in place after the end of white minority rule.

"These songs cannot be regarded as hate speech or unconstitutional," ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told a news conference. "Any judgment that describes them as such is impractical and unimplementable."

The recent singing of the song by firebrand ANC youth wing leader Julius Malema, who argues that black South Africans have not benefited enough from 16 years of democracy, drew anger from whites and other minority groups.

The lyrics of the song, sung in Zulu, translate as "kill the farmer, kill the Boer", referring to the former ruling white minority.

"Most people realise that this is a struggle song but many whites cannot help but feel that they are being targeted," said Marius Roodt a researcher at the South African Institute of Race Relations.

"The ANC needs to be sympathetic to the feelings of minorities especially if there is a perception created that they endorse inflammatory statements.

President Jacob Zuma has repeatedly stressed the importance of reconciliation in what became known as the "Rainbow Nation" after the relatively peaceful transition from apartheid.

The World Cup will be a failure (here is a great, balanced, website about crime in South Africa). If Mandela dies before or during the World Cup, "Kill the Boer" could become "Kill any White Devil" in the country.

Black people in not just America, but around the world must understand the serious implications of what a disastrous World Cup in Post-Apartheid, Black-run South Africa will mean: Black people are incapable of running anything significant; from a county in America (like Jefferson or Clayton); to a city (like Detroit); or to a nation they earned by killing every white person on the island (like Haiti); to a simple sporting event.

Sports create the idea of equality through the vast inequality of the athletes participating in the games. White people receive positive images of Black people and thus, Black people are allowed to participate in a society that would otherwise reject them.

For the sake of the future of Black Run America (BRA), the World Cup must be moved from South Africa. If not, be prepared for the destruction of the egalitarian myth that holds together this nation (and world) with the strength of badly stretched rubber band.

It's almost ready to rip apart. The World Cup in South Africa will supply the final amount of pressure necessary to cause it to break apart forever.

If Mandela passes away then "Kill the Boer" will transpire, and yet the spirit of Epic Beard Man will manifest itself with righteous indignation across the globe.

Again, SBPDL encourages the cancellation of the World Cup from the unsafe cities and stadiums of South Africa.

If not, the irony of the sporting world destroying the fragile world order it helped create will not be lost (see the film Invictus and any American movie made about race and sport).

See here where South African President Jacob Zuma assures fears of the South African World Cup are misguided.

See here where HIV will explode during the Cup.

#49. Whitopia

Who in the world could like Pre-Obama America? The boring, white-bread world that represented America when it was 90 percent white (as late as 1964 the United States was less than 1 percent Hispanic - a forthcoming SBPDL) is but a distant memory, like the view of major city's skyline in the rear-view mirror as white people flee to their Whitopia's.

Wait, wait, wait. It is a well documented fact that the majority of Black people live in major cities (an important website that shows which states in America have the highest Black population can be found here) and thus - despite those pioneering Stuff White People Like whites who practice gentrification - have few white neighbors.

Strangely, white people don't want to live among Black people despite the ululating protestations of disingenuous white liberals who demand complete integration yet flee farther from Black people than their MARs counterparts.

Is this implicit whiteness on the part of white people, as some people have postulated? Is it a revulsion at the spectacle of the creeping reality of Clayton County and Cook County into all parts of the country that have Black people and the horror of what happened in St. Louis recently that continues to push white people into enclaves that are economically inaccessible to most Black people, sans athletes?

No, Black people know the real reason white people enjoy living among white people - and the occasional token Black - and it isn't that difficult to comprehend, requiring few academic credentials to decipher and qualify: the reality of underclass Black criminality, which sadly comprises a large cross-section of the Black community acting as veritable Pac-Man eating both sides of a Venn Diagram (let us take a look at Memphis and the deconstruction of Section8 housing and the scattering of Black people into new areas of the city, as only The Atlantic Monthly could regale):

"Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis’s hometown turned into America’s new South Bronx? Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city’s chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it’s a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don’t want to hear. It’s an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions."

Black people don't like living around crime and that means they don't like living around Black people at all. Remember Detroit? Whites long ago fled that city with the same tenacity as Martin Blank, leaving it for those who crave raccoon, but Black people are now fueling "Black Flight" from the very city they conquered and turned into a Blackopia:

"After decades of "white flight," African Americans are now leaving Detroit at a higher rate than their white neighbors, according to estimates released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The total population estimate for the city fell to 912,062 in 2008, a .5 percent decrease from 2007, indicating that roughly 6,609 people live in each of Detroit's 138 square miles.

