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
I'm working on a theory about over-saturation of Black people in sports (NBA and NFL) and the repudiation of Black people by those consuming other forms of entertainment (comics/graphic novels, movies and television, professional wrestling, video games, enjoying the outdoors, skiing, the beach, etc).
People are under the impression that sports equal a meritocracy (which it is not: just ask Peyton Hillis) and that the athletes in the NFL, NBA and at major colleges represent the best available. Though college athletes might not be best students -- and could cost a coach his job for their academic failures -- the perception that Blacks are the best athletes available require a toleration of their off-field antics.
This is one of the reasons why the uproar over Thor has upset a large segment of the population desiring the creation of a new Black phenomenon in pop culture.
Idris Elba -- whose last film Obsessed was a huge hit among Black people -- has been cast as Heimdall in the upcoming Marvel film Thor and he finds those who question a Nubian playing a Nordic God to be idiots:
"It's so ridiculous," Idris Elba says of Web sites that criticize his ability to play "the whitest of the gods."
When Kenneth Branagh cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in the upcoming summer tentpole Thor, a furious debate erupted among fanboys, with some insisting it was wrong for a black man to play a Nordic god often described as "the whitest of the gods." Fumed one fan in an online foum: "This PC crap has gone too far! Norse deities are not of an African ethnicity! … It's the principle of the matter. It's about respecting the integrity of the source material, both comics and Norse mythologies."
But the London-born actor (who starred as Stringer Bell in HBO's The Wire; his 2009 film, Obsessed, grossed $68 million domestically) has no patience for the debate.
"It's so ridiculous," he said Feb. 24 at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J.
"We have a man [Thor] who has a flying hammer and wears horns on his head. And yet me being an actor of African descent playing a Norse god is unbelievable?" he went on. "I mean, Cleopatra was played by Elizabeth Taylor, and Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley."
Beyond that artistic defense, though, there is an even more basic reason black actors welcome colorblind casting: There is a ceiling on the amount of business black-themed movies can achieve, so the opportunities for black actors and actresses remain limited unless they can also claim parts in mainstream entertainment.
In the past decade, black actors have been losing ground. In the early 2000s, blacks played 15 percent of roles in film and TV. Today, it has fallen to 13 percent, according to Screen Actors Guild stats.
This past Academy Awards lacked any Black actors, actresses, directors, set designers, costume designers, composer's, illustrators, etc., even nominated for an award.
We have reached a point where white consumers of sports have been conditioned to believe the only legitimate sports are football and basketball -- because Blacks excel at them -- and sports lacking Black involvement are somehow tainted (see baseball).
Paradoxically, by every conceivable metric consumers spurn Black people in entertainment that doesn't include NFL or NBA stars. Black musical acts might sell on iTunes and zoom up the Billboard charts, but concert goers seem infatuated with white acts.
You have to laugh that the only way to get a Black actor into a comic book is to hypocritically cast him as the "whitest of the Gods."
I'm sure Hollywood expected no one to notice the casting of a Black guy as a Nordic God, but they did. That people laugh when Afro-centrists claim that Cleopatra was Black -- sorry to burst your bubble Elba, but she wasn't -- is upsetting to Black people desirous of creating myths that are inherently unbelievable.
That the only positive images of Black people come from sports is interesting especially when you realize consumers of popular culture, entertainment, and the activities they seek out for fun and recreation have insignificant and only token Black representation.
Does the over-saturation of Black people in sports make consumers uninterested in watching movies and television shows with Black actors and actresses? Why don't consumers of comics books read Black books? Why don't Black wrestlers attract support in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)? White guys tolerate rap and hip-hop because white girls like to dance to it, and this fad will ultimately pass. Then again, why is Journey so popular?
Michael Jackson famously bleached his skin in an all out effort to become white; had plastic surgery to replace his God-given looks with features that esthetically would be deemed white; and had his hair straightened in an attempt to undo nature, replicating the same techniques that millions of other Black people employ.
Though he ran away from his Black roots his entire life (attempting to have the outward appearance of a white person in the process), Jackson found a precious moment to acknowledge them with the 1992 music video to his song Remember the Time:
Black people have long found Ancient Egypt a fascinating subject and source of pride, because Egypt is in Africa and logically must be an African nation. Just like the Black people populating Michael Jackson’s music video (an interview from Jet magazine with Michael Jackson about the music video can be found here), the Ancient Egyptians were Black people, and the intriguing erections that jettison into the barren desert are a constant reminder of the past glories of a people long since gone.
Those who believe some long dead ancient race built the pyramids are mistaken, as the long-standing monuments that still deliver awe-inspired looks of astonishment upon the faces who them in person were built by Black people.
Aliens had nothing to do with assembling and constructing the stones that comprise the pyramids or any of the trappings that make Ancient Egypt so intriguing and exotic. It was Black people.
