#176. The Reality of Jefferson County

Sweet home Alabama. Where the skies are so blue, and Black people control Jefferson County too.

Named for Thomas Jefferson, the most populated county in Alabama is home to a thriving Black people led-local government that has helped see - in 10 short years - the exodus of five Fortune 500 company headquarters from Birmingham:

"There was a time when Birmingham - at least by one measure of corporate muscle - ranked up there with Los Angeles and Boston.

That was in April 1999, just 10 years ago, when Birmingham was home to six companies in the Fortune 500, the list of the largest corporations in the country, ranked by revenue.

Now, the Magic City has just one member, Regions Financial Corp., which is hanging on to its 280th spot after a rough year that included a $6.2 billion fourth-quarter loss. Los Angeles has added a member since 1999, while Boston's tally has remained level. Meanwhile, another landmark Birmingham business - Bruno's Supermarkets LLC, a member of the elite Fortune roster in the mid-1990s - is in the process of disappearing after the 75-year-old chain's assets were auctioned in U.S. Bankruptcy Court."

Jefferson County is 58 percent white and Black people comprise 39 percent of the county, as they are largely situated in the core of the Birmingham, with white flight encircling the minority-ruled city in such white cities as Hoover, Vestiva Hills and Mountain Brook.

Black people have found the suburbs of Birmingham not conducive to their needs and have decided to stay within the eroding city walls of downtown Birmingham. There, Black people have helped Alabama climb to # 13 in the United States for worst crime rate with much of that crime taking place in Birmingham:

"The overall crime rate in Birmingham for 2007 (10,108.9 per 100,000) is more than twice the state average (4,206.3 per 100,000). The violent crime rate per 100,000 is almost 3.5 times the state average, and the property rate per 100,000 is 1.9 times the state average. The average clearance rate is below the state average. Indeed, the only clearance rate above the state average is for robberies."

Birmingham and its Black leaders can take solace in the fact that in the football crazed state,they are ranked th 11th most violent city in America, and #5 in murders per capita, in 2008.

This violence and dearth of major corporations led the annual Iron Bowl football game between Auburn University and the University of Alabama to leave Legion Field in 1998 - where they had played almost every since the 1950s - and back to the whiter and safer college campuses in Tuscaloosa and Auburn.

The area around Legion Field is incredibly unsafe and populated entirely with Black people, so officials from Auburn and Alabama moved the game - which brought an incredible economic boost to the former Magic City - for their alumni and fans safety.

Birmingham's City Council and Mayor Larry Langford - Birmingham is 73 percent Black and 25 percent white - have inherited a leaky sewer situation that threatens to bankrupt the city and with it, Jefferson County: a $3. 2 Billion sewer debt.

Worse than the $3.2 Billion sewer debt, is the fact Jefferson County is insolvent:

"A budget crisis is forcing Alabama's Jefferson County to push negotiations over its multibillion dollar debt onto the back burner even though the mounting payments due could drag the county into bankruptcy.

"If Jefferson County goes bust it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, but the pressure of coping with sharply falling revenue has reduced the priority of talks on how to reschedule the debt, county commissioners said.

"In the latest sign of financial turmoil, Jefferson County announced on Wednesday it would put roughly 1,000 employees, out of 3,200 total, on administrative leave without pay by August 1 in a bid to save money.Our immediate crisis is being able to provide services and keep people employed. That's the No. 1 crisis here in this community. The sewer crisis has taken a back seat," said county commissioner Sheila Smoot."

Why is there a sewer crisis and why is Birmingham directly leading Jefferson County into the problematic waters of the largest potential municipal bankruptcy in US history?

It's a convoluted story, but when you get down to the meat of the story, it unfortunately looks very Black.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the reality of Jefferson County, Alabama, for a city that was once the jewel of the South and is now the sewage of the South has helped bring a once thriving county to the verge of the bankruptcy.

White people fled Birmingham, as did five Fortune 500 companies. Black people rejoiced in having the city to themselves, much like Clayton County, Georgia and Detroit. Thus far, the results haven't been what Black people would expect them to be, as the largest bankruptcy in US municipal history is on the verge of fruition, thanks to Black people.

#91. Foreign Beer

All races on earth have found beer to be one of God's many blessings ( with apologies to our Mormon friends, who refuse to drink for admirable, moral reasons) and few racial groups enjoy alcoholic libations like Black people.

