All Activity

Interesting that all of the other Jacksons appear to fine. I still believe the level of fame & stardom MJ received pushed him to another side. Prince's doctor was fined for prescribing opiods to him. MJ's doctor actually served jail time for negligence in his overdose.😎

They are all similar including Byron Donalds & Tim Scott.😁😎

Do any of y'all make any distinctions between the Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas (funny how both could be called Uncle Tom) and kids like Candice Owens and Coleman Hughes? How do you feel about less controversial republicans like Herman Cain or Condoleezza Rice? I do. I'd venture a guess that I'm the only one reading this who has read more than one book written by Sowell, most of what I read does not address race issues. I have also read--and enjoyed-- Sowell's columns for years especially his "Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene." They were though provoking tidbits that challenged liberal views. For the record I tend to be both fiscally and socially liberal. The article was generally hyperbolic, which Facebook's algorithm loves! So, all Tdka is doing is enriching Mark Z by feeding the algorithm. Everything has a context. "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Audre Lorde Today, we blindly and feverishly use the master's tools to build up his house, the problem is that it comes at the expense of our own.

Yeah, he "seemed' that way. He was probably nutty long before that--The money was just and enabler. Wasn't his Dr. convicted for mis-prescribing his medication or something like that?

I have distain for most of these platforms, and the reasons are complex. Your description of facebook; "FB is a sounding board. A chance to get on your soap box and blow off steam to a vast, ready-made audience..." is accurate, but simplistic (all due respect to your wisdom and intellect). Facebook and Meta (Youtube) do not operate in isolation they entered a WWW where there was a vibrant and growing community of Black-owned and Black-centered platforrms. In a variety of ways these companies have completely destroyed this. In the earlier years I even helped Facebook accomplish this, but I had no way of understanding what was happening. I also understand that even if I did know it would not have made any difference--because it makes no difference today. It is not just me, some disgruntled website owner whose posters now suckle at Mark's teat. There have been many books written about how bad Facebook is--even Facebook's own employees describe the problems. Look, Facebook (and Goole and Amazon) IS THE WEB for most people. A hand full of companies control what you see hear and read. Their rage driven algorithms fan the fire of dissent for profit. I have more than 22K followers on FB that I earned through engagement on Facebook (helping FB build an audience). Today if I post something less than a handful of people will engage with it--don't even think about posting a hyperlink to a website. Even If I paid to boost a post (yes, I was naive enough to try that) I still did not get the same type of traffic that I used to get during Facebook's early days. Facebook used me. like they use everyone on the platform. You've read about Cambridge Analytica, right? Surely, you've read about Facebook's adverse impact on mental health, especially teens. Then there are the issues of abusing our privacy, and on... Facebook is much more than a "sounding board." I know most people do not get this and if they do, they could care less. I also appreciate, being an active contributor to the WWW for more than 30 years, that I have a perspective that most people do not have. I get that. It is just painful to watch, as Black people are hurt the most and are completely oblivious to what is happening. I could go on about YouTube, or rather Google (Alphabet) as well.

Hi everyone! I'm sharing a title to be considered for review. More details and a description below. - Chloe Boulard (Associate Publicist, cboulard@cpg.org) Title: Bridging the Rivers of Difference Subtitle: A Proclamation of Unity in Resistance ISBN: 9781640659674 Author: Catherine Meeks Pub date: June 16, 2026 Description: A call for unity in the face of growing dehumanization of marginalized people–from a powerful voice in the dialogue on racism today. The walk back on a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The silence across communities as the undocumented, primarily Latino population faces attack. The grandstanding of nationalism and the intersection with white supremacy and ideas of genetic superiority. These issues are not temporary but rather exist on a continuum in the history of racism and divisiveness. Meeks, who has spent a lifetime fighting for racial justice and healing, offers collaborative strategies to fight systemic racism--together. She also addresses current cases with civil rights impact in areas such as zoning, voting, and immigration, and delivers a powerful message about the need for unity in combating these destructive decisions. This moment, Meeks argues, shows that othering is alive and well in America and a continuation of white supremacy. She also believes the United States has been complicit in continuing the destabilization of other countries and the cycles of ethnic cleansing. Within Black communities, she explains, there is a hesitance to join the conversations, but the fight is one that demands solidarity. Resistance is necessary to dispel hierarchies of human value and combat the failure of institutions. Author Bio: Catherine Meeks, PhD, is the winner of the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for her decades of work for racial justice. A nationally recognized speaker, radio commentator, and writer for publications including Baptist News, she is the former executive director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing and author of six books, including The Night is Long, but Light Comes in the Morning: Meditations on Racial Healing. Dr. Meeks is the founder of Turquoise and Lavender, an institute for transformation and healing. She holds a master’s degree in social work from Clark Atlanta University, a PhD from Emory University, and honorary doctorates from Virginia Theological Seminary, the Seminary of the Southwest, and the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. Dr. Meeks lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Personally, I do not have disdain for FB. Just never had a reason to use the platform. Also, I don't find appealing the thought of people I haven't seen or talked to in 40+ years tracking me down.🤣😎

