Black Criminal – White Criminal…How the MSM Portrays

When a black person commits a crime -obviously they are depraved.

When a white person commits exactly the same crime…They are “misunderstood”.

TV is full of white criminal “masterminds”…The real world tells quite a different story,

How are white folks programmed to hate? A daily diet of racist stereotypes in the media.

Things really haven’t changed much since “Giant Negroes” roamed American cities.

When The Media Treat White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims

News outlets continue a rich tradition of racially biased coverage.

On the afternoon of Aug. 9, 2014, a police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. Eyewitnesses said Brown was compliant with police and was shot while he was running away. Police maintained that the 18-year-old had assaulted an officer and was reaching for the officer’s gun. One clear thing, however, is that Brown’s death followed a disturbingly common trend of black men being killed, often while unarmed and at the hands of police officers, security guards and vigilantes.

After news of Brown’s death broke, media-watchers carefully followed the narratives that news outlets began crafting about the teenager and the incident that claimed his life. Wary of the controversy surrounding the media’s depiction of Trayvon Martin — the Florida teen killed in a high-profile case that led to the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman — people on Twitter wondered, “If they gunned me down, which picture would they use?” Using the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, users posted side-by-side photos, demonstrating the power that news outlets wield in portraying victims based on images they select.

Days later, a Twitter user tweeted out a photo driving home another point: Media treatment of black victims is often harsher than it is of whites suspected of crimes, including murder.

View image on Twitter

This is by no means standard media protocol, but it happens frequently, deliberately or not. News reports often headline claims from police or other officials that appear unsympathetic or dismissive of black victims. Other times, the headlines seem to suggest black victims are to blame for their own deaths, engaging in what critics sometimes allege is a form of character assassination.

When contrasted with media portrayal of white suspects and accused murderers, the differences are more striking. News outlets often choose to run headlines that exhibit an air of disbelief at an alleged white killer’s supposed actions. Sometimes, they appear to go out of their way to boost the suspect’s character, carrying quotes from relatives or acquaintances that often paint even alleged murderers in a positive light.

Here are a few examples: 

WHITE SUSPECT

That’s how the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal chose to present the story of Amy Bishop, a former college professor who eventually pleaded guilty to killing three colleagues and wounding three others at a faculty meeting in 2010.

 

BLACK VICTIM

And that’s the headline AL.com ran about the shooting death of a 25-year-old black man in Alabama in 2014.

 

WHITE SUSPECT

This is how the Staten Island Advance covered the case of Eric Bellucci, a mentally ill New York man who allegedly killed his parents.

 

BLACK VICTIM

Meanwhile, NBC News ran this headline during ongoing coverage of the Trayvon Martin killing in 2013.

 

WHITE SUSPECT

This Fox News headline quoted friends shocked that 15-year-old Jared Michael Padgett had entered his high school in 2014 heavily armed and killed a classmate, injured a teacher and taken his own life.

 

BLACK VICTIM

But in Florida, this headline in the Ledger focused on a police account that made the death of a black 19-year-old seem somehow expected, or at least unsurprising.

 

WHITE SUSPECT

In the wake of the mass shooting in Santa Barbara, California, in 2014, the Whittier Daily News offered a headline showing one man’s disbelief that Elliot Rodger could have committed such a crime.

 

BLACK VICTIM

In August 2014, the New York Daily News ran this headline, carrying comments by the Ohio attorney general that appeared to defend police after killing a black man at a Walmart.

 

WHITE SUSPECT

This was the headline given to an Associated Press story at Mlive.com about an Ohio teen who later pleaded guilty to a school shooting in which three students were killed and two were wounded.

 

BLACK VICTIM

But when an unarmed father of two was killed by a police officer while entering a vehicle that contained his own children, the Los Angeles Times served up this claim from officials.

