Troy

Of course, some here be against it because we look, pretty shitty. The US would probably most of the top 5 over the past 400 years. Chattel Slavery, Genocide of indigenous populations, lobbing two Nukes, etc, etc. This appears to reflect a small area. There are many middle class and upper middle-class areas where you can find people these types of people who are from FBA Black families. We are the majority in these classes.

Truth be told, you both have helped immensely. You have that in common

I forgot there will almost certainly be MORE problems in the short term, so lease grant me some grace, as it is the nature of these things. It is still just little 'ole me running the beast of a website

I'll give you one guess... Money! ...yeah basically. I made that observation myself, thought I don't hear it expressed very often perhaps that is considered poor form. It is the kind of observation I would expect @Pioneer1 to comment about, albeit wrapped in some conspiracy. I was always curious about bridge when I learned it had similarities to whist which I play pretty regularly now. Bidding makes all the difference in Whist too. That or when our leaders become entertainers. Robots which can do all of that are on the way. If first one will do a longer more than kiss and hug you. That is a problem that trust will go away with the webserver I'm migrating to.

As part of the AALBC upgrade, I have to move to a dedicated server. The shared environment I current run on is not allowing to add the features I'd like to add and to make aalbc.com a truly world class website. This discussion forum may experience a brief outage (hours not days). It is also possible some posts may be lost depending upon when you make them. So please do not share anything you do not want to lose until I give the all-clear. Finally, I will probably migrate to newer discussion forum software (...ugh, I know). The problem with this software is that they are pushing upgrades to a cloud-based solution which is much more expensive. I'm basically broke; so, I (1) can't afford the software and (2) I don't think it is worth it. There are better solutions that I can more easily integrate with aalbc.com and I will pursue one of those. I'm open to suggestions. This software will remain in place, but I will probably lock down the discussion forums and encourage people to begin using whatever new platform I launch. I believe this is the best chance for increasing the number of engaged active users of the site and ultimately building something that someone else or another team and actually maintain after I'm gone. (Sidebar: in the longer term I doubt websites will continue to be a thing, but there will always be a need for to Black-operated and owned platforms we Black people communicate and curate out culture we can't leave this up to Elon and Mark).

...8 years later. I've added Beyond the Hurt by Akilah Trinay to the website. She caught my eye for two more reasons. (1) She is opening a bookstore RP Books (2) Her publishing company ReVision Publishing was selected for IBPA's Innovative Voices Program The other sisters selected include Dr. Artika R. Tyner, who hit my radar years ago (she is Ted Talk large) and has been doing big things in the MN for a long time and Kelsea Johnson is new to me But I'll check here out. I'm a board member of the IBPA (I was not involved in this program); I point this out because I string recommend the organization to any author or indie publisher who is serious about the business of book publishing.

So the joke was lost on the AI. Interesting.

Let’s make April 7 a nationwide celebration honoring and uplifting Black-owned bookstores across the country.

Exactly. That is why I created Huria Search I literarily brought it back yesterday. It was down for several years, but as I'm revamping the site I'm bringing back features that I abandoned -- even if a few people will use and benefit from it. It took me all of 5 minutes to bring it back. AI made this possible. AI is reminiscent of the early days of the web. This time around fewer people will take advantage of it and the benefit to individuals will not be very long.

That last for a few minutes relatively speaking. Just long enough for me and many others to get excited about the potential only to have it usurped by the folks maniacally fixed on money. The same thing will happen with AI; money will be the only motivator in how it is used and criminals will have unfettered access to use it to fuck over the world. Today I resurrected a Search Engine, Huria Search, which only queries Black-owned websites. There are hundreds on Black owned sites that are indexed. It uses Google's tech in the way it was originally designed -- just to direct you to websites. It used to sit on it's own domain huria.org, but I allowed the domain to lapse. I have pulled the search engine it back into AALBC.com. I naively thought Black folks, especially the website owners themselves would support the search engine -- maybe embed it into their own sites. That never happened website owners actually stopped linking out to other websites as Google told them it would potentially hurt them in search -- as a result it became virtually impossible for people to discover another website from a website. I have NEVER stopped linking to other website because, despite what Google says that was the beauty of the web. I sure you will not find ANY Black site that links to more Black sites than AALBC.com.

I watched it last night. I'm sure, in it's day, it was a remarkable feat to produce and film not to mention 40 others. Micheaux worked spanned the period of the Harlem Renaissance. I know the Piney Woods School, part of the film, is real and I believe there was a prominent Dr. Vivian during the period as well. I have to check out Body and Soul now

Becoming have sold more than 5 million hardcover copies since it was released. In fact, last month February 2026, it was the 8th bestselling nonfiction book by a Black person in America. The book came out in November of 2008. That one book could provide an entire family a fabulous lifestyle anywhere on Earth -- one book.