For many people, FB is a sounding board. A chance to get on your soap box and blow off steam to a vast, ready-made audience. It is many-faceted and convenient for millions of people who have nothing better to do when it comes to occupying their free time. It's escapism and is very accessible. It also provides a way to connect with friends and strangers. To me, since I no longer have a lot of mobility, hangin around there is just something to do... I've always been curious why the guys on this site always express so much disdain for FB, but have no problem with YouTube, which to me is not that different from Face Book. They both just need to be taken with "a grain of salt".

MJ seemed relatively normal until Thriller catapulted him into the stratosphere. Then, there was skin bleaching, surgeries, exotic pets, children as friends & his adopted white kids & drug addiction. Mike left up outta here a whole mess.😁 Prince went out from Fentanyl but his drug use started with painkillers. Otherwise, he had always been clean & didn't tolerate drugs & alcohol around him.😎

Obviously, I haven't been around here long enough to know of any former posters. It is great that they are still producing content. Would be great if those indiciduals were still posting here but we know the net effect of the white man's ice. Even the most intelligent, educated, astute & well-written/spoken brothas & sistas fall for the ice. Amusing to me is Black folks who talk sh8t about the same white folks who own the platforms they are using to host their content i.e. Fa*ceb**k, Y*uT*be, Gram, Tok, X, etc.🤣 There's always the hope that Black folks will find their way out of depending on white folks & become independent & autonomous.😎

@aka Contrarian...thanks for sharing the article here @ AALBC. Enjoyed reading it. Of course, I've never had any use for folks like Thomas Sowell & Clarence UncleThomas. There have always been & will always be Black folks who willingly take up a seat of contentment within the system of racism white supremacy & support it. Unfortunately, whenever Thomas Sowell closes his eyes for eternity, another conservative coon will take his place.😎

I know the question was for @Tesa , but only equal things should be treating equally. A couple of beers over cards is fine; crashing your car or losing your job because you are drunk not so good. Gambling is fine, but losing your house from a gambling debt not so much. Moderation for most things is fine Things like cigarettes, crack, meth, etc, have no real benefit that I'm aware of... and should only be available in the Black market.

Yes, I know, but the software can't tell the difference. @a_womon another blast from the past.

Oh, don't get me wrong -- I appreciate you doing that @aka Contrarian Please keep it up. I was just lamenting the fact that some of our favorite posters have left for Facebook and others who view themselves pro-Black but are actually more pro-Zuck.

@Troy Well, as I previously stated, the articles that I occasionally re-post here are posted on FB not by the people who wrote them, but by others who are quoting them. I share some of the provocative ones here sometimes to just start conversations...

@Troy Well, former AALBC contributer. Linda Chavez, was who posted the article on FB. All these articles I re-post here have been posted there by just regular people who found them interesting, like me. One of the people who "liked" the article was another former regular here, "a woman". And just for the record. that quote that you attributed to "aka contrarian" was not my words. That was still tdka speaking.

It seems Michael needed help throughout his life and everyone just tried to exploit him, so I give him some grace. I have zero interest in seeing the film.