What's most interesting about Black people's love of beer and other alcoholic beverages is that, according to Wikipedia, the ccontinent of Africa and it's inhabitants never invented nor created any alcoholic drinks, unless they were in contact with practitioners of Islam, the Egyptians or the evil Europeans that might have left a barrel or two of inebriates behind.

You see, Black people have never actually invented nor accidentally discovered alcohol. They consume it in large quantities, but were it not for European people, Barack Obama, Henry Gates and James Crowley would have been consuming another beverage at their peace summit.

And one man Black person, Alabama state Representative Alvin Holmes (a Democrat from Montgomery), has a desire to keep all foreign beer out of the state of Alabama.

In Alabama, beer can only be sold if it contains less than six percent alcohol. A bill was proposed that would raise "...legal limit on the alcohol content of beer in the state. Last year, a legislator proposed raising that limit to 13.9 percent, thus permitting the sale of craft beers."

Mr. Holmes found the proposal to be worth his oratory skills and with his elocutionary prowess, asked:

“What’s wrong with the beer we got? I mean, the beer we got drink pretty good, don’t it? I ain’t never heard nobody complain about the, uh, beer we have. It drink pretty good. Budweiser. What’s the names of some of them other beers?…”

Holmes is an advocate of isolationism when it comes to protecting American brews, and he is incredulous when told that the bill is part of a campaign by Germans. In the video below, you can hear Holmes indignantly ask, "Germany?" (In the second video, go to 5:20 to hear Holmes' statement).

Yes, Mr. Holmes. Germany, the home of some of the finest beer in the world, and also the nation that is the ancestral home of most of the major United States beer companies founders, like Budweiser, Coors and Miller.

The group that sponsored the bill, the Free the Hops Foundation, was left all wet by Holmes' line of questioning and forced to retire to Germany, as Holmes and his protectionist policies left Alabama residents deprived of foreign beer

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes foreign beer, especially in the case of Mr. Holmes, but in the case of all Black people and their palates, for any form of alcohol is foreign to them. Never was alcohol created by Black people, so each sip they take reminds them of yet another foreign substance that someone else created.

#677. The End of "Knowing"

Movies are one of Black people's favorite forms of entertainment. Films like Soul Plane and Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood have long been some of Black people's favorite cinematic treats.

However, a recent Nicholas Cage movie left Black people wondering if Leni Riefenstahl had directed the film posthumously. The science-fiction film, Knowing, grossed more than $175 million worldwide and was a moderate success during its theatrical release in 2009, in America.

It might have been a bigger hit, had the trailers for the film been more forthcoming about the plot, as Nicholas Cage - whose hairline continues to change in each film - plays an MIT professor who uncovers a 50-year-old numerical sequence that has correctly forecast major disasters:

IMDB.com describes the plot this way:

"When John (played by Cage) was looking at the numbers, he quickly realized that it was some type of code that predicted the month, date and year of a specific disaster, and how many people died in that particular disaster. After witnessing a plane crash at Logan International Airport, and saving people from a freak New York Subway accident, John realizes that the last disaster on the code is the end of the world when one of the Sun's solar flares will scorch the Earth."

So it's another end of the world flick, and like in so many movies before it, Black people don't get a chance to save the world from solar flares. In fact, they barely are even seen in the film at all.

What makes this film so incredible and yet, so offensive to Black people - and perhaps all non-whites - is the ending of the film. For, like in Nordic mythology, the end of the world is met with fire, complete destruction and yet, a re-birth of Nordic life. A Ragnarök that seems alien to Black people.

Throughout Knowing, strange Blond hair, blue eyed people help the son of Cage's character and in the end, these angelic people turn out to be the savior of mankind, or perhaps only European-kind, as they are aliens that take two white children (one being Cage's character) to another planet. There, they avoid the destruction of earth and the film ends with the white children (one boy and one girl) running in fields of gold (perhaps the Elysium field's).

As the world is about to consumed by fire, Cage's character in the film reunites with his father, who tells him, "This isn't the end son," to which he replies, "I know."

Prior to making it to his parent's home though, he traverses through Boston and New York City, where mobs of people are looting the cities as anarchy reigns. Interesting, Beethoven's 7th Symphony Major, 2nd Movement - Allegretto in A Minor" is playing as he makes his way throughout he cities, a stark contrast to the savagery outside the windows of his car and the beauty within.

Classical music ( a future inclusion to the growing list of SBPDL) accompanying the end of the world is just to much for Black people, especially one in which angels or aliens only saved white children.

