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@Mel Hopkins I’m glad you were serving him drinks and not the other way around. @Pioneer1 welcome back!

History class was kicking my butt! It was a short semester class jammed packed with a lot of work including up to the very present. I did get an "A" and learned a lot about the United States that even I didn't know! And I read a lot! Some of it was so depressing I felt like I was struggling through PTSD. Thank goodness my professor was a Black woman with a PhD - she held the light towards the finish line. I took the summer off from school. I needed a break. 👋🏽🙋🏽‍♀️

🫩 Tired of hearing about the war in Iran? Disgusted by the Supreme Court's dismantling of the Voting Rights act? Mad because your team got eliminated from the NBA Playoffs?Unimpressed by the ridiculously extravagant garb of the celebrities at the annual Met Gala? Worried about the possibility of a new virus epidemic? Fed up with high gas and grocery prices? Broke because you blew $500 on 2 tickets to the upcoming Usher-Chris Brown concert tour coming to a theater near you? Saddened by the evening news reporting the shooting death of yet another inner city black teen? How about something to take your mind off of these bummers? Read on... Rule No. 1 is the foundation to lure an athlete with a pick-me mindset: “He’s the prize. Remember he can change your life; you can’t change his.” Rule No. 2: “Dealing with cheating, DON’T LOOK FOR IT… if it’s just a fling, LET IT GO!” He’s the prize, remember he can change your life, you can’t change his …” Rule No. 3: “Completely integrate yourself in his life to where he can’t function without you.” Rule No. 4: “Don’t embarrass him. Don’t cheat, don’t text other men.” Rule No. 5: “Go completely WILD ON HIM IN BED!” Rule No. 6: “DO NOT tell his mom ANY personal information.” Rule No. 7: “Always look good and appealing." **************** OK, back to things worth caring about. 🥴

Welcome back bro.👍🏿 Thought I was gonna have to roll up to Michigan to find your whereabouts.😁 How so you might ask? I would've started by interrogating African women.🤣😎

ProfD Or maybe he's still trying to climb out of the rubble of the OLD website format that was demolished without warning....lol. Right before everything collapsed, I read something about Troy changing his mind about updating or reformatting the website. Next thing I know, the site vanished and when it re-appeared it required me to use some old email address for over a decade ago to access it again....which took me 2 months to dig up, lol.

..., he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket." No, he will just blame some whomever he is told to blame. Mexicans, The Blacks, Gay People. Muslims, Jews, etc. I was reminded of the quote in a review I just published: Book Review: Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave by Tiffany G. Townsend

Hilarious. White women have been running that playbook since the 1990s.😁 That's why there are so many mixed breed athletes running around nowadays.🤣 Exhibit A....Golden State Warriors superstar Steph Curry.😁😎

They left out the most important tactic......do not throw away used Condom. As well as.......Lock black women out of his immediate circle - where ever and whenever possible

In a similar vein to "Watermelon Man", I need to add, "The Blackening," which I initially overlooked, but I was drawn in once I saw it on Netflix's "before it leaves soon" page. It's genuinely hilarious and the best satire horror comedy I've seen in a while! It's about a group of college friends meeting up at a cabin in the woods after a hiatus - you know, the "life 'be lifing'" type of excuse for absence. So, like any cabin in the woods horror flick scenario, the first to die is a black person - but who's the first when everybody is Black? Well, surely it has to be the Blackest one, right? I hollered when they pointed to the actual African in the group. Anyway, that's the premise of this satirical flick, and it is really funny. Tongue-in-Cheek funny! So, although The Blackening was released in 2023, it should be a contender for this list because it absolutely has staying power.

@ProfD I didn't know at first that Rachel Scott was a sista - with impeccable journalistic credentials! Trump has also been accused of referring to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson as having a "low IQ". He seems to really be intimidated by black women who, when it comes to being qualified, put that skank Melania to shame whose only notable accomplishment is being multi-lingual, able to say "unzip" in 7 different tongues. 😛

Technically, China is the oldest empire & still going strong.😉 If the USA implodes under its largesse & collapses losing any type of empire status, the consolation can be that Great Britain, Italy, Turkey & Russia, etc. still exist. Otherwise, the world has been taken over by global capitalists. Countries will become business centers. Super-power countries will continue to exist as major hubs for the global capitalists. Think of it like the airport system.🤣😎