Maybe Del ditched the site for Facebook 😉

Good 'ole (aka Shannon King), you going back more than 15 years. Here is a conversation "On Percival Everett" from 22 years ago. It is hard to imagine we had conversations like this here. I took it for granted, because that is what we did on the Internet back then... before Facebook launched and all the Black people flocked there. It only took a few years to reach that level imagine if we continued to the same trajectory for the next 22 years! Today Yuki posts on interesting things on Facebook and Mark is richer for it. @aka Contrarian I guess I'm sounding like a broken record griping about Brothers supporting Facebook. We (Black people) simply do not support Black platforms anymore, and this lack of support has only increased over that past 20 years A Platform like Facebook can do so much demonstrable harm yet we double down in our support. So, if it is not obvious, I'm a little salty about this. I'm not losing any sleep over it, cause I'm gonna continue to do what I do regardless. There are however, indications that the tide is turning, so there is reason for optimisms 🙂

@Troy No wonder Del didnt elaborate. Probably was wondering if AI was at work.🤫

The derivation or meaning of names like "Tdka" is unknown to me. I see them around a nowadays and I'm sure they mean something. Maybe I'll ask an LLM. From my seat, anyone in 2026, actively working to enrich Mark Zuckerberg can't justify being so critical of a Sowell (one in a glass house... ) That is not to say that I disagree with the critique, I just don't know why any Brother is freely giving long form analysis to Facebook. We already learned this lesson. I looked for the book, Fundamentals of Economics (2027, 900 pages), to add it to the site, but I could it. The only books by Tdka were on Amazon. Again, nevermind.... I'm glad you shared it here @aka Contrarian

Another one of my FB friends who was a member of the old crowd is my boy Shannon King who went under the user name "Yukio" and who also went on to become a college professor and a published author. Below is an article he posted which was written by Peter Birkenhead and which I found very timely. "I was about to write that I don’t think white people understand how much we are about to lose as a consequence of Black people losing electoral power, that we don’t have anywhere near an adequate appreciation of how much everybody in this country has benefited from the Voting Rights Act and the seismic political, legislative and cultural shifts it set in motion (there’s no Obamacare without the VRA — hell, there’s no Obama,) that almost everything we do every day has in some way been affected for the better by the democratization of political power and the corresponding investment in the public good represented by the VRA and its countless direct and indirect ripple effects (wether or not you send your kid to Head Start you have a hundred reasons to be grateful that other people send theirs,) and that I doubt very much that many of us would like to go back to a world lacking, for instance, the countless contributions, innovations and inventions of Black scientists, academics, engineers and artists subsidized by grants and institutions that would not themselves have existed but for the pressure exerted by people who could finally vote and have their votes weighted fairly. But then I remembered who we are, and how not once since the Voting Rights Act passed has a majority of us voted for a presidential candidate who supported the immeasurably better future that it ushered in, or the many better futures it would still no doubt have delivered. I remembered that we are white people, and that there is nothing — absolutely, positively nothing — that we aren’t willing to go without if it means Black people go without more."

This is not Del,. Del just popped into my mind when I saw the cover :-) I bet it does favor him as a kid

