This website will serve to educate the general public on Black people and the Stuff That Black People Don't Like. Black people have many interesting eccentricities, which include disliking a litany of everyday events, places, household objects and other aspects of their everyday life.
Black people are an interesting subject matter and this website will chronicle the many problems in life that agitate this group of people.
To suggest material, please contact sbpdl1@gmail.com
Alton, Illinois is a city that has just shown us a glimpse of Black Run America. Worse, it reminds us of a scene from the 2000 film American History X, where Derek Vinyard's father - a fireman - has just been killed trying to put out a fire in an all-Black area:
Reporter: [Rasmussen shows a video of a crying Derek with his mother talking to a reporter after his father's death] Look I know this is tough. But how do you feel right now?
Derek Vinyard: How do you think I feel? I think it's typical. Reporter: Typical how?
Derek Vinyard: Well, this country is becoming a haven for criminals so what do you expect? You know, decent hard-working Americans like my dad are getting rubbed out by social parasites.
Reporter: I don't understand you're saying that you think maybe your father's murder was race related?
Derek Vinyard: Yeah it's race related! Every problem in this country is race related not just crime. It's like... immigration, AIDS, welfare those are problems in them. The Black community, the Hispanic community, the Asian community, they're not white problems.
Reporter: Derek, are those really issues that deal with poverty?
Derek Vinyard: No. You know, no. They're not products of the environment either that's crap. Minorities don't give two shits about this country, they've come here to exploit it not to embrace it.
Derek Vinyard: I mean millions of white European Americans came here and flourished you know within a generation so what the fuck is the matter with these people going around shooting a... fireman? [cries]
Reporter: What does this have to do with the murder of your father?
Derek Vinyard: Because my father was murdered doing his job! Putting out a fire in fucking Nigger neighborhood. He shouldn't be giving a shit about. He got shot by a fucking drug dealer who probably still collects a welfare check!
First responders from the Alton Fire Department and five officers from the Alton Police Department were attacked by a crowd of several hundred people in the Oakwood Housing Complex who shot large bottle rockets at them. The incidents occurred late Sunday and early Monday in the 700 and 800 blocks of Oakwood.
"I'm so angry," said Alton Police Chief David Hayes. "This type of conduct is not supposed to happen in civil society. This was obviously intended to be entertainment for the crowd."
Hayes added that the crowd's actions were "despicable and turn my stomach."
The confrontations began at 10:20 p.m. and within the 40 minutes it took to resolve the first incident, police were attacked three times. It started when a firetruck was dispatched to extinguish a Dumpster fire in the 700 block of Oakwood and was immediately attacked by the crowd shooting and throwing fireworks at them.
According to two police reports, Patrolman First Class Walter Wetzstein and several other officers already were on their way to the scene because of the "large amounts of fireworks being set off at that location." Both reports stated that in the past, fires have been set to "lure the fire department out so they could be attacked by fireworks."
When officers arrived, they too were attacked "by the mob" with bottle rockets thrown from behind buildings. Police responded with pepper-ball guns and at one point pursued attackers in an attempt to restore order. Officers left when firefighters were able to extinguish the Dumpster fire but quickly returned to the housing complex because of reports of people shot or injured in the 800 block of Oakwood. Police did not find anyone injured but again were attacked by fireworks and again deployed pepper-ball guns to prevent attacks.
Officers were attacked a third time in the 700 block of Oakwood when they responded to reports of a truck fire; that turned out to be a box on fire. Officers had to leave when their pepper-ball guns were out of ammunition.
At 12:29 a.m. July 5, police and fire personnel again were dispatched to the Oakwood Housing complex for a Dumpster fire in the 800 block of Oakwood. Officers were attacked with bottle rockets and again deployed pepper-ball guns. When the fire department put out the fire, police requested the Dumpster in the 900 block be soaked down in an attempt to prevent it from being set on fire. Officers left at that time to respond to other calls.
