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Pioneer, I agree with Cynique. The fact supports everything she wrote. I would also emphasize that you can't generalize your observations to the whole. There are more plausible emplainations to many of your observations. For example, very old women today usually grew up in the south because the vast majority of Black people lived in the south then. 50 years from now the oldest Black people will have been raised in cities, because that is where the vast majority of us live today. You can't look at African immigrants and assume they have the same characteristics as the ones still in Africa. The ones in our universities are the best and the brightest Africa has to offer. Even the ones starting out as cab drivers are the most motivated people and are not representative of everyone still on the continent. Also, in cities like NY the entire environment was far more polluted 100 years ago. They dumped raw sewage into the the rivers, horses shat all over the street and the air reeked from burning of trash, factories, etc. It is definitely cleaner today If a 50 year old is not thinking as quickly it is because everyone's mental capacity declines over time, that is normal. I'm not arguing with you about what we may have lost spiritually, because i think we have lost something. Over my short life seeing everyone connecting to devices 24X7 is unnatural. Our complete separation from nature as seen in our massive urban centers is unnatural as well. I assume neither is beneficial, but I can't really say how bad it is relative to the beneficial tradeoffs. I would be willing to bet that the loss of spirituality due to our disassociation from nature and slavish devotion to corporate controlled technology has had more of an adverse impact on the brothers on Chicago's west and south side than vaccines. They could be dying from diphtheria or typhoid fever. Wouldn't you agree?

Troy No, if I had children I WOULD NOT get them vaccinated. As best I could I'd provide a healthy environment and diet for them to maintain a strong immune system. I wouldn't worrry about them not being able to enroll in school because the schools are miseducating many Black children anyway. I'd home school them and probably give them a much better education than the local school district ever could. As far as vaccines being a part of a conspiracy...... I don't know if they were designed to "destroy" Black people, but certainly I believe that regardless of the intent...the RESULT is that most of the MMR vaccines that have been administred to children of all races seem to have a disproportionately negative reaction in Black children and especially Black boys and it increases their rates of autism and seems to lessen the overall general intelligence of most Black boys and girls who receive them. And I'm not the ONLY one who believes this....Rober Deniro seems to also believe it: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Robert+De+Niro+autism+Black+children Again, look at Africans from the continent who HAVE NOT received those same vaccinations and they are are smarter than White children in school and much smarter than Black American children. You tell me what's the problem? CD Personal responsibility will only take you so far. One of the reasons why people file class action lawsuits when they are victims of environmental toxins and poisonings and WIN is because the law recognizes that it wasn't THEIR FAULT that they were poisoned or exposed to toxins. Responsibility means the ABILITY TO RESPOND. When people are systematically being poisoned and miseducated and denied access to clean water and fresh food....they don't have the ability to respond on their own. Only an authority higher than them has the ability to replace their infrastructure, remove the toxins from their environment, and improve their overall quality of life As far as me making it out. I never was really "in" the ghetto. We weren't rich....but I didn't grow up in poverty, I grew up in the lower middle class. Neither I nor my brothers had to struggle for food or any other basic necessity like many of my cousins and other family did. I guess that's why we have a different mentality than them and know how much better things can be than the way of life so many of them are satisfied with living. I'm not rich now either, I'm still on the lower side of middle class but I'm somewhat comfortable by God's grace. I had a brief encounter with poverty some years ago and found it intolerable....lol. Years ago I had moved to a new city, hadn't worked in a while and was close to being out on the street so I woke up one morning and was so angry I got dressed and went down to the city hall and DEMANDED a decent paying job and told them I wasn't leaving the building until either security took me out or they gave me a job with decent pay and benefits. Even talked about how I was an American citizen and had a right to life which includes work at decent pay started quoting the Constitution on them...lol. They gave me a job. But I decided I didn't like the city because I couldn't find a girlfriend there, so I quit the job and left town....lol.

It seems Black Enterprise has finally gotten a clue regarding social media. 5 Reasons Your Business Shouldn’t Be on Facebook From a limited reach to a lack of results, here’s why your brand is better off without Facebook in its marketing strategy Now I don't agree with the article entirely, because you can still derive benefits from Facebook to benefit your business. But this article is a step in the right direction.

We gotta go with what we got. If it takes a bi-racial football player protesting on bended knee when the national anthem is played, then so be it. No denying that he has called attention to the empty words of this song and inspired other athletes to do the the same. And, as you both noted, when sports heroes take a stand, this hits the public where it hurts in a sport-crazed country like America. The black lives movement has no face. This group is perceived by an apathetic white public as a straggly bunch of black folks parading around chanting a slogan that simply reinforces the idea that black lives don't matter. But mess with the sacrosanct national anthem rendered amidst a flag bearing color guard in a venue filled with rabid fans, and a nerve is struck. I give Kaepernik his props for risking his career and popularity with a simply gesture that aggravates an element of the population that needs to be targeted: that blue-collar, Joe-6-pack, super patriot crowd, along with the glib sportscasters charged with not rocking the boat and, most of all, the team owners profiting off the blood sweat and tears of their black gladiators. Instead of belittling Colin Kaepernik, I say thanks to him for doing it his way, and his detractors need to find somebody else to put down since their criticism is not really constructive.

No, Pioneer, black people were not healthier 75 years ago than they are today. Check the life expectancy of black folks 75 years ago. And before then, there was a high mortality rate among poorer children with many doing good to make it to their 10th birthday, dying at birth, or succumbing to such diseases as diphtheria, and typhoid fever. They also suffered from rickets and whooping cough and other debilitating childhood diseases such measles and mumps. Mothers frequently died in childbirth from such things as child bed fever.Tuberculosis also impaired the health of or eventually killed off a lot of black people Later, vaccinations wiped out all of these diseases as well as small pox and polio. Better medicine also dramatically lowered the death rate from TB. Now, as Troy noted, these diseases are making a come back, thanks to the anti-vaccine community, many members of which have been influenced by celebrity parents of autistic children, looking for an excuse to blame for their less than perfect children. My generation was vaccinated with the DPT serum that eradicated Diphtheria, Typhoid Fever, and Pertussis(whooping cough) and we were also vaccinated against small pox. Anybody my age, still has their vaccination scar on their upper left arm. We were routinely given these shots in school in the lower grades. It may have been different in the south, however. There are risks and side effects associated with any medication including preventive vaccines but the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the benefits out weighing the risks. A lot of things have contributed to the degeneration of the species, including television and the computerization technology that spawned smart phones, video games and the Internet. I would add that food additives and crop spraying may also be culprits. As for vaccines, I go with erring on the side of caution.

That really was a great discussion with so much good input and insight. A look back at a glimpse of this forum's golden age.

Thats right! I forgot about that book (it has been 12 years). Kola's old publisher, Door of Kush, published Chris' book as well as another contributor to these forums Diane Dorce. If these titles were published today I would be in a much better position to help promote these books. When they were published I actually had a full time job, young kids, and making updates to AALBC.com requiured a LOT more work. I just created a page for Chris.