What's more is after the white children are safe from the fiery remnants of earth, they run toward a magnificent white tree. Accompanied by two white rabbits - a sign of fecundity - the white children are prepared to rebuild a world that the movie stated, unequivocally, that needed "a cleansing". That's how Knowing ends... and it was made in 2009.

Below, you can watch the last few minutes of the film, including the part of the movie that Black people found so offensive. For a world without Black people would never function properly, as entertainment would be but a mesh of whiteness.

Knowing, directed by Alex Proyas (who also directed the fantastic movies The Crow and Dark City), has been put on notice. The world in his latest film was destroyed, not even saved by Black people, but was afforded a re-birth where white children, headed toward a white tree, accompanied by white rabbits are to re-build civilization.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Knowing, because this film shows that angels (or aliens) would only chose white children to re-build a world, and give them a pure Nordic mythological paradise to do it in, and yet, Black people are forced to endure the destruction of earth.

In the new world to come, the aliens (or angels) of Knowing decree that Black people serve no fucntion, and leave them behind to fires of the solar flares. The film is racist, and SBPDL has yet another entry.

(NOTE: YOUTUBE has to take down this ending a lot, due to copyright, so please check out the movie yourself and come to your own conclusions)

#209. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour

Black people know humor. Pop in the DVD of Coming to America for a Black person, and you'll have them hooked for the next two hours and in a deep, humor induced trance of epic proportions.

The lineage of humor in the Black community stretches back to the the early slave narrative, when one Black slave would entertain the others, behind their masters back - as depicted in the movie Life - and can be seen at full display in the Richard Pryor sketches of the 70s, the Eddie Murphy SNL skits and the subesquent movies he would make in the 1980s.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence filled the void when Eddie Murphy made horrible movie decisions in the 1990s, and then came Chris Tucker and his role in Friday, and the subsequent Rush Hour franchise.

You might say that Black people now have the ultimate funny-man entertaining them exclusively, as Tyler Perry and his TBS shows and movies - that usually star him in drag - have become all the rage in the Black community. It is hard to find a white person who actually has seen a Tyler Perry movie or show, but Black people incorporate his programs and movies into their daily diet of Sprite and BET.

Black people find Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle funny, but our uncomfortable with some of their performances in the past, which Black people justly believe help to perpetuate negative Black stereotypes. Rock and Chappelle, though Black, fail to be Black enough in their comedy, as the only positive symbol of comedy in the Black community is making fun of whitey, not pointing out the problems that plague the Black community - which mainly consist of Blacks themselves.

However, one form of comedy Black people find offensive, if not downright irritating, is the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Comedy Central's white answer to the Black phenomenons known as Def Comedy Jam and The Kings of Comedy.

Black people find the Blue Collar Comedy Tour a form of kryptonite, and like when Black people hear classical music, run in the opposite direction or quickly change the channel anytime Black people are exposed to the vile message that the four white guys who contribute to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour spew.

Those four white guys include the uber-redneck jokester Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall and Ron White. Combined, this fearsome foursome - to Black people - crack jokes about middle America, the South, rednecks and everyday mishaps. The bulk of the jokes revolve around lower-class white people and their ways, but all white people find the Blue Collar Comedy Tour funny, even if they wear white collars to work.

Black people don't like this one bit. Anytime white people show racial solidarity, as Black people did when voting 96 percent for Mein Obama in 2008's presidential election, Black people are uneasy and smell the pungent odor of racism.

When four white comics come together, under the "accusations-of-racism" force-field, known as the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Black people are weaponless and are deprived of name-calling - their equivalent of a nuclear weapon in the on-going war against white people that they are waging.

The Blue Collar Comedy Tour is seen as a revival of sorts by Black people, where white people come together for humor and conviviality. Never is negative word spoken of Black people, but the paranoid nature of Black people leads them to believe anytime white people congregate together, a lynch mob isn't far from forming.

The only jokes delivered at the Blue Collar Comedy Tour consist of "You might be a redneck if....", or "Get er done". No jokes at Black people's expense, just jokes at white people's expense.

Stuff Black People Don't Like will always include the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, because four white guys cracking jokes to an entirely white audience is too much whiteness for Black people to handle. And even though the jokes aren't racial in nature, white people laughing and having fun without the help of any Black people is seen as a major offense to all Black people, for they are the ultimate form of entertainment.

Even though it's called the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Black people still see it as the White Comedy Tour, a title they would never, ever allow.