 

WHITE SUSPECT

In 2008, 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger was accused of plotting to bomb his South Carolina high school. Ohio’s Chronicle Telegram wanted readers to know that he was a straight-A student, running an AP story with this headline.

 

BLACK VICTIM

And according to the Omaha World-Herald, this is what you needed to know about Julius B. Vaughn, a 19-year-old gunned down in Omaha in 2013.

 

WHITE SUSPECT

Kerri Ann Heffernan was charged in 2012 in a string of bank robberies and stores. This headline at Wicked Local wonders how she’d come so far from her days as a smart high school student.

 

BLACK VICTIM

Of 22-year-old black man Deon Sanders’ killing in Ohio in 2014, WKBN’s headline said “gang member,” and that apparently was enough.

 

The Well Dressed Man Makes a Comeback

In the area that I lived in growing up, the system for integrating schools started the first few years at the Elementary and Middle School level. I was one of the first black males to attend an “integrated” Junior High School (7th and 8th Grades) in my county.There were a whopping 2 black boys and 5 black girls that first year in a school of 1800.

My father took me out “shopping” before the first class, and purchased for me 5 white shirts, and several ties. My Dad was known by friends and family for always wearing crisp white shirts,a tie, and a suit to work every day. He was a strong believer in looking respectable to be respected.

Every morning he would check me to make sure I had my “uniform” on before school. Heaven help me if I stopped by on the way home for a game of baseball with the other kids in the neighborhood and got my clothes dirty!

As we got to know each other better, some of the white kids would tease me about always wearing a tie to school – and being the “best dressed” kid in Junior High. They would ask why I always wore a white shirt and tie – I just passed it off as a “Dad thing”.

I found later in the business world that how people perceived you, and how well your initial introductions went depended highly on how well you were dressed. A Sales guy in the company I worked for at the time taught me to always dress one cut above the client, and that the perception of being successful was just as important as the fact itself.

The goal was to look professional, and as I rose in the ranks, the make, quality, fabric, and cut of your suit and accessories indicated whether you “belonged”.

Look professional…To be professional Glad to see some youngsters have figured this out.

How the Well Dressed Movement Demolished Black Stereotypes

Kwame Phipps looking great at Syracuse University

Three African-American students at Syracuse coincidentally dressed up on the same day, and soon decided to form a movement to combat prejudice sartorially.

I met Kwame Phipps five years ago, at the end of his junior year in high school, through a Harlem-based youth development organization to help him apply to college. He was always neatly dressed and attentive to his grooming. So I am not surprised he would become a founder of the Well Dressed Movement at Syracuse University to promote better dress habits among his peers.

One reason I volunteered to mentor students like Kwame is that media portrayals of young black men have burdened them with numerous disquieting stereotypes. Like many stereotypes people affix to particular groups, they are highly simplistic and often neglect larger societal issues that produce and perpetuate misperceptions. Such perceptions prove harmful to nearly all black men. Young men like Phipps are often overlooked in such generalizations, so he and his friends have taken conscious steps to dispel negative myths.

Phipps, a 2016 Syracuse graduate, and his roommates, Joshua Collins and Elijah Biggins, started the Well Dressed Movement as a direct effort to counter some misperceptions. In 2014, their sophomore year, each had dressed up one day, but Phipps said, “It was random. I had an internship, Josh had a job interview, and Eli had a class presentation.” Unaware each had dressed up, “we left our apartment at different times and met later at the library for a social. Everyone saw us and asked why we were dressed up. We pretended it was intentional and said it was “Well Dressed Wednesday.” From there, they decided to make a Wednesday tradition of dressing up and enlisted their friends to join them.

They began the Well Dressed Movement in the wake of high profile killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, and college campuses were rife with discussion about race. Syracuse was no different. Phipps said there was extensive racist dialogue in online articles in the school newspaper, The Daily Orange, and on Yik Yak, a location-based social media platform popular on college campuses.

