Troy

Absolutely and it also resulted in the unnecessary detainment and even arrest of a disproportionate number of Black people -- usually men. Have you even been stopped by the police for no apparent reason and had you car searched -- I have. It is always, "we were looking for someone fitting your description." Once, while having my car searched, I complained about the number of times I'd been pulled over to a sympathetic looking police office (a Black Hispanic woman) and she gave me the same line. Then over the police radio someone said they pulled over the suspect driving a car like mine. She said "see," I said "OK" the three police cars that had me hemmed up took off. But I know plenty of young men who were stopped for no other reason other than walking down the street! One of my neighbors a good kid was actually arrested -- for not having a form of identification -- a teenager!

I don't know where you live @Mzuri, but your statement is hyperbolic. Overall we live in a relatively safe control. Now if you are talking about a place like New York City ghettos 40 years ago, were there were thousands of murders a year and mugging and larceny was objectively out of control I'd say you'd have a point. Are you actually afraid to go to church or a restaurant with our a gun? It is mind boggling but the situation is not intractable. Texas politicians are a strange group. Didn't they just make abortions illegals there? What is the difference? Really? With all the Black people killed by white people, like Arbery, what condition needed to be removed to prevent his murder?

Yeah it was pretty cool to be recognized in the industry trade publication so soon after launching. PW has consistently covered the Black Book Ecosystem over the years. Still it would be better if we could tell more our our story -- Unless you are telling your our story it ain't being told correctly. That reading list page should be redirected here: The Coffee Will Make You Black Book Club’s Complete Reading List (aalbc.com) Over the years numerous people have volunteered to moderate our book club, but no one, other than Thumper, stuck around very long. @Mzuri the post from old discussion forum are still on line, and indexed in search engines, the problem is that the software used to organized them no longer works so you can not follow a conversation. I did a search and found this, Thumper's Corner - Archive 2004 I'll see if I can dig up the rest of these and restore the archives in a way that a human can peruse them. I wish I could bring them onto the AALBC domain, but if I do that I risk Google killing my website. Seriously, Google banned the entire domain from serving advertisements years ago -- an algorithmically driven decision that was final, without review or recourse, and permanent. Google's software could have easily dealt with any issues -- they just did not give a f*ck.

Here is the oldest article I could find mentioning AALBC on PW’s site, “A Diverse Market for African-American Books Keeps Growing” by Carol Taylor, PW Dec 13, 1999. Again, they have chronicled the Black Book Ecosystem longer than any other entity -- Though PW is not Black-owned, and are a trade publication, they have been an asset to our community.

This is a brief article from Publishers Weekly (PW), which is the largest publishing trade publication in the country, perhaps the world. The article mentions several Black-owned website -- all of which predate AALBC by at least a -- and AALBC is 25 years old! I have been interviewed by PW several times over the years. One has to recognize that PW is the best chronicler of the Black Book World that is still in print. There have been others, who did the job better, like the Quarterly Black Review (QBR) and Black Issues Book Review (BIBR), but these publications did not last very long, have both been out of print for years. We have lost many publications that covered Black Books. The impact on the culture is significant, because the void remains largely unfilled. I try to do my part with AALBC, but it is not nearly enough to make up for what we have lost. PW carries on; I was surprised to learn, recently that PW has been in publication for 150 years. I decided to try to find old article covering Black folks, "Web Black History" was the oldest article I could find. The online archive does not appear to go back more than 25 years. Of the websites cited in the article only one remains active, Black History. I became friendly with the site's owner, Dante Lee, years ago. At the time, he was just a kid really (in his 20s), but he managed several of the largest Black websites and owned many desirable domain names. Unfortunately, Google's search algorithm killed the discoverability of many websites back in 2011 (the graphic below depicts the impact on both blackhistory.com and aalbc.com). AALBC's traffic did not fully recover for another 5 years. The lost growth of AALBC and countless other website is incalculable. Black-owned newspapers were devastated. The article's author, Calvin Reid, has a senior level position with PW today and I will reach out to him to see what I can find older articles on Black in publishing that are older.

@Mzuri (anyone) what do you think about Dyson’s critique of Obama?