"The Fourth of July is always a very busy time for us because of fireworks. It's unfortunate that resources were tied up for a couple of hours like this" when the rest of the city might have needed them, Hayes said.
The city has taken a more proactive approach this year in curtailing the private use of fireworks. The Telegraph printed a letter from Mayor Tom Hoechst stating that fireworks were illegal in Illinois. Individuals found to have them or be discharging them would receive a non-traffic citation and would have to appear before a judge and ordered to pay a fine. If they failed to do so, a warrant would be issued for their arrest.
"The sad reality is there were likely a number of adults who participated or were spectators. They're just showing their kids 'this is the way we have fun on the Fourth of July.' It speaks to the poor parenting skills they have," Hayes said.
The police are reviewing videotapes to see how they can follow up with charges.
"If nothing else, we can identify the residences people were going in and out of and talk to them," Hayes said.
Hayes said he spoke with management of Alton's Housing Authority and they "share in our horror." He said the two departments will work together to prevent problems next year.
Andy Hightower, the Alton Housing Authority's manager, did not return a reporter's call Monday afternoon.
"This is as aggressive as I can remember an attack (of fire department personnel)," Assistant Fire Chief Tom Chappell said. "It's a bad situation when people who are sworn to help get attacked."
"It's disheartening and I support Chief Hayes' investigation into this 100 percent," Alton Fire Chief Greg Bock said.
Bock said first responders are unable to help others in an unsafe environment. He did not recall similar incidents last year but did say he has been to "dozens of incidents that involved grass fires, brush fires, EMT calls, all associated with private use of fireworks. What goes up has to come down and that creates a hazard not only for spectators but also the first responders."
The pumper truck received "no real damage" from the fireworks and a bottle rocket put a dent in one squad car. The report did not mention injuries to city personnel but one officer was sent to Alton Memorial Hospital to speak with a juvenile and her mother who claimed the girl was struck by a pepper-ball.
What transpired in Alton is a sad reminder that many of the questions posed in the film American History X were left unanswered. As Thugreport.com shows, the majority of the crime committed in this country has a startling connection.
This has been ignored for far to long, and will continue to be ignored until it is too late. Already this story has been removed from the Fox affiliate in St. Louis website, showing that the face of criminality must be covered up or not reported at all.
The questions raised by American History X will go unanswered and firefighters and police will continue to put their lives on the line... for nothing.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world. Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.
The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo -- in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part.
"It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations)," he said. He held up the International Space Station as a model, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese.
Space exploration has long been an entry at Stuff Black People Don't Like, and the statement fro the head of NASA should prove sufficient in validation of my blog (of course, Google censoring the website should be more than enough as well).
Thankfully, African nations are leading the push into space. The website First African in Space details the exploits of an astronaut that penetrated earth's atmosphere for low-orbit in 2002. However, upon examination of the website incontrovertible proof is provided that the first African in space was of non-African descent.
Africans must travel to the moon to investigate what developed nations have been doing in outer space, Ugandan President YoweriMuseveni said Saturday.
"The Americans have gone to the moon. And the Russians. The Chinese and Indians will go there soon. Africans are the only ones who are stuck here," Museveni said, addressing a meeting of the Uganda Law Society in Entebbe.
"We must also go there and say: 'What are you people doing up here?'."
Museveni urged the assembly of Uganda's top lawyers to support East African integration, arguing that one of the region's goals should be to develop a space programme.
"Uganda alone cannot go to the moon. We are too small. But East Africa united can. That is what East African integration is all about," he said. "Then we can say to the Americans: 'What are you doing here all alone?'."
Museveni has vocally campaigned for a common East African economic and political zone.
Negotiations to establish a tariff free trade zone including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda have been ongoing for months.
Museveni on Saturday also called for enhanced political integration among the East African nations, suggesting the region would be strengthened by becoming one country.
Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff are both movies that glorify Pre-Obama America and a people who once had the audacity to travel to the moon. That audacious and fearless attitude is best directed in helping propel the self-esteem of Muslim nations skyward and to help them dream big and uplift every Mohammedan heart.
The future of NASA is to be relegated to the punchline from the film Dumb and Dumber, when Lloyd Christmas finds out, rather belatedly, that we landed on the moon.
The achievements of NASA occurred at a time of profound whiteness - an embarrassing fact to Black Run America - and thus all energy and efforts of the interstellar government agency have been grounded to a most terrestrial goal.
The 1996 movie Independence Day, perhaps the most politically incorrect movie ever made, has an interesting montage scene at the end where the alien ships have been downed in a global aerial battle, the citizens of emerging victorious. In one scene, scurrying from the jungle are African males carrying spears and raising them triumphantly, celebrating the destroyed alien ship that utilized a gravitational device to hover in the air miles above the ground.
It would be foolish to believe any arm could contain the power to throw a spear the required distance to bring ruin to the spaceship, but somehow the absurdity of the scene managed to withstand editing and found its way into the finished version of the film.
This one scene epitomizes the vast differences that exist in humanity, as the valley in human biodiversity is a wide gulf that no amount of wishing will ever cause to go away.
NASA's grandest accomplishment, sending a man to the moon, is of little concern anymore and will be excised from future textbooks giving way to the true final frontier facing man: helping out the Muslim world.
The desire since time immemorial to travel into space and traverse the unknown has been a driving force behind the creative minds of the top civilizations that have arisen on earth. Though they may have fallen, new civilizations arose with aspirations of exploring the heavens.
The apex of space travel was achieved nearly 41 years ago. Now, the ambitions of a distinct people have been tied down, chained to the people of earth who never resolved to lose those terrestrial ropes in the first place.
People will forget that we ever went to the moon, as Lloyd Christmas shows but a glimpse of the future in the aforementioned movie.
Diversity. No word is more nebulous in the English language then this one, though achieving some form of it is the goal of every company, business and university in America. Institutions lacking the blessing of diversity are cause for immediate concern though one Harvard sociologist refused to publish major findings on the subject of diversity on the grounds it might lead to the erosion in the once-perceived invincible armor of the diversity movement.
One thing is for certain: Diversity is not an old, old wooden ship that was used in the Civil War era. Regardless of what diversity truly means, once a company has acquired a certain level of diversity, to undue this transition and back-peddle on such a noble commitment would be grounds for immediate concern.
The race to accumulate the most positive diversity points in Corporate and Collegiate America is a never-ending marathon that will ultimately lead to the displacement of every leadership position in that entity of people with ties to Pre-Obama America.
Black Run America requires enforcers to guarantee its continuation and the never-ending desire to obtain some elusive goal of diversity to brighten the employee payroll figures is a task that is at the forefront of all organizational objectives.
A corollary of the quest in pursuing diversity is that once the implementation of this mission has occurred, the hiring of a non-diverse employee can never transpire for that position.
If this happens, the commitment to diversity is over and a regression to the mean old days of Pre-Obama America (an era where diversity wasn’t a principle of every company and university, but striving for unquestioned excellence was such a principle) is afoot.
Black people are the pawns in the game of diversity, where Disingenuous White Liberals maneuver to pull the levers of power through a game of manipulation.
No pawn is more apparent than the former Athletic Director of the University of Georgia, Damon Evans. Hailed as the first Black Athletic Director of a Southeastern Conference (SEC) school, he presided over a multi-million dollar budget and replaced the legendary Vince Dooley in the role.
Becoming the figurehead for all of UGA athletics, Evans was confirmed to be one of the ultimate personifications of the dreaded Token Black in all of American business.