“My friends and I are from inner city Philadelphia, Paterson (New Jersey), and New York City,” and they felt the sting of such commentary. Dressing up was a constructive response to address perceptions others might have about them. They took inspiration from earlier black pioneers who tackled social justice issues. The group’s motto, When you look good, you feel good,facilitated engagement with their peers. Their movement took hold and spread to other campuses, including Binghamton, Cornell, Howard, and Pace universities and Utica College, which validated their efforts.

Looking good takes money, however. As budget-conscious millennials, they shopped at H&M, Zara, local thrift stores, and they tracked sale items at Macy’s. It was worth the effort. Phipps said dressing up without a specific purpose elicited positive responses from those with whom he interacted, and it instilled a professional mindset in him.

“Dressing up on campus prepped me for interviews,” he said. “I already had the pieces, so I didn’t have to think about it too much. Because I had already experimented with different combinations, I can put on an outfit and be confident beforehand.”

Practice paid off: While still in school, he had internships and summer jobs at places like the Ford Foundation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington.

Phipps described his style as “trendy with my own personal touch.” A wardrobe necessity for him is “a navy blue suit, because you can dress it up or dress it down. It’s a suit you can match with other pants or jackets.” He added, “You can use it for going out, a job interview, to go to dinner. It’s a good essential to start with.”

 

Detailing with colors and accessories is his personal touch. “I like to incorporate hints of gold, if possible.” When it comes to ties, Phipps said, “I mainly choose neckties, because when you’re dressing up, you have more options. A bow tie is more extravagant and you’re making a statement with one. And not a lot of bow ties go with certain shirt combinations.” A final item for him, the pocket square, which “adds a nice touch to your outfit. You can find a set on Amazon or eBay for $10.” When he’s dressed casually, however, Phipps prefers jeans, Adidas, and Nikes. “I also like classic T-shirts and bomber jackets,” he added….Read the rest here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wRHBLwpASw

 

Exceptionally Stupid Republican

Yeah Buddy, how about a free order of Size 13 up the wazoo!

GOP candidate offers Harlem residents free KFC and watermelon — they offer him ‘a foot in the ass’

A Republican candidate for New York’s state senate is taking heat after he promised to give out free fried chicken and watermelon to people who attended one of his campaign events in Harlem.

NBC 4 New York reports that Jon Girodes, the Republican candidate for New York’s 30th District, told the news station that he planned to hand out “Kool-Aid, KFC and watermelons” to people who attended a Harlem campaign rally in the coming weeks.

Harlem, of course, is a majority black neighborhood, and watermelons and fried chicken are two foods that are used to stereotype black Americans. All the same, Girodes doesn’t think there’s anything offensive about his stunt since people in the neighborhood should be grateful that they’re getting free food.

“What I think is anyone who gives free food to people is doing them a favor,” Girodes told NBC 4 New York’s I-Team. “Get a bunch of people who say it’s offensive and let me go into their neighborhood and give it out for free and see if they take it.”

Harlem residents, for their part, were not flattered by Girodes’s supposedly generous offer.

“It’s racist,” Harlem resident Tyrone Nero told the news station. “Whoever he is, I think he should go back in whatever hole he crawled in and have a great life.”

“It’s more than an insult and anybody with any sense would see that’s pathetically racist and insulting,” said Harlem resident Scott Randolph.

Meanwhile, another resident responded to Girodes’s “donation” of food by offering to “donate various foots in his ass.”

 

Why Conservatives Will Never Win Minority Vote

When your entire basis for an argument is a seines of counterfeit racist stereotypes, wandering in to the La La land of baseless dreams becomes reality.

One more time…It’s the racism, stupid!

This conservative writer draws on the entire list of racist conservative stereotyping drivel, from quoting reliable Uncle Toms like Larry Elder, to “blackwashing” the entire black community with the problems of a small part. Sort of like saying, Dennis Hastert is a convicted child molester. Other Republicans have been convicted of child sexual predation. As such, ALL Republicans are child molesters.

