Troy

@daniellegfny raised a good topic. I agree with @Dee Miller's statement and @Pioneer1's statement on how to break the cycle. Independence is key. We are all dependent upon each other we can not provide food, maintain an infrastructure, protect the environment, etc, all by ourselves -- all Americans need each other for some very basic things. But in terms of our communities and especially our businesses, we can not continue to support massive corporations, we have to support our own businesses. Either we are owners or sharecroppers. As a sharecropper you create wealth for the landowner -- never yourself or community. Sharecropping is better than starving, but you have to risk starvation to be free. Most, it appears, are not willing to take the risk, and maybe they shouldn't, because they are ill-prepared to take on the risk. Independence requires a supportive community, training and education, and obviously a desire for it. ------------- Yes I noticed that problem too @daniellegfny and am working on it as I get a chance. If you know HTML you can go into source mode and insert images that way, but I appreciate that will be too technical for most

@daniellegfny, you can read the information I provided above or click the graphic for even more information. The book is a Young Adult novel. Here is a definition of Young Adult: https://aalbc.com/content.php?title=Target+Age+Group+Descriptions

Oh brother... The implications of the slave holding states on the current electoral process is clearly unknown to you, so your only recourse is to hurl an insult.

I reread what I would and don't see how you drew this conclusion. To clarify #readingblack lives here, not on Twitter. I'm happy for people to use any means at their disposal promote #readingblack or AALBC. The can use social media, email, post cards, or shout it from the highest roof-top.

"Attack," don't you think that is hyperbolic? You are starting to act like a crazed liberal 🙂 Again, you are operating on the presumption that Uber is "essential," as a result, all the conclusions you draw from this will be flawed in my view. Now, you are now saying that some government bureaucrat has deemed Uber to be essential. I'm operating on the actual definition of essential not the government's classification of "essential." Again, you are exhibiting more liberal tendencies, but relying on the government to tell you what is "essential." Are you sure you are a conservative?

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / General Young Adult Fiction / Legends, Myths, Fables / General Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Prejudice & Racism

People do this all the time.

Really? How do you come to make the broad generalization about people based solely upon their skin color? 😆 Mor >> as in "Moronic. Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Pioneer I agree with @daniellegfny you should vote. Danielle I agree with Pioneer the electoral college is not a good idea for a at least two good reasons. It was designed to give slave holding states more representation in national elections and the idea that someone can lose the popular vote by 3 million and still win is ridiculous.

Is that an action you are taking because of something I wrote?

@daniellegfny are you now saying that you never wrote that your driving a Uber (or Lyft) car service was an "essential service?"

LOL! Nah man, I just made a mistake. Surely you know what those are, right?