Estimates for single-race African Americans fell 3.8 percent in 2008 to 643,200, according to the bureau's American Community Survey data.

The estimated number single-race white residents remained virtually unchanged at 86,072.

The ACS estimates are based on an annual, nationwide sample of about 250,000 addresses per month.

"Black flight" has been a relatively consistent phenomenon in Detroit since the last official U.S. Census in 2000."

Yes, major cities that once sparkled with magnificent, gleaming new towers that symbolized the United States dominance of the global economy now see these formerly great skyscrapers acting as tombstones, headstones and mausoleums to the white people who built them and as silent witnesses to the Black people who kill each other with stunning rapidity underneath their shade.

Black people in America have been shocked for a very long time at the stunning invertebrate reactions of white people to the de-whitening of the entire country. They can see what is happening to every part of the country and wonder why white people are so callow as to retreat to so-called Whitopia's and merely wait for the fate that the fates have decided (it is akin to retreating to a fallout shelter and believing a nuclear war has been fought and the sky is already contaminated, when no such war has been fought).

What is a Whitopia?:

"A Whitopia has three things. First, it has posted more than 6% population growth since 2000. The second thing is that the majority of that growth — upwards of 90% — comes from white migrants. The third thing a Whitopia has is an ineffable social charm — a pleasant look and feel."

So, a Whitopia is a place, much like the US News and World Reports list of Best Places to Live in America, that has few Black people or "gasp", other racial minorities (Black people still believe they are the only minority, despite being elbowed out of the way by Hispanics for second place in the spoils system long ago).

Black people look upon Whitopia's with envious eyes, for they have been left to fend for themselves for nearly two generations since white flight first occurred and gave Black people the chance to run major cities, with most going the way of Jefferson County and Birmingham.

Why our Whitopia's so evil, when white people are merely retreating to white cities to die, thereby raising the white flag of surrender, hoping to live out their days in peace?:

"There's a long-term harm when Americans accept balkanization as a way of life," says Benjamin, who is an African American. "Segregation can appear to allay social tensions, but it worsens them in the long run. Optimal democracies require more than voting; they require social integration and involvement."

Benjamin defines Whitopias as towns that are much whiter than the nation as a whole, which means they are more than 75 percent Caucasian. He looked at areas with a population growth of more than 6 percent since 2000, in which the growth was 90 percent white. Then he set out to Forsyth County, Ga., (98,000 people, 684 of them black), St. George, Utah, Coeur d'Alene and other vanilla outposts to find out why folks were moving there.

"There are forces that push people out [of cities and inner suburbs], like diversity and crumbling infrastructure and high home prices," Benjamin says. "And there are pull factors, like more home for your dollar [in the whitopias], beautiful natural amenities and safety, and the perceived comfort that comes with homogeneity."

White people want to live around white people, although they will never, EVER admit this fact, which Black people exploit so easily and effectively. A movie was made called Pleasantville, which pokes fun at Pre-Obama America, for its lack of "color". White people are constantly trying recreate the magic that is dramatically castigated in that film, to no avail.

Black people want to live among white people, because only white people have been able to create and sustain a pleasant -ville that welcomes them with open arms and away from the crime and poverty that shapes most majority Black areas.

So, paradoxically, we must include Whitopia among the Stuff Black People Don't Like, for they would love to live among the thoughtful and pleasant white people who flee to these enclaves that are popping up quickly and efficiently (like a SIM-City), yet they are fearful for actually admitting what this would mean in practical terms.

Simply put, Whitopia's mere existence undermines all that has been done in social engineering over the past 50 years and proves without a shadow of a doubt that integration has failed and that wherever white people can be found living amongst almost all white people, Black people will be found with their bags packed, hoping to move in soon to start Acting White.

Yet, if Black people flock to Whitopia's, it will mean Black people are incapable of governing and keeping their own communities in check, and that there is no THE MAN keeping Black people, but merely Black people performing that feat. Catch-22 indeed, for a Pleasant-ville really can only include white people after all, sans color. If Black people flock to a Whitopia, white people will just pick up and leave again, thereby exacerbating the problem in an endless hamster wheel of disharmony.