As reported Tuesday in this newspaper, a trust report titled "Opportunity Adrift" ranks UGA last among the 50 flagship public universities in the United States in terms of the percentage of in-state minority and poor high-school graduates it enrolls. According to the report, 40 percent of this state's 2007 high school graduates were black, Hispanic or American Indian, but less than 10 percent of the university's freshman class for that year were minority students.
This article published in 2009 points to Evans moral strength and the importance of his leadership in helping the Georgia Bulldogs attain athletic excellence, never acknowledging that all 12 schools in the SEC are also enjoying the financial windfalls of being part of the SEC.
Mr. Evans was a paragon for those who push diversity, a model citizen and a loyal representative of the school. He attained the position of Athletic Director of a Predominately White Institution (PWI) and was viewed as an individual who could help the peaceful infusion of diversity into virtually every segment of society.
The police report from the Georgia State Patrol officer who arrested Damon Evans in Atlanta Wednesday and it’s a damning document for the Georgia athletics director.
According to the report, filed by GSP Officer Mark Cabe, Evans’ black BMW was weaving noticeably on Roswell Road, which initiated Cabe to U-turn his cruiser and execute a stop. After Evans pulled into a parking space at the corner of Roswell Road and Chastain Drive, Cabe reports that he “noticed that the subject had a pair of lady’s red panties between his legs.” Later in the report Evans admits that the panties belonged to his passenger, 28-year-old Courtney Fuhrmann of Atlanta.
“She took them off and I held them because I was just trying to get her home,” Evans said, according to police.
While trying to conduct a field sobriety test on Evans, Cabe reports that Fuhrmann got out of the passenger side of the car several times despite instructions from both the officer and from Evans to remain in the vehicle. After failing to obey a final warning, Fuhrmann was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
“I have a young lady and she is intoxicated and I am just trying to get her home,” Evans reportedly told the officer.
Police report that Evans failed a field sobriety test. “Used his vehicle for balance” and “subject kept his left heel on the ground almost the entire test . . . after instructed (to hold it) approximately 6 inches of the ground,” reads the report.
Evans refused a breathalyzer, then began to plead with the officer.
“I am not trying to bribe you but I am the athletic director of the University of Georgia,” the officer reports.
“The subject admitted again that he’d been drinking and started crying,” McCabe writes. Evans asked the officer to take him to a motel.
“I am not going to bribe you but is there anything you can do without arresting me?,” Evans asked, according to police.
When off-loading Fuhrmann at the jail, the officer asked her how long she had been seeing Evans. “Only a week ago,” she replied, according to police.
Fuhrmann also stated: “I promise you one thing: He will get off. . . . It will be erased because he is the Athletic Director of UGA and he has that power.”
Upon dropping off Evans at the jail, “the subject began crying uncontrollably,” the police report says.
His tenure that was greeted with so much enthusiasm for the diversity-addition he brought immediately upon hire now ends thanks to one alcohol fueled evening that displaces diversity atop the head of UGA’s athletic department. Therein lays the true casualty in this sordid tale of DUI, disloyalty and booze – diversity.
Once you hire a Black person for a position and once that Black person’s employment is terminated, or if they resign, a Black person of equal or lesser value must be immediately hired to replace them. If not, the commitment to diversity has been reneged upon and that business or university is forsaken its desire to be a model for diversity.
Call it the Black Vocational Rule of Diversity
Damon Evans is no more at the University of Georgia. Diversity cannot be another victim in this story. Evans, who told students not to drink and drive in a public service announcement, failed to take into account his own advice and in turn threatens the fragility of the diversity situation at UGA.
The successor to Evans must be a Black person - as the Black Vocational Rule of Diversity mandates - or else the commitment to diversity by UGA has to be called into question. A school that is embarrassed by its overwhelming white student body (historically, the school has always been white, thus its nature is a PWI), must replace this unfortunate stain on its reputation by displacing white students with diversity.
Thus, the true nature of diversity. The displacement of white people with non-white people. But hey, at least we have college football to watch!