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.🤣😎

China has been the blue-collar labor force for the United States of America (USA) for several decades now. Every person living in the USA has at least 5 things that were made in China.🤣 Also, there's at least 5 million Chinese people living in the USA. Yet, the US government wants the American people to believe China is a threat. If China wanted to destroy America it would be very easy to do wirhout firing a single shot. Everything from contaminated clothing & products to a little something extra in egg rolls & Chinese food would kill millions of Americans.🤣 First, it was the nuclear arms race that made Russia a boogeyman. China has become one too mainly because it owns a huge amount of US debt. White people in America make up enemies to justify the military & owning a bunch of guns. If American white folks would stop creating enemies through colonization, imperialism & racism, etc., they would have nothing to fear.😎

The issue is not about whether this generation is worse than the preceding ones or about finger pointing. That's all a waste of time. It concerns what to do about what is currently happening. Problem solving gets lost in the shuffle of idle reminiscing. Maybe fines and jail sentences will have an effect. Or perhaps these roving hordes of young folks will get scared straight, after a body count builds up at the hands of trigger happy cops... Such is life.

As @aka Contrarian mentioned in another thread, fhe great Jazz saxophonist, Sonny Rollins has joined the celestial orchestra. Sonny Rollins was the last living musician in this 1958 picture A Great Day in Harlem: His legacy as a musician is cemented. Thanks for the music. RIP Mr. Sonny Rollins.😎

Black folks are masochistic; like an abused wife who stays with her mate because - it hurts so good.

At this point, I have very little hope in ANY of the current national political parties. Republicans have already made it clear that they intend to do NOTHING for AfroAmericans and the Democrats only promise benefits to us INDIRECTLY at best through half-ass underfunded programs designed to help people who don't even need them; and if some of those people just HAPPEN to be Black or AfroAmerican, oh well. No more jobs or job training programs or funds given directly to Black community organizations like back in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. No talk of Universal Healthcare. It's not even on the radar and that was one of the main issues Liberals were pushing for back in the day. Come on mayne...... Dude is actually building a multimillion dollar BUNKER under the White house! Does that sound like the behavior of someone who is getting ready to move in a couple of years, to you? You don't build an addition to a place you're planning on leaving anytime soon....lol. "So let me get this straight......... You're paying us $45,000 to build a new patio for a house that just got foreclosed on and you're moving out of it in less than a month?"

If you guys weren't constantly bitchin' and whining about the lingering injustices of slavery in this country and the institutionalized racism that is designed to stifle Blacks, and keep them in their place and the omnipresent spectre of white supremacy and on and on and on, maybe Richard wouldn't look askance at the ambiguity of your relationship with this country. Troy bristles with his contempt f or the pervasiveness of social media and all it involves, and ProfD makes no secret about being armed and amenable to vigilancy, never wavering in his goal of reparations. Funny, I never got the impression that Richard was a member of a different generation than you two. His thinking is not archaic, to me. All of which contributes to the elusiveness of black unity. In watching the recentPBS special on WEB DuBois, I can't help but wonder what tribe he would belong to, were he still with us. I, personally, have given up categorizing folks. How one views the world depends on their core personality, imo. 🙄

They are protesting at the ICE facility in Newark, NJ this week. A few folks have been arrested. Last week, Secret Service shot a man near the White House after he opened fire on them. He later died at the hospital. There's a certain amount of F8ck Trump protests happening around the nation. The media is not reporting most public protests because the current administration has them shook. 😎