Now, the question of where these intellectually-gifted and architecturally-minded geniuses drifted to is a question most Black people never pose nor consider answering: only the celebration of a long-dead civilization that has the geographic advantage of being on the African continent – thus making it Black in origin – is allowed.
In the seminal book, Not Out of Africa, the author provides mountains of evidence – all sourced – that helps to dynamite intellectually bankrupt ideas regarding Ancient Egypt that have spread throughout intellectual circles and infested the Ivory Halls of academia like Credit Default Swaps did in the 2008 financial markets:
Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities.
Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves a radical departure from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend his position by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence from the instructors who claimed that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.
Normally, if one has a question about a text that another instructor is using, one simply asks why he or she is using that book. But since this conventional line of inquiry was closed to me, I had to wait till I could raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February 1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley's Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a "distinguished Egyptologist," and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then President of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.
After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians. But others stayed to hear me out, and I assured Dr. ben-Jochannan that I simply wanted to know what his evidence was: so far as I knew, and I had studied the subject, Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly only built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle's and Alexander's deaths.
Black people profess a belief in Afrocentrism, the belief that all that is good and great in the world comes from the supple and capable hands of Black people and that all evil and maliciousness is the hallmark of white hands only. The existence of Ancient Egypt as a Black civilization rests at the pinnacle of the theory of Afrocentrism, and no matter what scientific discoveries might uncover, Black people cling to the idyllic and romantic notion of a long-lost advanced society that was distinctly Black.
Michael Jackson’s music video provided all the evidence Black people needed to support the supposition that Ancient Egypt was Black, and should have closed the lid on such a superfluous argument once and for all.
Angelina Jolie is one of the most beautiful women in the world, but her "perfect" looks have some critics complaining she's all wrong for her latest role.
Earlier this month producer Scott Rudin got the Internet buzzing with his announcement that he was developing a Cleopatra biopic "for and with Jolie" based on Stacy Schiff's book "Cleopatra: A Life."
Schiff raved about the choice, telling USA Today, "Physically, she's the perfect look."
But some members of the African American community beg to differ -- they are outraged by the casting decision and say Jolie is "too white" to play the Egyptian Queen.
"I don't care how full Angelina Jolie's lips are, how many African children she adopts, or how bronzed her skin will become for the film," Shirea Carrollwrote in an editorial for Essence.com.
"I firmly believe this role should have gone to a Black woman...What's next? A biopic on Sojourner Truth played by Betty White?"
This isn't the first time Jolie has found herself at the center of a debate about race in Hollywood.
In 2007, she sparked serious controversy when she wore tinted make-up to play the role of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's wife Marian, who is partly of African descent. Pearl herself took to the press to defend Jolie, telling Time Magazine, "It is not about the color of your skin. It is about who you are."
While experts can't say with certainty what Cleopatra looked like, physically speaking, Jolie is probably not the most historically accurate choice. For starters, she's probably too tall, beautiful and skinny, according to what historians now know.
"Sadly for those who seek the secret of her personal allure, the more we study Cleopatra's surviving images, the less certain we may be of her [allegedly gorgeous] looks," Susan Walker, a senior curator at the British Museum, told the British Sunday Times.
In fact, according to ABC News, Egyptologists insist that the legendary temptress, known for having used her beauty to seduce Roman Emperor Julius Caesar and general Mark Anthony, was actually "short, fat and plain."
Black people being forced to suffer the indignity of watching a film that contradicts the Michael Jackson music video Remember the Time and the learned teachings of Afrocentrism is a horrendous offense that no amount of Black actors being cast as Nordic Gods can bring atonement too.
A pyramid can be found in the great Black city of Memphis, Tennessee… exactly as pyramids can be found in the great ancient Black civilization of Egypt. That should be all the evidence necessary to warrant Black people’s claim that Ancient Egypt was a Black civilization and that Jolie should thus be barred from portraying Cleopatra.
A land of eternal mystery, Ancient Egypt is a Black civilization that has been lost to the sands of time and the memory of this Nubian land is corrupted by nefarious white people bent on removing any shred of evidence that connects Black people to their rightful heritage:
This "celebration" marked the high-water mark of Afrocentrism, a movement that had begun in the academy in the 1980s and gained astonishing momentum with the publication of Martin Bernal's "Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization" (1989). According to various Afrocentric books and popular assertions, ancient Egypt invaded ancient Greece, Plato and Herodotus somehow picked up their ideas in travels along the Nile, and Aristotle stole his philosophy from the library at Alexandria. Though the arguments were contradictory and scattered, the point was that Western civilization had been founded on materials and discoveries borrowed or stolen from black Egyptians.
During this whirlwind of dubious scholarship, the academic world mostly remained mum, hiding behind the curtain of academic freedom and withholding its criticism lest a statement of simple truth be branded "racist." For a 1991 column in U.S. News & World Report, I phoned seven Egyptologists and asked whether the ancient Egyptian population had been "black." Of course not, they all responded, but not for attribution, since, as one said, "this subject is just too hot."