The hallmark, perhaps the bedrock of civilization is the development of a commonality between citizens of a nation that connects the living population with the long deceased and will unite the unborn to that past.
Tales of past grandeur passed down orally or through the written word help maintain ties that bind those living to events that transpired long before their birth.
Puzzling though is how impoverished the traditions of Africa and the Black experience in the United States has been, compared to that which developed in Europe and in the outposts of that civilization throughout the world wherever Europeans have propagated.
Art, literature, theater, music and dance are all different elements that when combined help create a rich cultural tableau that develops a clear portrait of the commonality binding a civilization together.
Black people have already been found to find classical music a most irritating nuisance to their auditory system, though the vuvuzela is a musical device that brings joy to the always ebullient Black face.
Though many scoff at the so-called fine arts as an avocation whose followers would never dare utter “No Homo” but graciously accept such so-called negative terminology, many of the theatrical performances, concerts, operas, ballets that are performed in cultural centers pay homage to a distinct culture, rooted in Pre-Obama America.
Yet Black people are rare in these areas that help entertain and educate those who view and appreciate them. The fine arts and the performance arts have a dearth of Black people – like the Winter Olympics – that underlie the deepest fears of Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs): that Black people don’t want to be just like them.
You see, DWL’s are the ultimate white supremacists as they believe that Black people must be exactly like them: espousing the same fundamental beliefs; enjoying the same forms of entertainment and tastes; and conforming to a rigid interpretation of the world guided by DWL tastes.
Take our hand, white liberals say, and we will continue to be your guide on the Underground Railroad… but only do as we say.
These same white liberals bemoan the lack of Black involvement in the so-called fine arts, never realizing that Black people created their own forms of cultural commonality that bind them to their own community. They have purposely rejected all mores of Pre-Obama America and embrace the teachings that unite them to their community.
As a snapshot of ballet in this country, the six-day, nine-company Ballet Across America series at the Kennedy Center, which concluded Sunday, offered some good news but little revelation. The primary take-away is that whether you're talking Memphis or Tulsa, Seattle or Charlotte, there's an impressively high level of skill among the nation's ballet dancers.
The companies are also overwhelmingly white and dotted with Europeans -- as they have always been. Diversity in ballet remains a serious problem for the small companies as well as the large, on the coasts as well as in the heartland. In the 21st century, we can put a black man in the White House, but as last week's survey shows, we can't put a black ballerina in the Opera House. Clearly, not enough work is being done to foster African American dancers. But with public money in their coffers, ballet companies -- and the local, state and federal funders -- need to make equal opportunity in the dancer ranks a priority.
That's the story on the dancers. But what did the series tell us about their leaders? Here was the surprise: The last shall be first. In terms of repertoire, the greatest rewards came from the smallest companies, which appear to be doing the most creative work with the fewest resources: First, North Carolina Dance Theatre with Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's "Shindig" and a live bluegrass band, then Ballet Memphis with Trey McIntyre's emotional take on Roy Orbison. Friday, it was the tiny, 10-dancer Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in Jorma Elo's "Red Sweet."
Black people have no incentive to joining ballet troupes, for the performances all glorify halcyon days of a past that had little to do with them. Culturally the most important ballets have their roots in Europe, a land historically deprived of Black people.
That’s what a focus group of a dozen African-American women concluded about the musical “Memphis” last summer when they were asked to assess the show’s tagline, “The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
But after seeing artwork featuring Felicia, the black R&B singer in the show, and after hearing about the turbulent romance between the character and a white D.J., the women in the focus group said the show was much more up their alley.
With that in mind, the producers changed the “Memphis” tagline before opening on Broadway to: “His Vision, Her Voice. The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
The use of focus groups is one of several diversity strategies, aggressive by theater standards, used not only by “Memphis” but also by another new Broadway musical, “Fela!”; the new play “Race”; and the revival of “Fences” — all shows centered on black characters, who are rarely in the forefront of major plays and musicals.