Good day, everyone - My name is Kevin Parham, and I am seeking an AALBC review for my upcoming 350-page historical novel, Orange Line to Forest Hills. The story follows the intense emotional arc of the protagonist, Sadie Mae Beckham, as she navigates mid-20th-century challenges in an environment that denies people of color the opportunity to achieve their goals and take their rightful place in American society. Consideration of my submission would be greatly appreciated. Respectfully, Kevin Name: Kevin Parham (Author) https://priapublishing.com/ Book Title: Orange Line to Forest Hills ISBN: 978-0-9849485-9-8 Publication Date: July 14, 2026 List Price: $17.99 (paperback) $4.99 (digital) Synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Sadie Mae Beckham has grown up knowing the cruelty of racism in the Jim Crow South, but nothing prepares her for the brutal lynching of her father. Determined not to let hatred define her future, Sadie Mae leaves everything she knows behind and travels to Boston, Massachusetts, driven by a single goal: to gain an education and one day become a doctor. In her new high school, Sadie Mae forms an unlikely friendship with two girls, one Black, one white, who share her belief that injustice must be challenged, even when doing so comes at a cost. As the girls navigate peer pressure, family expectations, and quiet hostility in classrooms and summer jobs, their convictions are tested again and again. When relationships across racial lines begin to draw unwanted attention, the friends are forced to confront a society determined to keep them apart. Each choice they make carries consequences, not just for themselves, but for those they care about. Will Sadie Mae hold onto her dream without compromising her values? Can friendship survive in a world built on division? And is moral courage enough to challenge a system designed to punish those who stand against it? Orange Line to Forest Hills--a powerful story of friendship, determination, and the courage to choose what is right in a would shaped by fear and inequality.

Humm going back to the subject of Becky's 7 Point Plan for Snagging a Wealthy Brother. Maybe Brothers like Arsenio are not prejudiced, so "race" was not a factor they simply got with whoever appealed to them most on a mental, compatibility, shared interest, spiritual-soul-mate thang. 😏

The Black man who killed my father while he was trying to prevent a robbery of his uncle store was convicted with life with no expected parole. He is free today and has been for some time, so I suspect there are a lot who are free today. But that crime spree back in the day - sent me fleeing NY so, I'm not mad at that crime bill that saved other Black families who couldn't leave New York. If there were people falsely imprisoned my heart breaks for them and I hope some liberal project got them out. But it wasn't like Black people caught up in that bill were innocent. They left a lot of Black families without fathers, sons, mothers and daughters. In other news, Hi @ProfD ! I hope you are doing well on this Memorial Day!

Glad to be back. I could actually read the messages, I just couldn't participate without signing in. I started to sign up under another name but thought about all of the history that went into my original handle and decided to wait until I eventually figured out that old email address I used. I happened to read where Troy said he emailed me so I looked for a ping in one of my old emails to find out which one I signed up under.

Applications for the #AWP27 HBCU Fellowship Program will be closing on Sunday, May 31st! You can apply here: https://lnkd.in/e_yGqnJb Each year, the ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS & WRITING PROGRAMS offers fellowships to faculty and students who currently work at or attend a historically Black college or university and are involved in creative writing. Those chosen will be invited to attend the 2027 AWP Conference & Bookfair. The #AWP27 HBCU fellowships will be offered to three faculty and six students, and will include a stipend, paid round-trip travel and lodging expenses for the duration of the conference, an opportunity for students and faculty to workshop students' creative pieces, and more. #HBCU #BlackWriters #AssociationofWritersandWritingPrograms #SerendipityLiteraryAgency LinkedIn#awp27 #awp27 #hbcu #blackwriters #associationofwritersan...Applications for the #AWP27 HBCU Fellowship Program will be closing on Sunday, May 31st! You can apply here: https://lnkd.in/e_yGqnJb Each year, the ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS & WRITING PROGRAMS offers f AALBC.com and the Black Book Accelerator — led by Troy Johnson, Carrie J. Bloxson, Linda A. Duggins, Peter Hildick-Smith, Brian Hurley, and me — have launched one of the first major initiatives of the Black Book Accelerator: the BLK Bestseller List. The list showcases the top 20 bestselling fiction, nonfiction, children’s, young adult, and poetry titles by Black authors. I’m excited to announce that AALBC and the Black Book Accelerator have also now partnered with TheGrio, a trusted source for Black news, politics, and culture, which will now share the monthly BLK Bestseller List on its platform. I’m proud to be part of a team with the passion and commitment to help build a stronger, more connected Black book ecosystem — one that ultimately strengthens the publishing industry as a whole. You can read TheGrio's announcement here: https://lnkd.in/gZ7TPf-W hashtag#BLKBestsellerList hashtag#ReginaBrooks hashtag#PublishingNews hashtag#AfricanAmericanLiteratureBookClub hashtag#BlackAuthors hashtag#BlackWriters hashtag#BlackBookAccelerator LinkedInAALBC Launches BLK Bestseller List with TheGrio Partnersh...AALBC.com and the Black Book Accelerator — led by Troy Johnson, Carrie J. Bloxson, Linda A. Duggins, Peter Hildick-Smith, Brian Hurley, and me — have launched one of the first major initiatives of the