I hear this argument a lot, and I image it comes from folks who have never been robbed by someone else carrying a gun. I have and know others who have. When you are ambushed by a gunman he usually takes you by surprise. Unless you are Quick Draw McGraw, or are walking around with you gun out with your finger on the trigger, you simply won't have have time to pull your piece in self-defense. Now after you are robbed you can shoot the guy as he leaves, but are you really gonna risk killing someone else because you been robbed? The argument that diamond couriers, and others like them, are not exceptions I would tolerate -- if guns were completely illegal. There already too many guns out there and they are far to easy to acquire, arming more people is absolutely the wrong thing to do. I know culturally people feel very differently about this and it is not likely to happen. In the meantime will continue to have more innocent children's being killed in schools. The notion that the solution is to arm teachers is alarming to me. We already have schools with armed police officers, where we require students to walk through metal detectors. Where does it end -- why not arm the students while we are at it?

Book Review: Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin ADD TO CART Buy the Audiobook 1 Time AALBC.com Bestselling Book! Publication Date: Sep 14, 2021 List Price: $26.95 Format: Hardcover, 272 pages Classification: Nonfiction ISBN13: 9780393651904 Imprint: W. W. Norton & Company Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Parent Company: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Borrow from Library Read a Description of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

Yeah keep us posted about your NFT sales. I recently abandoned an NFT based business idea. Art seems to have the most tracking, but it seems like a fad at this point.

At @ProfD I'm with you in failing to understand why anyone, even Brits -- especially the Black one -- care about the royal family. While @Mzuri provides a case for her specific situation, it does not help me understand the general case, for most people who care about the royals would not have the same things in common. I have yet to meet a heterosexual male that cared about princess diana and the royal family. Has anyone? I don't think the Brits fluoridate their water.

They say they believe Arbery was a burglar because their have been a rash of crimes. I would if there was enough crime in the area even support the suspicion. In Florida the vast majority of people I encounter in Florida are very nice. However Florida was the only place I've been when white men behave negatively toward me for not reason. I'm thinking about two situations in the past 10 years and both men could not be reasoned with and they were both in the wrong. I just chalked it up to old fashioned racism it is a now win situation. One guy threatened to get his gun and I told him to "do what you need to do." I turn and kept walking and think to myself this is how Black men get shot -- over nonsense. I understand that Arbery entered a home that was under construction. I've done this dozens of times. I guess technically it is wrong, fortunately no one has ever shot me over doing it. Here in Tulsa a man was shot, while riding his motorcycle, by a a motorist. They can only presume it was a road rage incident. If it were up to me no one would be allowed to leave their home with a hand gun, and doing so would result in immediate imprisonment.