That is conservative racism 101, and the reason 96% of black folks can’t stand to be in the same room as these racist assholes.

Here is an example of a racist conservative trying to delude the Trumpazoids…

How Trump Can Win the Black Vote to Win the Election

In the welter of cable commentary over Donald Trump’s overwhelming victories in the so-called “Acela primary” Tuesday, among the most startling was an aside by CNN’s Van Jones that Trump could win the election if he got just 25% of the black vote. Now this didn’t make the African-American activist who co-founded and is the current president of Dream Corps, a “social justice accelerator,” particularly happy. Nor did or does it please BET’s Tavis Smiley, who has made similar mention of Trump’s possible inroads in the black community. But it’s true.

Donald Trump really could win the general election by being the first Republican in years to gain a significant percentage of the African-American vote. He just has to make a serious and sustained effort, with genuine proposals, to do it. If the attempt is simply self-referential bluster (like bragging about the actually paltry number of Hispanics who voted for him in Nevada) coupled with unspecified pledges of “greatness,” he might as well not bother. It will end up a disheartening misfire that will not only be an insult to his supporters but a continuing — and worsening — wound to our country.

Nevertheless, the auguries for Trump in this area are extremely good, certainly the best in recent years for a Republican,  if he should choose to act upon them. And for the sake of all Americans, he should. In fact, he’d better.

The African-American community is in a miserable condition that has been getting worse for decades and has reached its nadir under Obama — two-parent families disappearing, unemployment rates skyrocketing, incarceration rates catastrophic, drug addiction epidemic. We all look on in despair as gang members shoot children in the streets of Chicago and murders — almost all black-on-black — proliferate in Baltimore after years of decline.

What is to be done about all this? Hillary Clinton will certainly have plenty to say, but it will all be the same old disingenuous bilge. She can’t be part of the solution because she — like the Democratic Party she has served loyally for almost her entire life — is  part of the problem. For reasons of moral narcissism and political expediency, beginning with the Great Society that party has set up a system in black communities that has trapped African-Americans into a non-stop cycle of government dependency, turning them into what talk show host Larry Elder dubbed “victocrats,” believers in perpetual victimhood, a self-fulfilling prophecy, if there ever was one. The #blacklivesmatter movement is only the most recent avatar….Read the rest of this racist drivel here…

 

One Reason Why Opioid Addiction is Higher in White People

In the unfortunate circumstance you have need of a Hospital due to severe injury or illness, your experience may be different based on what you look like. If Mommy and Daddy’s names happen to be on the plaque at the interest listing Founders or Major Donors – you will e staying at the medical equivalent of the Biltmore. If however, you are black and poor – they may still save your behind…Although it probably will be more painful than the well heeled.

Fastest rising drug problem in the US is Opioid addiction. Addiction which in many cases starts out with legally prescribed drugs, and progresses to street drugs like heroin.

Studies over the last 20 years have documented persistent differences in patient treatment by race. Yet another study, implicating that the differential between how blacks and whites are prescribed pain medication, may be responsible at least in part for the massive rise in white addiction.

The Pain Gap: Why Doctors Offer Less Relief to Black Patients

We know the disparity is linked to racial discrimination on some level, but struggle to put our finger on the one cause.

A new University of Virginia study suggests that many medical students and residents are racially biased in their pain assessment, and that their attitudes about race and pain correlate with falsely-held beliefs about supposed biological differences—like black people having thicker skin, or less sensitive nerve endings than white people—more generally.

The study highlights how a confluence of mistaken attitudes—about race, about biology, and about pain—can flourish in one of the worst possible places: medical schools where the future gatekeepers of relief are trained. And it illuminates what I’ve called the divided state of analgesia in America: overtreatment of millions of people that feeds painkiller abuse at the same time that, with far less public attention, millions of others are systematically undertreated. Think of it as a pain gap between the haves and the have-nots, along lines of class and race.