I didn't read that into what I actually wrote. I'm questioning how China can be considered an enemy or boogeyman given their labor force producing a huge amount of products & the Chinese presence in the USA.😎

https://thehill.com/homenews/5868640-clyburn-trump-sc-redistricting/ Rep. Jim Clyburn is fighting to save the lone South Carolina Democratic Congressional seat from a redistricting effort. At 85 years old, Rep. Clyburn is running for re-election. It would be his 18th term in Congress. Having earned several million dollars already & the pension he'll receive, there's no reason for America's favorite sharecropper, er, Rep. Clyburn to continue working in Congress.😁 I'm fairly certain Rep. Clyburn isn't taking care of hoes in different area codes either..🤣 The senior citizen squad that is Rep. Clyburn, Rep. Nancy Pelosi & Rep. Maxine Waters & every other member over 75 years old needs to retire & give younger folks a chance to sit in those seats. Term limits are totally necessary. There's no reason for these people to be taking naps during sessions &/or having the chamber smell like linimint or Aspercreme.🤣 We need a campaign telling Rep. Clyburn & others that its time to go home & enjoy retirement.😁😎

The amount of money Political Action Committees (PACs) are spending to put folks in office is ridiculous. If Black candidates are beholden to a PAC on either side, Democrat or Republican, their marching orders are already set. Candidates funded through grassroot efforts & regular campaign donations have an uphill climb. That's why Independents are rare. Campaign finance reform is a joke. So, the 2-horse race between Democrats & Republicans remains status quo. Just a matter of selected candidates out-fundraising each other. Once the politicians get to Capitol Hill, they go about the business of enforcing the agenda of & enriching the folks who sent them.😎

America! Ya gotta luv it. 😉

I know some people dismiss the "Ancient Aliens" TV series which explores and offers examples of aliens having visited Earth centuries ago and left artifacts behind and inspired hieroglyphs and wall carvings of figures who look like uniformed astronauts in space ships to prove this. But the archeologists who promote these theories and who end each episode with a "we are not alone" teaser have as much credibility as closed-mouthed Presidents. DUH. 🙄 Even the Bible offers evidence of these phenomena, according to these scientists and they refer to the verse about Ezekiel seeing a wheel "way up in the middle of the sky" as a UFO sighting. I believe Aliens may be among us and I have always kinda felt like EARTH, hence America, is not my home. Even as I key this, I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder...👽 Anyway, If ETs do exist it's time for them to make themselves known before Trump destroys Earth... Just our luck, Trump is an alien from a place where bigotry and pedophilia are not frowned upon, sent here to rid the universe of this prudish humane planet. I still wonder why certain areas in Anarctica are a restricted no-fly zone. zzzzzzzzz

Did anyone actually hear what Trump said? The website you shared @ProfD won't let you listen to the clip unless you subscribe. I don't know if they are a reputable news source given their use of this tactic... Report the "news" or don't, but don't bait me with scandalous content and fail to deliver. At any rate. they use terms like "appears" and "apparently" when it comes to his use of the word. So I can only assume it was not blatant - still he has to play to his base.. approval rating are down. I guess he'll be hurling the N-bomb soon--that will really rally his supporters. He'll probably hold that card until right before the midterms 😉

Pareto principle - 80/20% Or 20% of the people do the work. While 80% folly. "vital few", "trivial many" And the vital few group is usually very diverse.

Whenever the dust settles, POTUS OJ will be clinically defined as a megalomaniac. That will explain his narcissism, misogyny, pettiness, insecurities, etc.😁😎

She was initially Randy's girlfriend. He had a few children with her. Jermaine must have seen her at gatherings and decided he wanted a piece of the action keeping it all in the family.🤣😎

Did either one of them marry her? If not, she didn't "pull" them. She was just a star struck "thot". 🫣

WT Hillbilly F! Where did you learn that piece of gossip so their kids are both siblings and cousins huh?

Yes I am exited.....like a schoolboy about to have sex for the first time

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.

@ProfD If everything you say about the true nature of Black people is right, then they have no reason to complain about being at the bottom of the totem poll. That's where they belong😜

@Troy very true. In this dog-eat- dog world, ignorance can be bliss. One person's concern, is another one's indifference. Such is life...