As I've previously mentioned, I'm still in touch with several members of the old crowd who used to post here, and who are now my FB friends. One if these is a good ol sista named Linda Chavez and below is an article by someone named Tdka Maat Kilamanjaro which she posted and which I found very compelling because it takes to task a famous black pundit, revered by many. Below is the article. "Thomas Sowell---he is 95+ years old, he'll be dead soon, so I am making sure I analyze the mess he has made for over 65 years of slick ruling class capitalist propaganda...before he passes away. Out of Maatian respect for an elder. He like Clarence Thomas, has done his share of dirt for the White far right wing Heritage Foundation and other far right-wing Nazi organizations that paid him. He was but a bird paid to sing, yet another Black empty wagon rattling down an empty dirt road making noise by say nothing of substance. Once you peel things back, these are elementary school lightweight hired negroes just trying to pay their bills from the very Nazi Whites systematically impoverishing Blacks since slavery. Intellectual arsonists for these parasitic Whites, starting fires and blaming the Black populations they burned up in the the flames. Our problem as a people is our overall low level of capacity to think critically. So lightweight Black stoolpigeons like these two, Sowell and Thomas, can essentially run rings around most of our people by just talking mess with big words amplified with the Whiteman's international mass media. The moment you hear these windbag negroes of the far right wing Heritage Foundation are speaking on something or publishing something, you should automatically know the White Nazi garbage that will come out of their mouths. They are on the payroll. They are ignorant slick-talking mindless tools, effectively bought and paid for. They have zero independence of thought. If they deviate fundamentally from the Whiteman's right-wing script, their jobs and pay ends. But why fault them for being the degenerate enslavers mouth pieces they have been since these enslavers used chattel slavery to build the White capitalist system in the beginning? Even in the progressive community of Blacks the standards are just too damn low because most opposition Blacks are trying to be capitalists to get wealthy just like the Whiteman. So they, in their usual infantile way, just straddle the fence, tap-dancing around thinking they are going unnoticed. Foolishly deluded that they are some how independent. Playing both sides. As a result, these Black miscreants serving the far right Whites should have been intellectually crushed years ago. For decades these Black propagandists for Nazi Whites have had free road to just slander our poorest for their poverty when they were systematically made impoverished by this parasitic capitalist economy these Whites created for their own benefit. We explained this in detail in our newest research Fundamentals of Economics (2027, 900 pages). Below is a summary of the infantile right-wing rhetoric Thomas Sowell has propagated for over a half century. ANALYSIS The central error in the conservative economic interpretation associated with Thomas Sowell is that it treats social outcomes primarily as the cumulative result of culture, incentives, and individual behavioral patterns while systematically underestimating the historical construction of unequal material conditions. This framework often abstracts present-day economic behavior from the long development of murderous White genocidal conquest, 300+ years of enslavement, land theft and dispossession, deliberate labor stratification, imperialist colonial extraction and outright theft, 100 years of direct segregation, deindustrialization, and state-directed capital accumulation that shaped modern racial class structures. As a result, disparities are frequently interpreted as evidence of dysfunctional values or dependency rather than as the predictable outcome of historically produced differences in ownership, infrastructure, political power, education access, labor-market positioning, and wealth transmission. A major weakness in Sowell's approach is its tendency to isolate “free market” outcomes from the state structures that created and maintained them. The modern capitalist economy in the United States was never a neutral competitive field. Northern industrialization, railroad expansion, suburbanization, banking growth, agricultural development, and university formation were all heavily subsidized through state intervention, land grants, military expansion, exclusionary labor laws, racially restrictive housing policy, and infrastructure spending. And before that genocidal chattel slavery of Blacks by these rotten Whites and their predatory economic and land stealing government. Black populations were historically excluded from many of these state-supported wealth accumulation systems---of which Whites overwhelmingly benefited from. Therefore, arguing that contemporary inequality merely reflects differences in "decision-making" ignores the fact that entire racial populations entered the modern economy with radically unequal access to capital, land, credit, and protected labor markets. These rotten Whites monopolized wealth accumulation solely for Whites. They still do, by and large. Sowell's childish and silly interpretation of Black unemployment particularly suffers from this narrow causal lens. The argument that welfare programs or minimum wage laws produced Black unemployment reduces a complex structural process to a simplistic incentive hypothesis. Black unemployment expanded dramatically during periods of automation, deindustrialization, union decline, suburban capital flight, urban disinvestment, discriminatory hiring, and the relocation of manufacturing overseas. Entire Black working-class urban communities had been integrated into industrial labor markets during the mid-20th century, only to be devastated when industrial capital abandoned cities in search of cheaper labor and higher profit margins. The destruction of manufacturing employment removed stable wage structures that had previously absorbed semi-skilled labor. This collapse cannot be adequately explained by welfare incentives alone because the disappearance of jobs preceded or outweighed many behavioral explanations. Furthermore, the conservative claim that government assistance weakened Black work ethic often reverses causality, inverting logic in an essentially infantileattempt to blame the victims. Welfare expansion was itself a response to structural unemployment, low wages, urban poverty, housing segregation, and labor exclusion. Assistance programs did not