Unfortunately, the UVA findings are neither surprising nor fundamentally new. Back in the 1990s, two studies—one in an Atlanta emergency room, the other in Los Angeles—found that white patients being treated for long bone fractures were dosed more liberally than Latino patients in L.A., and more liberally than black ones in Atlanta. The authors put forward several possible explanations of the disparity: Perhaps patients in different groups expressed pain differently, or maybe caregivers interpreted pain differently in these groups, or perhaps nurses and doctors saw pain the same way across groups but just chose to remedy pain differently.

By the late 1990s, other studies found similar disparities in cancer care, where people receiving outpatient cancer care in places that mostly served minorities were three times more likely to be under-medicated with analgesics than patients in other settings. Speculation about the causes deepened: Perhaps inadequate prescribing for minority patients resulted from concerns about potential drug abuse, or maybe minority patients had more difficulty finding pharmacies that stocked opioid prescriptions, or again perhaps there was a cultural barrier in doctor-patient understanding and assessment. Into the 2000s, additional reports have confirmed the gap—again with no agreement about any single cause.

In a sense, the pain issue echoes other debates about race in America. We know there is a disparity; we know it is linked to racial discrimination somewhere or on some level, or even to institutional racism. But just as in racial bias in the law and policing, we struggle to put our finger on the one cause.

The truth is that there is no single cause for this disparity.

That said, the UVA study turns our gaze to one important place where race problems are manifest—medical training and physician perceptions. Medical students and residents learn precious little about race and social difference; but they also learn little about pain or about the fallacies of biological reasoning (for example, the false ideas apparently held by many in the UVA study that black blood coagulates more quickly than white blood). Given that such erroneous blood differences were once used to justify segregating the blood supply and to argue against racial integration (and that they seemed extinguished decades ago), their reappearance in the UVA study is especially shocking….Read The Rest Here…

 

Louisville A Capella Group Pranks Sterotypes

All is usually not what it seems when people stereotype…

And…

‘Street gang’ carolers teach white suburbanites an amazing Christmas lesson on racial stereotypes

A newly formed black acapella group from Louisville has come up with a novel idea to launch their career by dressing in dark baggy clothing associated with street gangs and then stunning unsuspecting audiences with beautiful renditions of Christmas carols.

As reported by WDRB, the members of Linkin’ Bridge have made appearances all over Louisville — confronting residents in parking structures, banks and in wealthy neighborhoods where they break into song, surprising and delighting the appreciative listeners.

The groups manager, Tom Mabe, had hoped that videos of the group would go viral — and he has been proven right with over 2 million online views.

“You know, I had this prank idea for over a year, and I put on Facebook that I need four or five black guys who can sing their butts off,” Mabe told WDRB. Videos of Linkin’ Bridge can  be found on Mabe’s Facebook page and on one maintained by the group.

In videos seen below, the group wanders up to a home in Louisville’s wealthy Estates of Saratoga Woods, where they stare menacingly at a door that briefly opens and closes before they break into song, drawing out the homeowner. In another video they are confronted by security in a bank before performing Silent Night.

“Pretty much the message is, whether you’re black or white, or whatever color, you can’t be judged by what you have on,” said Montre Davis of Linkin’ Bridge. “We weren’t there to do harm to anybody. We there to spread love peace and joy.”

 

“Blackface” in Baltimore…

I don’t believe this guy tried this…

Blackface Show Benefitting Cops Indicted In Freddie Gray Death Nixed

The venue where a former Baltimore police officer said he planned to perform an Al Jolson routine in blackface says it won’t host the event.

Bobby Berger announced plans Wednesday to raise money for the six Baltimore officers indicted in the death of a black man who died of injuries he received while in police custody.

Later Wednesday, Michael’s Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie, where Berger intended to hold the event, said on its website that the fundraiser will not be hosted there.