While the “Memphis” producers estimate that 25 to 30 percent of their audience is black, the producers of “Fela!” and “Race” say that their outreach has resulted in black theatergoers’ making up 40 percent of attendees. “Fences” and its star, Denzel Washington, are also drawing large numbers of black people, though the show began selling out early and has been a tough ticket to obtain, a spokesman said.
Broadway shows about black characters often draw black theatergoers, but the producers of “Memphis” and “Fela!” as well as producers of some coming shows are particularly going after African-Americans, given that Broadway’s overall attendance has been on the decline, down 3 percent for the 2009-10 season. Whether black theatergoers become a larger, reliable part of the Broadway audience remains to be seen, as do the range and quality of the shows that are offered to appeal to them.
Yet producers clearly sense a market that has not been tapped out: This fall’s Broadway lineup already includes two new musicals about black men, “Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical” and “The Scottsboro Boys,” and possibly the new two-character play “The Mountaintop,” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., depending on whether the producers can land the stars Samuel L. Jackson and Halle Berry.
Indeed, the producers of “Memphis” credit word of mouth among black people for helping keep the show alive through slow-selling weeks to reach the Tony Award voting season that began in May and ended when “Memphis” won the top award for best new musical this month.
While some theater critics and rival producers have derided “Memphis” as a conventional show and have spurned its story of racial reconciliation as simplistic, the musical’s success at building a black audience is anything but business as usual for Broadway. Yes, some of the marketing strategies were tried before with the 2005 musical adaptation of “The Color Purple,” but that show had a well-known title and Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement going for it.
By contrast, “Memphis” has no stars and an unknown score and story. But its producers believed that their show would become known as memorable entertainment if buzz spread among enough so-called Broadway taste-makers — who, in the case of “Memphis,” were not the usual critics, bloggers and veteran theatergoers, but instead African-American ministers, choir directors and black women.
“Anyone who says that ‘Memphis’ is somehow unoriginal as a piece of musical theater is missing the impact that the show is having on a wide cross section of people who feel that Broadway isn’t usually for them,” said Sue Frost, a lead producer of “Memphis,” who noted with pride that Michelle Obama took her two daughters to a performance of the musical this spring. (The three also caught “The Addams Family.”)
The R&B flavor of the show, and the serious treatment of African-American life in the segregated 1950s, were the selling points of the show for Willie Anderson, a tourist from Atlanta who took a group of 11 relatives and friends to a recent performance. Each paid $94 a ticket.
“We wanted to see something with some African flavor, and what we heard in Atlanta was that ‘Memphis’ was a show worth seeing,” Mr. Anderson said. “The main thing is, you want music that you’ll appreciate and like. I have nothing against ‘Mary Poppins,’ but I don’t see that as a show for us like ‘Memphis’ will be.”
One theater group-sales company that focuses on minorities, Full House Theater Tickets Inc., reported that “Memphis,” “Race,” and “Fela!” had drawn disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans. (Group sales are a cornerstone of commercial success for most shows.) “Fela!,” about the Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, has sent vans emblazoned with the show’s logo and playing Mr. Kuti’s music to racially diverse neighborhoods, where the drivers hand out brochures for the show and talk it up to passers-by.
“Part of the appeal of these shows is that they give black audiences something to talk about,” said Sandie M. Smith, president of Full House. “For ‘Race,’ we went after and got African-American attorneys’ associations, groups that dealt with the justice system and, in some cases, created post-show discussions because there were rich topics to discuss.”
Many of these post-performance conversations have happened at the theater district restaurant B. Smith’s, named for its owner, the black entrepreneur and former television show host.
To expose young people to Broadway and, with luck, spread word about the show to more parents, the “Memphis” producers spent $75,000 on their own program, Inspire Change, that has sent cast members into schools and then students from those schools — nearly 1,000 so far — to the musical. The program began after a fifth-grade teacher at the KIPP Star College Prep Charter School, in Harlem, wrote to the “Memphis” producers after seeing a performance and asked if the musical had an educational outreach component and discount tickets for students.