20TH LEGACY AWARDS CEREMONY ANNOUNCES WINNERS, FINALISTS, MERIT HONOREES The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation announced the winners and finalists of the 2021 Legacy Awards and paid tribute to three pioneers in the Black literary community: Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, best known for her novels Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun; Ibram X. Kendi, an author, historian, and anti-racist scholar; and the Calabash International Literary Festival, a literary festival with roots in Jamaica. Author Tiphanie Yanique presented the North Star Award – the foundation’s highest honor for career accomplishment and inspiration to the writing community to Ms. Adichie. Author and Hurston/Wright Board of Directors member, Dr. Andre Perry, presented Dr. Kendi with the Ella Baker Award in recognition for his exceptional work in advancing social justice. Dr. Chris Abani, a Guggenheim Award-winning author, presented the Madam C.J. Walker Award Winner to Calabash for the organization’s exceptional innovation in supporting and sustaining Black literature. The award was accepted by poet and co-founder of the festival, Kwame Dawes. More than 200 literary stars, readers and representatives of the publishing industry, media, arts, politics, and academia attended the virtual event on Friday, October 15. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones served as Master of Ceremony. The highlight of the evening was the naming of the winners of the juried awards for books by Black authors published in 2020 in the categories of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and debut fiction. The winners and finalists of the Legacy Awards are as follows: Poetry Winner: Seeing the Body, Rachel Eliza Griffiths (WW Norton & Company) In the words of the judges: “Seeing the Body is expert in its grief. The judges were taken with the plunging depths of feeling, the cenote of sorrow cratering the speaker’s life. Yes, the mother has passed, but she was here, lived a life, and how can the speaker expect to continue on? In these deftly crafted poems, Griffiths teaches us that the eye of mourning is not calm, but a bracing against the wall of the storm.” Finalists: Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount (Four Way Books) In the words of the judges: “Blount’s creative and daring introspections ask us as readers to look at the confluence of passions, prejudices, and histories that make up our worlds. Ultimately, the lasting impression of Fantasia for the Man in Blue is its captivating imagery, the enraptured and dynamic dance of language and meaning. Pale Colors in a Tall Field, Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) In the words of the judges: “These are capacious poems, their capacity, generosity and sight rest as much in what is said as in what is not. Heat radiates out in a fanning field of need and desire and possible nexts. These pieces hold an interior space for us and the mutating ‘us’ that we meet in the world at large. What reminders of how quickly logic and legibility can shift.” Nominees: Jump the Clock: New and Selected Poems, Erica Hunt (Nightboat Books) Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, John Murillo (Four Way Books) White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, Kiki Petrosino (Sarabande) Nonfiction Winner: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain (Liveright) In the words of the judges: “Chatelain’s Franchise does what the best histories do. It takes a quotidian fact of our everyday lives and de-familiarizes it, showing with great aplomb how fast food franchises have always been bound up with the politics of race in Black America. With great care for the complications and nuance that shape our communities’ relationships to fast food, Chatelain emerges as one our nation’s most consequential historians, able through how she helps us to understand the path, to imagine what we might need in the future.” Finalists: Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, Vincent Brown (Belknap / Harvard University Press) In the words of the judges: “Tacky’s Revolt is kind of arresting history, one that reminds us that our people have always been deeply thoughtful and critical purveyors, practitioners, and theoreticians of resistance to the challenges of empire. In these times, where we find ourselves still fighting for our very lives, being reminded that tactical sophistication in warfare is a long-standing part of our political lineage, buoys us for the battles ahead. We will be contending with the implications of this work for many decades to come.” The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth and Power, Deirdre Mask (Profile Books Ltd / Griffin) In the words of the judges: “The Address Book completely upends our contemporary notions of what it means to put the places where from whence we come, “on the map.” Our addresses are never just a number, but are part of a vast history of place, geography, public health, discovered and attended to by curious adventurers across time and space, trying to make sense of where we are, in every way that that can be meant. Mask takes us along for an equal parts thrilling and meandering journey, helping us every step of the way to take nothing about our sense of place for granted.” Nominees: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo (Seal Press) The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, Ainissa Ramirez (MIT Press) Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, Natasha Tretheway (Ecco Books) Fiction Winner: Telephone, Percival Everett (Graywolf Press) In the words of the judges: “A quiet domestic novel about grief and loss, an acerbic, Rothian campus tale, a quiet mediation on the power of storytelling itself and an experiment in the “authority of the reader” — one never knows what one is going to get with Everett. Sometimes it’s all of the above. Always it’s astonishing, a novel revealing deep and penetrating truths about the human condition. Always it is worth your time.” Finalists: Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (West Virginia University Press) In the words of the judges: “Clark deftly traverses the ground between horror and farce, between the historical and the fantastical, creating real monsters to illuminate monstrous behavior without letting human beings off the hook.” The Freedom Artist, Ben Okri (Akashic Books) In the words of the judges: “Part dystopian warning, part fable, The Freedom Artist is most of all a compelling meditation on the fundamental human need for storytelling and the danger that ensues when that need is fed with cynical narratives meant to restrain and control instead of liberate.” Nominees: These Bodies, Morgan Christie (Tolsun Books) Book of the Little Axe, Lauren Francis-Sharma (Atlantic Monthly Press) Black Bottom Saints, Alice Randall (Amistad Books) Debut Fiction Winner: Remembrance, Rita Woods (Forge Books) In the words of the judges: “Remembrance engages in substantive ways with historic and present-day events—the yellow fever epidemic, slave uprisings and revolutions, the Underground Railroad, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti—while creating symmetry in the complex stories of four women who come into their power after catastrophic events. Using fantastical elements, Woods deftly writes a compelling tale focused on how the women use their power to create safe spaces within a world that attempts to destroy them and take their freedom.” Finalist: The Coyotes of Carthage, Steven Wright (Ecco Books) In the words of the judges: “Sharp and witty, The Coyotes of Carthage engages with our present-day politics and shines a light on the inner workings of political campaigns. This rich and detailed book probes how dark money changes campaigns, as well as the conscience of a man fighting for one last chance to turn his career around.” Nominee: Black Sunday, Tola Rotimi Abraham (Catapult) The judges Poetry: Chanda Feldman, Donika Kelly, Asiya Wadud Nonfiction: Brittney Cooper, CJ Farley, Ron Stodghill Fiction: Clyde W. Ford, Kim McLarin, Dinaw Mengestu Debut Fiction: David Anthony Durham, Amina Gautier, Donna Hemans

Hi @Milton I do not see this book on the page you linked to. What is the ISBN of the book?