Berger said 610 tickets had been sold for the Nov. 1 fundraiser at $45 each. The police union said Wednesday it doesn’t support the event and won’t accept money from it.

Berger says he doesn’t believe there is anything racist about his routine.

At least someone in the BPD figured it out beforehand!

The Original Al Jolson

Black stereotypes in American Cinema in the 30’s and 40’s..

 

NYC Activist Takes on Bill O’Reilly

This is a fun one. Bill the O’Bigot gets a lesson on stereotyping from New York Civil Rights Coalition president Michael Meyers. Michael Meyers called Bill O’Reilly and his network out to his face on Monday, accusing Fox News of engaging in a pattern of demonizing black men “You are painting black men as society’s moral monsters,” said Meyers…

Another Bill the Bigot lesson was given in December of last year by Russell Simmons on the show:

Simmons and Murray make a key point, thet the creation of the carceral state more than any other cause is the source of many maladies affecting poor black communities – Best summed up in Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, by Marie Gottschalk and described in this review

 Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics – Pathology of the Carceral State

For 40 years now the United States has been creating a vast and unprecedented carceral machine. Its size and reach stagger the imagination: jails and prisons, immigration detention and deportation centers, parole and probation offices, digital, electronic, and human surveillance. Its human costs are enormous — federal and state prisons and jails hold over 2 million people in custody at any time; if you include those under parole, probation, or other forms of government surveillance for crime the number exceeds 8 million. Tens of millions of Americans have some form of criminal record. Their families are drawn in to the reach of the carceral state along with them. In global terms the United States stands alone. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Its penal practices are brutal compared to Europe. It deepens the racial divide in the country. It distorts the economy and polity. Above all it degrades lives and the country as a whole.

To understand this machine means holding a series of seemingly contradictory notions at once. Mass incarceration extends long-standing tendencies in American penal history while being a bold departure from previous practice; it has at its core a system of racial subordination, although race is now arguably less important than previously; it has marked an expansion in state power but is driven in important ways by the search for private profit; it is an instrument of law and order that operates in arbitrary and uncontrolled ways. Incarceration, originally justified as a defense of human dignity against the bodily brutality of ancien regime punishments, has now become the site of physical and psychological torture. And there is no end in sight to either mass incarceration or the wounds it imposes on human beings and American society…

The broad history of mass incarceration is well known. Prior to the 1980s the size and reach of imprisonment in the United States was not significantly different from its western European counterparts. For most of the 20th century the United States sent slightly more than 100 per 100,000 people to prison. (That number is now over 500 in prison and over 700 if you include jails.) The death penalty had been in long secular decline and the Supreme Court suspended it in 1972. Courts began to take steps to ensure minimal constitutional standards for prisons and protections for prisoners. Serious criminological and legal opinion believed that there was a real possibility that the prison would soon fade away.

Of course past is not always prologue. At precisely the moment when the country’s use of imprisonment appeared to face the possibility of serious reduction, states began a new expensive spree of prison construction. In 1976 the Supreme Court approved the restart of the death penalty. A bipartisan move toward determinate sentences (supported by liberals who thought it would curb the arbitrary authority of prison officials and by conservatives who aimed to curb the power of judges), combined with increasing lengths in mandated sentences, helped trigger vast expansion. Prison officials drew upon fears of riots and “revolutionary” inmates such as California’s George Jackson to justify intensified control over their prisons and increased use of solitary confinement. In the early 1980s the “war on drugs” took off and with it not only a rise in the size of the federal prison system but also the exacerbation of extreme racial inequities in sentences and prosecutions…

These developments, to be sure, did not emerge out of thin air. Instead they built upon initiatives begun earlier under the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. In particular Johnson’s signing of 1968’s Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act dramatically increased federal engagement with local policing and punishment. One effect of the act was to encourage the growing militarization of police forces, primarily through the Law Enforcement and Assistance Administration. Johnson and his allies may have thought that by imposing new federal standards they would help protect minorities from local abuses (as well as preempt more radical conservative proposals) but as Naomi Murakawa has argued, this liberal emphasis on procedure and uniform standards helped legitimate the idea that new regulations could justify and control the expansion of the prison state. As the continual revelations of prison abuses show, this hope was a false one…(…More…)

 

Black Folks Can’t Hike

White men can’t jump…Black folks can’t hike…

Some stereotypes just seem to happen.