create mass poverty; rather, mass poverty created pressure for social assistance. Even where dependency effects existed, they operated within an economic environment already characterized by insufficient employment opportunities, weak public investment, unequal schools, and racialized labor segmentation. The deeper issue was not merely whether aid existed, but why 10s of millions of Black and other people required aid in the wealthiest capitalist economy in history. Simply asking Sowell this question would have forced him out of his lazy childish mess. The treatment of food stamps and social programs also tends to ignore how capitalism structurally produces surplus populations during technological change and labor restructuring. Modern economies continuously generate underemployment through mechanization/AI/robotization, productivity increases, and capital concentration---the wealth for a few increase and poverty for many increases. Social welfare systems emerged partly to stabilize consumption, sell goods that could not be sould profitably, prevent resulting unrest, and preserve market order under conditions where the labor market alone could not guarantee survival. To portray welfare recipients as the primary source of economic dysfunction ignores the far larger structural processes of speculative finance, monopolization, wage suppression, tax policy favoring capital, and declining labor bargaining power. Our dumbest negroes calling themselves conservative fall for this elementary school argument all of the time. The critique of civil rights legislation similarly contains serious contradictions. Here the stupid Sowell argument that anti-discrimination laws interfered with voluntary exchange assumes markets naturally punish irrational discrimination. Historically, however, racial exclusion was not merely individual prejudice but an organized White predatory economic system enforced through law, violence, custom, labor unions, banks, real estate markets, insurance systems, and state institutions. Segregation persisted for generations precisely because markets often accommodated profitable discrimination rather than eliminating it. In many regions, employers, landlords, and businesses collectively benefited from maintaining a cheap and politically weak racial labor force. Without state intervention, these systems had little internal incentive to disappear. The criticism of affirmative action also often treats competition as occurring on a historically level playing field. Yet access to wealth, educational quality, inheritance, professional networks, neighborhood safety, and political influence are cumulative and intergenerational. A society cannot legally exclude Black populations from asset accumulation for centuries and then expect “meritocratic” equality immediately after a few formal barriers are removed. Economic inequality reproduces itself materially across generations through property ownership, social capital, school funding, and access to investment. Ignoring these inherited structural inequalities leads to an overly individualistic reading of success and failure. Another major flaw is the tendency to selectively interpret immigrant success stories as proof that systemic barriers are insignificant. These immigrants were purposely/deliberately set up in Black communities---liquor stores, gas stations, hair and weave shops, pawn shops. Tax friendly profit enterprise zones are set up for them throughout the country. Different groups entered the United States under radically different historical conditions. Many immigrant populations arrived voluntarily, often after exclusionary immigration systems filtered for education, skills, or capital. Descendants of enslaved populations emerged from centuries of uncompensated labor, racial terror, political exclusion, educational suppression, land theft, and targeted segregation within the same national economy. These are materially distinct historical trajectories---and as slick as Sowell and others are, they know this. Comparing groups without accounting for these structural differences obscures the specific economic legacy of racial slavery and segregation. The conservative framework also tends to underestimate the role of wealth versus income. Even when Black incomes rose substantially after the civil rights era, wealth inequality remained extreme because wealth accumulates intergenerationally through property, inheritance, business ownership, and investment access. Housing discrimination, redlining, exclusion from New Deal programs, unequal GI Bill implementation, and banking discrimination severely limited Black asset accumulation during the very decades when white middle-class wealth expanded most rapidly. Thus, focusing narrowly on behavior or income statistics without examining wealth structures produces incomplete conclusions. His treatment of Black business development similarly overlooks structural barriers in credit markets, procurement access, insurance, transportation, commercial zoning, and capital formation. Historically, Black businesses often operated within segregated economies lacking access to mainstream banking and investment networks. Integration alone did not automatically create equal market power because large corporations possessed economies of scale, distribution networks, advertising advantages, and access to finance that smaller Black-owned enterprises often lacked. Government assistance programs sometimes failed, but the deeper issue was that Black enterprise existed within an uneven capitalist structure shaped by concentrated capital ownership. Finally, the broader ideological limitation of this conservative analysis is that it often treats capitalism as fundamentally neutral and self-correcting while locating dysfunction primarily in state intervention or culture. Yet modern capitalist development has repeatedly depended on coercion, imperial expansion, racial stratification, cheap labor systems, land seizure, and uneven development. Racial inequality in the United States was not external to capitalism; it was historically integrated into its labor organization, agricultural expansion, industrialization, housing markets, and financial systems. Therefore, many of the social crises affecting Black communities—unemployment, homelessness, underfunded schools, mass incarceration, unstable housing, and concentrated poverty—cannot be fully understood as moral or behavioral failures detached from the material organization of the economy itself. Again. Get up to speed...Sowell is now just another senile has-been tool of the lowest element of White Nazi ideological thought. Soon to be buried literally and figuratively." End of article.