“A week after we saw it,” said the teacher, Trenton Price, “I introduced the vocabulary word ‘integrate’ in class, and a kid used an example from ‘Memphis’ — about how the white D.J. goes into Felicia’s bar, but the bar wasn’t integrated at that point.”
Felicia, the R&B singer who is the leading lady of the show (played by Montego Glover), has proved to be a draw for African-Americans. The marketing team for “Memphis” played clips of Ms. Glover singing Felicia’s big first-act number, “Colored Woman,” at Harlem street fairs, as well as at beauty salons, churches and community centers in predominantly black neighborhoods in New York City.
The lyrics — “Colored woman with few chances/Has to do what she must do!” — proved captivating to women in particular, according to Ms. Frost, the producer.
Still, Ms. Frost and her main producing partner, Randy Adams, acknowledged that African-American support was not enough to sustain a Broadway show: “Memphis” grossed $835,071 for the week ending June 20, its best box office week so far, but the show has sold unevenly during some weeks and is far away from turning a profit.
“It takes time to reach a tipping-point moment where everyone is talking about your show,” Mr. Adams said. “We just have to keep faith that our fans will continue spreading the word.”
Like the Disney produced cinematic bomb, The Princess and the Frog, Black people will flock to Black produced shows, but the production will have a limited return on investment as targeting a negligible portion of the population will yield pitiable results. Unless your name is Tyler Perry, that is.
One article at The Root asked why so few Black people go to Broadway plays, and the answer is simply that the performances have little to do with their culture:
About 75 percent of Broadway theatergoers are white, though according to the Broadway League, which co-sponsors the Tony Awards, audiences have become ''slightly more diverse over the past decade.'' Blacks, Latinos and Asians made up the balance. In the 2008-2009 season, when shows included In the Heights, Rent, Thurgood and Joe Turner's Come and Gone and the all-black version of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, less than 3 percent of 12.15 million tickets sold were to black Broadway theatergoers. In recent years, when the lineup included the Oprah Winfrey-produced The Color Purple and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof--starring James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Terrence Howard and Anika Noni Rose and directed by Debbie Allen--black turnout was double that. (There was some overlap between seasons with Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.) The overall gross annual revenue is something like $700 million--even in these dire and confused economic times.
DWL’s at The Los Angeles Times had the temerity to question whether white people should direct Black plays and if Black people should direct white plays:
Randolph-Wright and Epps are among the relatively few African American theater artists who have had the chance to direct major productions of nonblack plays, including Molière, Shakespeare, Stoppard, Noel Coward, Ibsen and more. Both have also worked in television; Epps directed many episodes of "Frasier" and "Friends." And yet, despite their personal successes, they both perceive a systemic ill.
"The problem is, there is no balance," says Randolph-Wright, who appeared in the original Broadway version of "Dreamgirls" before turning to writing and directing. "I don't think by any means that Bart Sher can't direct an August Wilson play or any kind of play. But people of color don't get the reverse opportunity."
Penn says that among SDC rank and file, "most didn't begrudge Bart the opportunity. The conversation was about Wilson having been for so long something African American directors could count on and that there should be more access and opportunities for artists of color." Penn was formerly the managing director of the Intiman Theater in Seattle, where she worked with artistic director Sher. During their years working together there, the Intiman, like Pasadena, successfully mixed it up in terms of assignments, with white directors directing nonwhite works and vice versa.
Yet because opportunities that have traditionally gone to black directors -- such as Wilson's plays -- may now be open to directors of any color is of concern to Randolph-Wright. "There was not one black director on Broadway last season," he notes. "And the frightening thing now is, I'm not even going to get the black project."
