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Well, February is underway, ushered in by the ground hog seeing his shadow, an event signifying six more weeks of winter. February also signals the start of African American history month, an observance which sets aside 28 days every year for blacks to extol their icons, recognize their unsung heroes and bitch about the shadow cast by the racism that represents the ongoing "winter of their discontent". White racism is indeed at the core of black discontent, even as it sometimes takes a back seat to black freedom. Poster Xeon spoke about blacks being free to do all the things they deem necessary to advance themselves, if they so choose. Conservative columnist, Shelby Steele, was a tad more cynical when he recently wrote about freedom catching blacks by surprise, leaving them off-balance and unable to cope with the loss of victim-hood, something similar to what the father of black history month, Carter Woodson, mused when declaring that if blacks couldn't find a back door to enter, they would rip out the wall and make one. On a more personal level it strikes me as disturbingly ironic that it is not unusual to watch the local news where on any given night impeccable black news anchors enunciate the daily toll of black-on-black crime, offenses that run the gamut from children being caught in the crossfire of drive-bys, to elderly people being robbed and assaulted, to respectable hard-working folks having their autos carjacked. Any black Chicagoan choosing to explain this self-imposed genocide is free, however, to blame it on white racism. And there's nothing more stunning than having black intellectuals publicly debate the nature of racism. As is the case with perennial malcontent, Cornel West, accusing angst-ridden Ta-Nehisi Coates of being a whitewashed neo-liberal who has a masochistic fetish about the pain of systemic racism. White publishers pay these 2 big bucks to take advantage of their freedom to dissect white racism. Meanwhile back at the circus, the Freak presiding over a bunch of clowns under the white house big top, cruises along, throwing the constitution under the bus. In the course of delivering a state of the union address full of half-truths and self-praise, Trump became the object of disdain to black law makers who took advantage of their freedom to refrain from applauding his drivel. Troy reminds us that humans all belong to same big family, so when siblings exercise their freedom to accuse and abuse each other, this family obviously becomes dysfunctional. Welcome to America, land of the freed slaves. Bottom line, what they say about freedom not being free can't be denied. Freedom is a double edged sword because it allows whites the freedom to enforce racism. What blacks really need is to be liberated from the freedom to be manipulated.

I haven't been logging in as much because I've expanded my network of websites to 4 sneaker and sports based websites. You are exactly right Mel. We have given away our power by living our lives via social media. Having your own site and building old school webrings is the way to go. I've done this with AHN and now my site and network in the course of a year and a half have grown from around 3000 visits a month to 400,000 visits a month. The sites generate income and sales and when we hit 1 million visits a month we will be in the rare air of sneaker sites that generate considerable interest. Several sneaker sites have gained investors with amounts ranging from 2 million to 50 Million dollars. As long form content becomes more important those with their own platforms are the people who will benefit. Social and search continues to change requiring paid engagement. It's not the way to build a long term business. 3rd party should be used in support of, not primarily.

@Delano Welcome, my psychic brother! Thank you for joining this one! How do you find books to read? Or if they find their way to you - how does it happen? @Delano And this one... how long did it take you to stop being self-conscious?