@Mzuri, I still have not looked at that guy’s page on my desktop. What is a “PITA?” Nevermind, I just occurred to me. Any who, so maybe (I’ll still confirm it) you found an Amazon page with a link to an external website. Amazon would still is exercise too much control over Black books. what you are failing to consider is the fact that i visited a page with unlinked URLs that i thought you apparently considered hyperlinks. i honestly don’t remember asking you to build authors pages. I’m not saying i don’t do it i just don’t remember. At any rate I did not take into account your knowledge of the web — that should have been obvious. Also consider the fact the many of your previous supporting links did not pan out, so there may have been a bias.

Agreed. I just don’t think we should continue the sink resources into a lost proposition. The white man played the “long game of attrition” and won. Let’s move on. They won’t even pay the victims of the Tulsa race massacre what is owed and some of them are still alive. That is fight still with waging. Their situation is completely different. Their Holocaust happened recently. more importantly, They have always had America’s support — a benefit we have never enjoyed as a people. This statement Is in the dictionary, the definition of, Magical Thinking 😉

Do you need a boatload of money to run for office, You are beholden beholden whoever gave you the most money. If you happen to have enough money to fund your own campaign you’ll only be interested in yourself. The entire political process has been perverted beyond repair. Literally everything is subpar, inefficient, and costs more than it should.

Thanks anonymous!

What is strange to me about living here in Tulsa is that I hear very little about the GAP Band I work a block away from Greenwood ave and Archer Street which is the G and A the GAP band’s name. I have not heard about Ronnie’s passing may he RIP.

That is because management companies automate everything. Be 5 seconds late and there is and treat to evict notice on your door. I hear you on the crypto mining. Based upon what I know it is difficult and expensive. At least for Bitcoin. i recognize @Mzuri’s excitement. Mzuri keep up appraised of your progress. I’d truly hope you make some profit.

Not necessarily. Consider a scenario where where you have; one person who needs a tremendous amount of resources to be saved and another group say 10 people who are less seriously injured, but would all perish if the available resources were used to save one life. Supposed that one person was 90 years old and the group of 10 were young adults. We had an agenda, we had many agendas. The problem is getting Black folks to follow it. Consider Tavis Smileys' Covenant With Black America. Basically most of us do what Mzuri mentioned below: This is the American way. Face it America does not have it in her to play Black folks reparations. I think it is naïve to think they will hand over anything to ADOS. IMHO it is a waste of energy and resources All of the enslaved African, and all of their children are dead, and the vast majority of their grandchildren are already dead. The rest are intermingled with groups who would not qualify for reparations or are doing quite well financially - despite the historical hardship. After more than a century and a half later why any Black person believes THIS government would directly compensate any of us for the enslavement of their ancestors is beyond me. We can help ourselves if we think about more than just ourselves.

Yeah I don’t see the links on my cell phone. I just see text. I’ll check from my Desktop in the a.m. but I hope it not, yet another, wild goose chase. I’m fine thanks for asking.

Perhaps but clearly not everyone does...

I did not know I was arguing. The page you posted did not have hyperlinks that is why I explained provided the clarification. Still, as far as I know, Amazon does not allow hyperlinks to external site - which was the point you refuted, but your example did not prove otherwise. I have to approve all guest posts. Some I reject because they are obvious span other I allow. I took a moment to comment on this guys post because it was illustrative of a what I think is a problem. People coming to a booksellers site a posting links to Amazon. If Amazon respected by allowing links back to AALBC I might not take such a firm stance.

Probably, but it would an interesting stat to know.

The complete willingness to reject new information and hold tight to an idea was surprising to me too. But I do not think it is inability to think abstractly. For example, I used to believe what @Pioneer1 believed about race. Most of us did. However after the human genome was mapped and it became crystal clear that was no generic basis for race, I dispensed with the idea as well as all the conclusions based upon that idea -- which required a substantial change in one's world view. That is the part that I think people find difficult to to do, change their world view. It is hard -- especially when the new and more accurate idea does not dove tail with your personal experience. After you present people with facts that run counter to their world view and they refuse to change -- that is a person who will not incorporate who will never accept the new information. Indeed they will twist anything they read to fit their old and incorrect understanding. One would that it is easier to accept the truth, but for some it is far more difficult. In fact it is abstract thinking that make it possible to distort reality and hold onto a fiction.