Classical music is another avenue that Black people believe is a path that leads directly to white people, and thus a corridor that must be avoided:
For some Americans, Barack Obama’s election was the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of equal racial opportunity. Others, less starry-eyed, knew there’s still work to do. Nowhere is that point more obvious than in a typical symphony orchestra.
Like the Sunday morning church service, the Sunday afternoon concert is basically segregated by race, allegedly for similar reasons— black (and brown) people don’t like classical music, and that’s why we don’t patronize it, never mind perform it. So goes the theory, which once believed becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even if it’s fallacious.
I speak from experience. In Western Canada, where I grew up, people of African descent comprised such a tiny minority that we greeted each other with a smile or a nod as a show of solidarity and an acknowledgement that our shared melanin meant we were collectively swimming against the prevailing tide. My siblings and I were always the only black people in our class when we competed in local music festivals— it was just a given.
Nor can this situation be dismissed as a western Canadian phenomenon. Since my graduation from Juilliard in 1993, I’m told, that elite music school hasn’t enrolled a single black female pianist.
All humans are aware, from an early age, of visual differences. When you’re constantly identified as “them,” you yearn to be part of “us”; and when you’re black, the virulent history associated with racism stalks you, regardless of your financial bracket and education. I’m constantly aware that, as a black woman with unprocessed hair, I’m not what comes to mind when most people think of a classical pianist.
Whenever I attend a classical concert, I know I’ll be in a very small minority. I accept this fact of life; but for others, that degree of conspicuousness may suffice to deter them from attending at all (even if most of the whites in the audience couldn’t care less if we’re there or not).
All the more reason, then, to salute Jeri Lynne Johnson, a Philadelphian who has challenged conventional wisdom.
Rejected as ‘unmarketable’
Johnson, formerly the assistant conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, founded the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in 2008 after the selection committee of an American orchestra told her that it didn’t matter that she was good enough to be one of three finalists out of a group of 300 applicants— as a young, black female conductor, the search committee said, she’s unmarketable to their audience. Instead of accepting this assessment, Johnson decided to disprove that theory by uniting a diverse group of passionate musicians.
“I never thought of starting an orchestra as ambitious,” she told me. “It was just something that needed to be done in order to prove my point.”
So far, Johnson’s goals are being met and more. Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra has played to large audiences and received enthusiastic reviews.
Top-flight musicians, a strong business plan and efficient administration have helped, of course. But the key factor appears to be Johnson’s decision to market to audiences largely ignored by other orchestras: African- and Latin-American people.
You see, the activities listed above are all actions that if a Black person participated in would qualify them as Acting White. Accordingly, they would be the Token Black.
No matter how poorly they are received, Disingenuous White Liberals and Crusading White Pedagogues have an ingrained notion of hegemony over Black people and earnestly believe they can remake the entire race in their own image if only Black people would capitulate to their superior culture.
Yet Black people reject white culture by refusing to participate in events that are insufficiently part of their shared cultural experience as departing from their culture means acquiescence to the mores peddled by DWLs and white teachers.
Black people want to participate in Black cultural events and traditions that glorify their shared commonality and the struggle that they have endured at the hands of white people.
Liberals trying to get them to embrace the cultural that enslaved them for so long through enjoyment of classical music, ballet, the opera and Broadway fail to understand that Black people want nothing to do with these “white” forms of entertainment for they are part of the cultural history of a people they find intolerable.
Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the fine arts, for unless Black people have written, produced, directed and starred in any of these various disciplines then it is axiomatic that the aforementioned endeavor is a celebration of white people and their past.
For this village, even were it incomparably more remote and incredibly more primitive, is the West, the West onto which I have been so strangely grafted. These people cannot be, from the point of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have made the modem world, in effect, even if they do not know it. The most illiterate among them is related, in away that I am not, to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed would New York's Empire State Building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of their hymns and dances come Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they are in their full glory-but I am in Africa, watching the conquerors arrive.