@Pioneer1 I've said it before and I'll say it again. This site would be nothing without other people, including people like you The WWW is a place that rewards those who support the "other man" and not the Brother man. It is a very perverse and pernicious in this regard, because it works against all of us. Consider the fact that many Black people spend a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to understand a learn how to "work" some social media platform owned by a white, male billionaire who not only does not give two shits about us, but in most cases actively works against us. Meanwhile, Black platforms struggle and fold. I know I make it because of Black people who support the site in big and small ways -- it is the collective effort that makes the difference. Check out the book Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell it addresses the issue of "There are certain ways we relate to other human beings that seem to be "in" us; ingrained in our psyche." in a clever way.

... I can't. I can't go down these rabbit holes of conspiracies who are these people in these videos? Help me understand why anyone should invest the time to listen to anything these guys have to say. And no, I did not watch either of the videos.

Yes, and these arbitrary divisions make fighting amongst ourselves so much easier.

Yes. Gemni is much better at working my website. I've completely overhauled it an am now working on new features, but sometimes it is really frustrating. Right now I'm wrestling with the account login feature. I'm not aware of any. The dominance of those that exist make it impossible for any new entrants unless that are back by a government. How do you compete with someone who can build a data center in low earth orbit. Not surprising considering the training data -- our culture

While I was never a fan of separating ourselves from the global Black diaspora, would not have characterised it as "dangerous" .... at least until now.

No cognitive dissonance is required to hold more than two thoughts in my head at the same time. That is an understatement my dear. Yeah, apply your subject pioneer-race-scale to these women and enlighten us. All the while proving the absurdity different race

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if Bill Gates tried to secretly slip his wife drugs to treat her for an STD he contracted -- these billionaires are capable of anything. Now Bezos has more money than he knows what to do with, could eviscerating coverage of Trump, so that will make it possible for him to make more money, be his motivation. We know Bezos prevented the Washinton Posts editorial department from endorsing Kamala Harris -- despite saying he would keep his hands off the Post reporting and editorial...

for the thousandth time, race is a social construct, not based in genetics. The concept of race should be dispense with because it serves no other purpose than to facilitate racism. Black people are subhuman and it’s OK to enslave them. This belief makes racism “real” and something we need to contend with, but that does not mean it has a basis in genetics. “Race” is obviously wrong indeed the reason for this website is to combat racism. One can apply the same argument to gender, which is a social construct. All women should wear dresses wear and lipstick and be subservient to men. This is all socially determined and have nothing to do with genetics. Being a female is genetic.

Oh wait, are you playing that non-binary gender is a social construct game? I’m surprised that you you buy into that but can’t fathom that race is a social construct. So yes, you are correct. Being a male or a woman is a social construct. But not in the same way that race is. 99% of the people running around with penises are going to be “men” with Y chromosomes. What astonishes me is your ability to wrap your head around that, but you can’t fathom there is no genetic basis for race. Go figure…

Oh yes, I remember that character! If I ever knew her name, I’d forgotten it. Makes me wanna go back and rewatch that film.

I'm learning one cannot have a meaningful conversation with others on a given subject if there is not a basic foundation of shared knowledge. Again, without a basic foundation confusion ensues. What exacerbates the problem is when one is not interested in learning. Again, if you really understood you would know the answer to the question.

The poor guy is in capable of doing this... BTW I @aka Contrarian I watched that episode of the CBS TV series, East Side, West Side last night. I thought it was excellent. It had the feel of movie not an episode of a TV series. Again, I never heard of this series. The real star of this episode was the sister (I acknowledge @Pioneer1 would not consider her Black, but she is a Soul Sister to me) in the foreground in the image below, Diana Sands. I never herd of her either but, she was foine and put on a great performance. I learned died at only 39 years of age.

I was in junior high school around 11 or 12. All of us kids used to fight at that age and younger. But I avoided fights because the kids that want to fight me, were gangs and I didn’t have any kind of back up and I wasn’t down to catch up beating from a bunch of other dudes. I remember this one punk walk by me in the hall and we collided and his notebook fell down and he told me to pick it up. I was like why and this girl I liked was a witness and this guy was in a gang I could’ve easily have beat him in a fight but again he was a tough guy cause he had his boys. I picked up the book and kept moving. That guy is probably in jail now.