Over the years I’ve asked many authors, whose work I've been extremely supportive of, through book sales and promotion, to provide a link to AALBC, or any Black-owned bookseller's site, as an option for visitors to buy their books. This simple action does not typically occur to most authors, and certainly to no publisher. Usually when I ask an author to add a buy link to AALBC, they do it, and express embarrassment for not doing it sooner. Sometimes however, the request is denied, and some variation of, "I don't want to show favoritism to any given bookstore," is given as the reason. One author told me, recently, that their publisher advised them against linking to a specific store. All of the authors I've ever asked to link to a Black-owned bookstore, were already sending readers to Amazon's website to buy books. I always found it curious that none of these authors considered they were explicitly showing favoritism to Amazon. Recently the most "woke" authors and publishers believe linking to Bookshop.org provides readers with a good substitute, or alternative, to linking directly to a Black-owned bookstore's website. While linking to Bookshop is marginally better than linking to Amazon (who AALBC Boycotts), lets be be clear: Linking to bookshop.org DOES NOT help Black-owned booksellers. If you truly want to support a Black-owned bookseller — send readers to their websites, because the bookstores will make MUCH more money selling the books directly rather than linking to bookshop.org, who, like Amazon, collects the majority of profits from those sales. Today I discovered, author Robin DiAngelo, whose book, White Fragility, the #1 selling book on AALBC for August 2020, links to three (count 'em) Black-owned booksellers from her website! Now I've sold Black books on the web for the better part of 25 years. There are few, if any who have done this for as long as I have. I have also visited countless author websites during this time, easily more than 10,000. So when I say something is surprising this comes with an incredible amount of experience. Robin DiAngelo surprised me. DiAngelo is also white. Why does a highly-visible, bestselling, white author link to multiple Black-own bookstores. When Black authors, of the same stature do not? Lets look a few websites of Black authors with books that are have similar prominence as Robin's White Fragility, and see where these author's send visitors to buy their books. By the way, AALBC links to all of these author's websites and the books cited are all AALBC bestsellers. None of these authors link to AALBC or any other Black-owned bookseller. Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, sends book buyers to Bookshop Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, links to her publisher's website (who in turn links to, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Books-A-Million, Powell's, Indiebound, Hudson Booksellers, and Bookshop) Layla Saad, author of Me and White Supremacy send readers to (in the US) Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, and Bookshop Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, tell readers to go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Books-A-Million, Powell's, Indiebound, and Hudson Booksellers Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s Books, and Bookshop.org Sadly, I can do this all day... The point is not to beat up on any given author but to illustrate how pervasive this problem is. Recently Oprah Magazine published an article, “12 Authors Share Their Favorite Black-Owned Bookstores.” The article also shared books that were recently published by the authors, but when linking to places to buy these books Oprah Magazine did not send readers to any of the Black owned stores mentioned; instead readers were to a white owned bookseller! We universally support white-owned booksellers and act as if Black-owned booksellers are being boycotted. Why? Whenever a Black person would buy an identical product from a white-owned store, over a Black-owned on, we would say that was because they believed, "The white man's ice is colder." That phrase, along with the insight to recognize it as appropriate, is long gone. In 2020 the white man's ice must indeed be colder, at least based upon our collective behavior. If you want to support a Black-owned bookstore it is easy. Send readers to our stores too! Your actions speak MUCH more loudly than your words and the discrepancy is felt by the Black-owned bookstores you say you support. I think DiAngelo is on to something. Hopefully it will catch on!

AALBC Bestselling Book for July and August 2020. White Fragility by Robin Diangelo out sold all other books this period.

The software does not make any of the clubs really stand out. You kinda have know about them.

Of course it is, but that is not what you were asserting. Again, Uber drivers are not essential.

Again you are being intellectually dishonest @daniellegfny. The first video was not created by Madanna and it only has 5K views in 11 years. The other cell phone video pales in comparison and was unloaded with a scandalous title to a attract views. Besides what happened to the J Lo video?

I watched the movie twice but don't recall any mention of homosexuality. The perspective I shared (which you highlighted in red) is not conservative. Conservatives usually resort to victim blaming and say, "the media would not cover Blacks that way if they did not behave that way." Cries of media bias is reserved for white conservative dysfunction, not Black.

My goal is not to use the Twitter platform, but to use this one. Twitter is a tool to amplify this site not the other war around. Getting folks to use the #readingblack section of this site is up to the participants.

LOL I forgot about this Del! No steady boo yet.

Are you trying to say that Are all dependent upon Uber drivers to get to work? Lawd how did we even survive 10 years ago?

So show me the video where Jennifer Lopez is using lyrics like Cardi B's or behaving in the same manor. Same for Madonna. .... I'll wait.

This tells me you COMPLETELY missed my point. What I'm describing is the over representation of interracial and homosexual relationships in the media and how hetrosexual ADOS Black men are underrepresented -- unless we are providing entertainment through dysfunctional behavior, criminal activity, victims of violence, playing sports, or singing and dancing.

Exactly. E-commerce is not our strength. Bookshop is not Black-owned, but they have capitalized on our collective weaknesses. They are marginally better than Amazon. The longer term problem is that Black booksellers will never achieve true independence while they hand over their online business over to Bookshop. Amazon was appealing too in the beginning. I'm not going down the same road eith Bookshop, plus they already treat AALBC as a competitor.

It would be interesting to see what sites like ancestry.com report when it comes to the ancestries of American's. The census is self-reported and people like to tell stories. I suspect the percentage of African Ancestry would be much higher if we used DNA. Race is a social construct. Ethnicity really is a much better way of thinking about different groups of people -- it is certainly better than using skin color. @Delano the original quote may be is "Free Your Mind ... and Your Ass Will Follow" --Funkadelic (from the title of one of their early albums)

@Delano Sonia Sanchez really cares about the people, so that does not surprise me. @daniellegfny There are a variety of ways to make your books available for sale on AALBC, one of which you've taken advantage of (I believe). Check out our FAQ to learn more: https://aalbc.com/faq/#getonaalbc