Doing the single thing on those dating sites, and it seems the first thing every white woman puts in her bio is her love of running marathons and hiking through the wilderness. Black women…I don’t think so!

White women… “Ran a 10k last weekend and here are the pics!”

Black women … “Looking for a God fearing man”.

White women…” Here is me climbing El Capitan”.

Black women… “I am a God Fearing, loving,caring,honest and independent woman. ”

White Women – “I love all water sports, sailing and boating, as well as snow skiing and x country skiing.
Have an ocean kayak and a couple of small sail boats that are lots of fun.”

Black Women …”Please understand that If you are not interested in God, then I’m not interested in you! He is the apex of my life!”

White Women …”I love my Vespa scooter and jumping out of airplanes, tandem of course.”

Yeah…

 

White People Love Hiking. Minorities Don’t. Here’s Why.

White people simply love to spend their free time walking up and down mountains and sleeping in the forest. Search “hiking” in Google Images and see how far you have to scroll to find a nonwhite person. Ditto rock climbing, kayaking, canoeing, and so on. That white people love the outdoors is so widely accepted as fact that it’s become a running joke. The website Stuff White People Like has no less than three entries on the subject: “Making you feel bad about not going outside” (#9), “Outdoor Performance Clothes” (#87), and “Camping” (#128). The latter entry reads, “If you find yourself trapped in the middle of the woods without electricity, running water, or a car you would likely describe that situation as a ‘nightmare’ or ‘a worse case scenario like after plane crash or something.’ White people refer to it as ‘camping.'”

That quote is almost certainly how most blacks, Latinos, and other minorities view hiking and camping. The Outdoor Industry Association—the top outdoor-recreation lobby in America (and based in Boulder, naturally)—insists that outdoor enthusiasts “are all genders, ages, shapes, sizes, ethnicities and income levels,” but research by their own nonprofit organization, The Outdoor Foundation, shows underwhelming diversity. Its 2013 outdoor participation report notes that last year, 70 percent of participants were white. “As minority groups make up a larger share of the population and are predicted to become the majority by 2040, engaging diverse populations in outdoor recreation has never been more critical,” the report reads. “Unfortunately, minorities still lag behind in outdoor participation.”

In a front-page story today, The New York Times details these very problems facing the National Park Service—only one in five visitors to NPS sites are nonwhite, according to a 2011 study cited in the article—and the “multipronged effort to turn the Park Service’s demographic battleship around.” Clumsy metaphors aside, the article does a respectable job at detailing the various efforts—namely outreach, all-expenses-paid trips, and creating more national monuments recognizing minority figures in U.S. history—to increase minority participation. Less complete are the reasons the Times gives for that low participation.

Many white Americans who grew up going to the parks had towering figures of outdoor history — not to mention family tradition — blazing the trail as examples. And those examples, like Daniel Boone and the fur trappers of the Old West, tended to be white.

As Stuff White People Like says, “In theory camping should be a very inexpensive activity since you are literally sleeping on the ground. But as with everything in white culture, the more simple it appears the more expensive it actually is.” You may need to fly to your destination; otherwise, you’ll need a car and a full tank of gas. A backpack, tent, and the necessary gear will run you at least $1,000. And then you need some free time—which, if you work two jobs, you probably don’t have. That may explain why 40 percent of outdoor participants come from households with incomes of $75,000 or more, according to the Outdoor Foundation’s report… (…More…)

I guess God doesn’t go outdoors…

 

Stop the Sag!