Well, when it comes to the Jackson family, its no secret, their domineering father Joe had a lot to with their being ummm - eccentric. Michael always complained about being robbed of his childhood, attributing his affinity for young boys to that, imagining himself to be a real live Peter Pan. La Toya was /is nutty as fruit cake and always claimed that Joe tried to molest her when she was a teenager. Jermaine was reportedly consumed with jealously of Michael, hence his leaving the group and going solo. He was reportedly furious when he hit on Whitney Houston and she rejected him for Bobby Brown. Mama Kathryn, was a devout Jehovah's Witness and didn't celebrate Christmas but supposedly accepted and encouraged family members to give her large packets of money in plain brown paper bags on December 25th. Prince was a total control freak, the reason for his breakup with Vanity and the failure if his 2 subsequent marriages His older half sister from his father's first marriage supposedly warned his inner circle early in his career, that Prince's weakness for cocaine needed to be reined in... The price of being a superstar took its toll on so many young Blacks who died relatively young. But, - that's show biz...

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.😎

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.

@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.😎

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.

I'm more interested in Mel and Chevdov, hoping their absences are just their usual long breaks. Maybe pioneer is somewhere sulking, lickin his wounds. HeeHaw.

Speaking of conspiracy theories and computer technology and Aliens, the longer I live, the more convinced I am that there's more to "Life" than meets the eye, that what I once thought were delusions or hallucinations or dreams, are different forms of reality, vibrating at a different frequency; I definitely believe in a multi-verse and that I shift between parallel worlds. I also see images out of the corner of my left eye and sense that I have a spirit "guide" who looks out for me. Whether these are extra-terrestial or divine phenomena, they are super-natural and outre. I have also had some weird things happen in regard to computers deleting things on their own; especially when I went on a tirade about something better left unsaid; these rants would suddenly disappear from the screen as if I was being monitored. And then there was the "duplicated phrase" quirk as if, while typing, I shifted from one universe to another in the middle of a sentence causing an overlap which resulted in a phrase appearing twice in a sentence... Like just now, when the words "twice in" for some reason became underlined in yellow??? 🤫 Also, I always thought a lot more attention and investigstion should be given to the possibilities raised about other beings living inside the Earth. There are places in the South Pole that have never been explored by Man, and restricted areas there where pilots are not allowed to fly over... Whatever. Once I decided to just go with the flow when it came to the inexplicable, Time seemed to stop existing; now, - I just am. I might be dead and don't know it.😗 I've never been into conspiracy theories so I never questioned whether we actually went to the moon before, but now when I see the old photos of the astronauts on the moon, they look - phony. 🤫 And speaking of "phony", why aren't we given more specific images and info about the U.S. pilot who was supposedly rescued from the cave he was hiding in after being shot down in Iran? No name no actual picture of him. Nothing. I would think they'd be parading him around to justify the millions of dollars the rescue operation cost to pull off...

Absolutely. Only a small percentage of the population has ever been smart enough to do great things. Creativity & innovation aren't tied to literacy rates. Same goes for basic human behavior. Last week, a few astronauts returned from a trip around the moon supposedly.😉 NASA still uses a lot of the same engineering of 50 years ago to build the spacecraft. Heat shields prime example. Computer & AI is derivative technology built up over the past 50 years & counting.😎

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR WORLDCON 2026 Spacefunk edited by Milton J. Davis Austin Creek by Kimberly S. Love If you want to recommend a book for a Hugo Award nomination, post the following to this thread: 1. The name of the book 2. Are you a voting member of the World Science Fiction Society (Learn more here and here.) Conversation and questions are encouraged. But, ask them on the thread titled: "Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and Fantasy Writers?"

Is there anyone here wanting to nominate his or her own work for this year's Hugo Award? If there were several members of this forum who wanted to create a critical mass so that our works progressed to official nomination, one or a few of us could at the very least get exposure. I have read through the rules, regulations, and FAQs, and I did not read anything suggesting that an approach such as this one was inappropriate. More info here: https://www.thehugoawards.org/ Also, if anyone is interested in being on a panel for the World Science Fiction Convention, let's connect. This year, the event is in LA, but I am planning to propose a virtual panel because I rather contribute from home. More info here and here.