Truth is no ally of those who desire to win a debate with one who promotes theories populated with Afrocentrism.
Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes Angelina Jolie portraying Cleopatra, a casting move that contradicts the historical reality of Ancient Egypt and dares to question the validity of Michael Jackson’s most important contribution to contemporary Black history.
Remember the Time? Attempts to Black-wash Egyptian history fail historical reality, as the attempts to white-wash Michael Jackson’s body in life finally helped bring about his untimely demise.
In the history of cinema, movies that garner a sequel enter a rarefied class of distinction of classification, for the artist merit or the profit margin of the first film was enough to green light a continuation of the story.
However, those film sagas that are worthy of a second sequel enter into a wing of movie history usually reserved for historic, cultural and paradigm shifting works of art. Back to the Future, The Matrix, The Godfather, Scream, Superman, Stars Wars IV - VI and I - III, Indiana Jones (the fourth film was but a bad dream), Die Hard and Terminator are films with countless fans and cinematic endeavors that have been the inspiration of many writers who have gone on to produce films and television shows of their own.
One trilogy stands above the rest, however, as the absolute zenith of movie production, script writing and character development all rolled into three films that someone the American Film Institute (AFI) failed to recall when they devised the list of 100 Best Films of All-Time.
House Party and the subsequent sequels that were launched from the original film in 1990 stand as the ultimate manifestation of movie making magic multiplied magnificently, mellifluously mismanaged and malevolently misplaced off the list of AFI top films.
House Party has been overlooked for far too long, as this trilogy helped the methodical march of rap music into the hearts and minds of white people everywhere, facilitating the greatest transfer of wealth from suburban white kids to ghetto-dwelling Black people's bank accounts.
Without white kids purchasing Black rappers cassettes and CDs, multimillionaire rappers wouldn't be possible.
Thus, House Party as the trilogy of supreme importance can't be overlooked. What exactly is the film about, to the uninitiated?:
The film was written and directed by Reginald Hudlin, based on his Harvard University film school thesis. House Party debuted at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won two awards in the Dramatic category: the Filmmakers Trophy and the Excellence in Cinematography Award. The film grossed $26,385,627 in its run at the box office with its widest release being 700 theaters.
Young Kid has been invited to a party at his friend Play's house. But after a fight at school, Kid's father grounds him. None the less, Kid sneaks out when his father falls asleep. But Kid doesn't know that three of the thugs at school has decided to give him a lesson in behaviour...
Let SBPDL make an important here. The first House Party is actually quite funny. The sequels, despite the importance of the trilogy for helping eradicate Pre-Obama America, lack the originality and hilarity of the first film.
Fictional Black History Month, however, finds one character so over-the-top and profoundly militant in her demands of equality and an end to the Euro-centric world that created the very opportunities she denounces vehemently that we found it paramount to bring attention to her.
Played by the purported CoverGirl Queen Latifah, the character of Zora in House Party 2 is a dashiki-wearing feminist majoring in African studies. The film takes place at a university and the looming threat of the impending shutdown of the improperly named Ethnic Studies discipline leaves the Black students, led by the bellicose Zora, upset and in the mood to protest such an academic outrage of depriving minority students in education in fictional field of Blackness.
As the Black students gather to protest the absurd notion of cutting financially untenable courses and majors that would put the schools budget in the black, Zora goes into a full-fledged rant and then, decides to rap about the horror of ending (starting at the 9:02 mark of the video) ethnic studies that exist to merely perpetuate hatred of the majority population and find students capable of becoming professors at other college ethnic study programs.
A fictional Black History Month Hero we have in Zora, for Black people in real life find it more important to engage in silent sit-ins then resorting to improvised, extemporaneous raps that get across the point of Euro-centric evil:
Dressed in black with masks covering their mouths, students from the black community throughout the campus set out yesterday to address current racial tensions at UC Berkeley and throughout the UC system.
About 200 people participated in a silent demonstration at Sather Gate, which began at 11:30 a.m. At 2 p.m., the group moved to California Hall to deliver a letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau-who was off campus-detailing incidents that occurred in the last 10 years in the campus community that they said are comparable to recent incidents at UC San Diego, where blacks have been targeted for mockery.
Movies give us the fantastical and fill us with hopeful images of what could be, but offer us a glimpse at what fictional Black History Month Heroes could be like in real life.
Stuff Black People Don't Like welcomes Zora from House Party 2 to the never ending festivities that are fictional Black History Month. Who would ever believe that one day the individual portraying Zora - Queen Latifah - would go on to become a CoverGirl model though, which does make SBPDL believe that anything is possible.
But seriously, if only one Zora existed in real-life, Black people could coerce white people to accept any demand that make. Any.
White people will willingly acquiesce to any demand made of them by Black students, lest they desire to be branded a bigot unconcerned with helping disadvantaged people. Reasonable, unreasonable, outlandish or farcical scarcely matter, as long as it is Black people protesting.