Pull Your Pants UP!

 

Black Guys on a Beautiful Day

Hat Tip to Jack and Jill for this one. Go there for the background and credits.

Left me rolling on the floor laughing!

 

“Blind-Side” v. Precious

Why Some Blacks Prefer ‘Blind Side’ to ‘Precious’

There are two new films at the box office depicting poor black teenagers trying to escape their gritty urban lives. But only one of them is drawing criticism from many members of the black community.

“Precious,” the critically acclaimed drama about an illiterate black teenage girl abused by her mother and pregnant with a second child by her father, has come under fire by a number of blacks, including Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy and former Time magazine columnist Jack White.

Meanwhile, blacks, for the most part, have been noticeably silent about “The Blind Side,” the Sandra Bullock-helmed movie based on the true story of a Memphis family, the Tuohys, who take in a poor homeless black boy, Michael Oher, who becomes an NFL star.

Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips finds the discrepancy puzzling.

“While everyone is fussing about ‘Precious,’ a movie like ‘The Blind Side’ is going to make a pile of dough and seems far more racially patronizing,” said Phillips, the white co-host of the syndicated show “At the Movies.”

“‘The Blind Side’ is telling a really good story about one African-American character completely through the perspective of the white family.”

“That’s absurd and patronizing in itself,” Armond White, chief film critic of The New York Press, said of Phillips’ comments.

The reason for the discrepancy, said White, who is black, is simple.

//

“Some black people find ‘Precious’ offensive and they don’t find ‘The Blind Side’ offensive,” he said. “There’s more humanity there. ‘Precious’ is like a horror show, a freak show. There’s nothing but misery, debased behavior and degradation. One film is about Samaritan-ism, humanism, kindness, love and brotherhood, and the other is about degradation and ignorance.

“I’m happy that people aren’t buying it [‘Precious’] and prefer to buy ‘The Blind Side,'” he added.

Indeed, “Blind Side” opened last week just behind the “Twilight” juggernaut, raking in more its first weekend — $34 million — than “Precious” has grossed since its limited opening Nov. 6. Granted, “Blind Side” is being marketed as a Hollywood mainstream film, whereas “Precious” is being sold more as an art film…

Milloy wrote in his column last month that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, executive producers of the film, “have helped serve up a film of prurient interest that has about as much redeeming social value as a porn flick.”

Milloy told ABCNews.com he hasn’t seen “The Blind Side,” but among his black friends who have, they “like it a lot,” he said. “Apparently, the book was really good, and people went in knowing that they were going to get a happy holiday ending.”

Jack White refuses to see “Precious,” writing in a recent column on TheRoot.com, “I don’t have to see ‘Precious’ to know that it has little to tell us about how we can improve the circumstances of real-life victims of such tragedy.”

Armond White, who chairs the New York Film Critics Circle, called “Precious” more demeaning to black people than any other film since D.W. Griffith’s crudely racist “Birth of a Nation” in 1915.

“Full of brazenly racist cliches [Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken], it is a sociological horror show,” he wrote last month.

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Later, in a separate column, he praised “The Blind Side” as an antidote to the “Preciousmania” seizing the nation because it is “so free of the guilt ‘Precious’ arouses that it simultaneously raises the level of social imagination.”

Meanwhile, white culture critic Mark Blankenship, editor and chief of TheCriticalCondition.com, sees “The Blind Side” as another Hollywood production of a do-gooder white person rescuing a poor black person.

“The real story is inspiring,” Blankenship said, “but the way it’s being sold as a film is not very surprising. We’ve seen movies like ‘The Blind Side’ over and over again — ‘Dangerous Minds,’ ‘Freedom Writers,’ ‘Finding Forrester’ — even if we haven’t seen stories like the Tuohys or Michael Oher, which is an exceptional story being sold to us as just the latest cog in a feel-good machine.”…

In hard economic times, is “entertainment” preferable to “art”?