#419. Labor Day 2009

Labor Day signifies one of the last weekends of summer and the transitioning into the fall season, as in many states across the nation leaves begin to change color and a crisp can be felt in the air.

Labor Day has an interesting history in the United States that few people think about as they host friends for a barbeque or enjoy one last weekend by the pool:

“The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. In the aftermath of the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the US military and US Marshals during the 1894 Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with Labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike.”

In 2009, fears of economic destabilization are felt by millions across the United States, as even under the watchful eyes of Mein Obama, the country is heading into a territory not seen since the 1930s:

“Since late 2007, seven million jobs have vanished in the United States and industrial production has fallen nearly 17 percent, statistics show. Official unemployment hovers just under 10 percent in the United States, the highest since the early 1980s. But the unemployed and underemployed together total 16.8 percent of the labor force, which means one out of six American workers is unemployed or underemployed."

We here at SBPDL view the state of economy with trepidation, for if even under the incredibly capable hands of Mein Obama the country can see horrifying job loss and the erosion of the middle class, then what does that tell about the future of the country in Post-Obama America?

What is really doing on currently in the economy? Do the collapse of AIG and the complete destruction of the credit-default swap scam and the massive sub-prime mortgage disaster portend the economic ruin of the AGE OF OBAMA before it even gets started?

Black people are afraid to answer this question, for the data does not paint a pretty picture and puts the AGE OF OBAMA is serious danger of defaulting:

“Men are clearly in worse shape than women. The unemployment rate for adult men is 10.1 percent, compared with 7.6 percent for adult women… Black unemployment increased 0.6 percent to 15.1 percent, compared with an unemployment rate of 8.4 percent before the start of the recession.”

Black people have seen disastrous results since supporting Obama with 96 percent of their vote in the 2008 presidential election. Yes, they have a Black person occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but when a white guy was in office they could always claim racism whenever things went collectively bad for Black people.

Now, Obama is beginning to see disingenuous white liberals pull up anchor and leave the glitz and glamour of the AGE OF OBAMA to the same fate as the Titanic:

“Among white Democrats, Obama’s job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It has dropped by 9 points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women -- all groups that will be targeted by both parties in next year's midterm elections.”

Now, only Black people are fully behind Mein Obama and are in hope that he can be the force needed to get Black people back into the job market:

“Blacks led the national increase in unemployment as the jobless rate for African Americans soared to 15.1 percent – up from 14.5 percent in July…As for Blacks, the situation could get worse before it gets better. Employment is usually the last section of the economy to recover from a recession. Further, African Americans have historically been plagued by the tendency to be the last hired when things do start to get better.”

Worse, in New York City, Black people find themselves out of work at a pace that for some reason can’t crack the edifice of Mein Obama’s popularity:

“While unemployment rose steadily for white New Yorkers from the first quarter of 2008 through the first three months of this year, the number of unemployed blacks in the city rose four times as fast, according to a report to be released on Monday by the city comptroller’s office. By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, according to the report, even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here."

Jefferson County, Detroit and the reality of Clayton County are all becoming the reality of life in Post-Obama America. The middle-class is eroding and Black people are getting mad at the ineffectiveness of Obama to help find Black people jobs:

“When asked about the black unemployment issue by American Radio Network's April Ryan, Obama had to do a difficult dance. In light of the country's impatience, this was no time for America's first black president to actually be a black president. Obama took the question in stride, explaining that the best thing he can do for black people is to help the entire economy. He also succumbed to the fact that African American unemployment is traditionally much higher - nearly double - that of whites.”

Black people aren’t too concerned about the record unemployment for white males in Georgia – a whopping 211 percent increase in unemployment insurance by white males since 2007’s numbers were counted – nor will they ever worry about the lack of diversity in Federal employment:

“This year the First Place prize in the federal quota competition again goes to Court Services and Offender Services (CSOS) for employing 808% more blacks than their affirmative action target (quota).”

Black people view their economic displacement as the preeminent cause to combat in this country. They had high hopes for THE AGE OF OBAMA and with the rate of Black unemployment rising quickly they can’t blame THE MAN, for the highest office in the land is occupied by a Black dude.

The reality of Labor Day 2009 for Black people is that the economy under Mein Obama is not going to get any better – for them or any race. The nation has been savaged by feckless policies for far too long and not even the touch of the Barack Obama can save the economy now.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes Labor Day 2009, for the jobless rate for Black people is reaching historic highs, and the promise of Black people no longer putting gas in their car or paying their mortgage is out the window for good.

#82. Naval Academy Academic Standards

Previously, on SBPDL, we learned that Black people do not like Real American Heroes. The real United States military and the elite soldiers that comprise the Navy Seals, Air Force Special Forces, Rangers and Delta Force are overwhelmingly white, as are 97 percent of the pilots who fly for our armed forces.

Unlike the G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra movie, which tried to show a majority of the elite fighters as Black people, reality is stunningly and convincingly white. Black people don't like this, and in the age of Mein Obama needed a fictitious film like G.I. Joe to bolster their fragile egos.

Black people also don't like Pre-Obama America at all, for it is an era (1776 - 2009) that is dead and represented evil white supremacy and Black subjection. White people may have created and sustained a civilization that ultimately sent a man to the moon, but Black people will gladly take the reigns of that society now and will attempt to pull a Zimbabwe in America (or Clayton or Jefferson County).

Now, Black people are attempting to become Real American Heroes, albeit in a new light. Standards will have to be lowered dramatically to make it happen, but Black people are coming to the Naval Academy in droves this upcoming semester, because diversity is the fundamental goal of the Post-Obama America and the lowering of Pre-Obama America standards is the only way to ensure it becomes a reality:

"The Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced in Annapolis recently that "diversity is the number one priority" at the Naval Academy.

The Naval Academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, echoed him. Everyone understands that "diversity" here means nonwhite skins.

Fowler insisted recently that we needed to have Annapolis graduates who "looked like" the Fleet, where enlisted people are about 42 percent nonwhite, largely African American and Hispanic."

In an article in the Washington Post, a member of the admissions board stated that the only way to increase Black people presence at the school was to drastically lower standards for admittance:

"Fleming says the increase in minority enrollment at the academy has brought in students with lower grades and SAT scores who need more remedial classes and are less capable of the scholarship for which the academy is known.

"First of all, we're dumbing down the Naval Academy," Fleming said in an interview. "Second of all, we're dumbing down the officer corps."

Fleming asserts, correctly, that Black people are treated differently in their application process and get in with lower scores and:

"Once at Annapolis, “diverse” midshipmen are over-represented in our pre-college classes, in lower-track courses, in mandatory tutoring programs and less challenging majors. Many struggle to master basic concepts. (I teach some of these courses.)"

Much like the Wonderlic Test, Black people find the Naval Academy Standards as applied to white people to difficult to master and thus, must resort to fuzzy math to ensure greater representation of their people at a formerly important institution of higher learning.

Now, the notion of creating fictitious Real American Heroes in film has seeped into the Naval Academies admissions, as the school has lowered the flag of quality applicants and rigorous, difficult scholastics to introduce diversity and Post-Obama America to our nations future Navy officer classes.

The only way Pre-Obama America could be destroyed is to lower standards to include the people who support Mein Obama with 97 percent approval and who voted him by a margin of 96 percent-to-One percent in the 2008 Presidential Election.

The words of one of the highest ranking officers in the Navy need to remembered forever, as we enter Post-Obama America, for the standards of Real American Heroes no longer matter, and to ensure diversity and Black people's rightful place in the new Black world, we must lower standards completely:

"The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Gary Roughead released a podcast on the importance of diversity and the Navy's diversity initiatives Feb. 27.

"In the military and in the Navy, it's important that we are a diverse organization because we have to represent what I call the face of America," said Roughead. "As our population changes and the percentages of majority-minority changes and that's always taking place we have to reflect that same demographic in our Navy and that's why it's important, but at the end of the day, it really makes a huge difference because we're stronger because of the different perspectives and ideas that people bring to bear."

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Naval Academy Academic Standards, for the only way to include a high percentage of Black people in one of Post-Obama America's greatest academic institutions, Pre-Obama America Academic standards had to be tossed out.

The Chinese, Russian, British and other nations only allow the smartest and most intelligent people in their nations to be officers and defend their nation. In Post-Obama America, Real American Heroes have to be made up... in movies and through lowering of the standards at our elite military schools.