Troy

Again I hear you and I recognize that many feel you can not use our masters tools for liberation. I'ma bit more pragmatic. Few have the stomach, energy, or wherewithal to plan and execute a full on revelation. This that will happen and be successful is magical thinking in my opinion, so we are are left with working the the cards we are given. Would would be the optimal outcome of your race war, revolution, whatever you call it @Pioneer1? @daniellegfny, I don't know what Boyce Watkins's political party is, but is positions, in the video above, pretty much mirror what you've been saying...

Dude you are changing the argument as we go. Sexual harassment is bad. Expressing interest in someone that is reciprocated is good (though tricky in a professional work environment) Also you like to use the words ANY and NEVER when your argument is weak, simply because it is difficult to prove that any situation involving humans will ALWAYS be true or NEVER to true.

I hear you @Pioneer1, but you make is sound like I'M out of touch. Remember I grew up in the inner city. Sure I know what a decent life in New York City is like, I have not had a reported income of more than $40K since I left Wall Street. That is why I got a nice $1,200 check with Donald Trump's signature on it. Sure this year it will be very difficult to report less than $40K, but it is not like I'm as out of touch as you make it seem. I live in the world man, so while I have never been to jail or prison. I know a lot of people you have several are family members. As you mentioned I recognized many of the problems with our culture and fight to remedy what is wrong in my little corner of it. However I do not think a complete revolution will result in a better outcome for us as a people. I think our best opportunities rest in improving the systems we have in place and getting rid of the pieces that don't server us. If all of use supported local indie business and stop using Amazon. Our communities would improve overnight -- no revolution necessary.

OK can you explain, concisely, what this civil war looks like. The temporary protest in Seattle and other cities do rise to the level of a civil war. In my world white people are showning a great deal of support for Black folks supporting our businesses (including AALBC) and marching in the streets of Seattle and other cities (something I'm not doing). Of course there are racist white folks, but will they launch a race war, that they can not possibly win, I strongly doubt it.

So why don't you cast a vote for 45 since that is who you want to win? You know your belief of an imminent civil war sounds like a paranoid delusion, right? Have you expressed these ideas to others you know you well, in the real world? What do they say about your beliefs. Based upon other things you've written i presume you believe it will be a race war? Is that right? The employees if facebook are gonna take arms against the NBA players that sort of thing, huh? It is really interesting that Google put this video in front of me. Looks like Dr. Boyce Watkins is not voting either. He does not think keeping 45 out of office is a good enough reason to vote for a ticket that has Kamala Harris on it. He also answered my question "What would you think if I married a white woman."

@Pioneer1 who are you voting for?

@Pioneer1 the scenarios you described are textbook sexual harassment, so yes my assumption is based upon the fact that mist women dislike this. "Flirting" is not defined as "[seeking] sexual favors from them quite openly calling them baby and staring them up and down..." It seems to me you don't know what flirting means. I'm sure women find husbands at work but i doubt many choice someone who sexually harrassed them.

LOL, I will not judge all republicans or conservatives based upon Danielle's statements. I know many conservatives none of them share Danielle's perspective on this issue. A couple I know pretty well are in law enforcement and they told me early on that this was going to be serious and they were right. The media give these fringe perspectives too much coverage and it give people the impression that the are valid. The nuts running around talking about mandates to wear a mask go against their constitutional rights need help. At least Danielle will wear a mask. Yes I know people copy things from here and other places in the site. There are anomalies in my some of my lists I have not removed because it is a signature of sorts. That is how I can tell that my book store list, for example, was copied widely. People including those that write for major sites often don't attribute sources or even do a cursory check when they copy stuff from other sites. Sometimes people will here will cite a source but then you have to go 3 or more levels before you find the original source, but then the information share is usually a distortion of the original material. So @daniellegfny is 788,000 death enough for you to think the current precautionary actions are sufficient? How about 1 million dead. Do I hear 1.5 million. Still not an apocalypse, but pretty staggering considering most of these deaths and suffering could have been avoided.

You are muddling a wide variety of things and it is cause for some, with all due respect, sloppy thinking. Sure our genetics gave rise to our ability to use language, but the language we use is a function of culture not genetics. Gender is a function of genetics. How we express our gender through behavior and dress is a function of culture. In a different culture you would be speaking a different language, wearing a dress (a kilt) and agruing how that behavior is genetically defined. Open your mind my brother humans are not as narrowly defined as you'd like them to be.

@daniellegfny, the steps that have been taken so far have averted a great number of deaths. Only God knows how many more would have died it nothing was done. The pandemic is not yet over. Again, you use strong language like "apocalypse," but no one reasonable is saying this pandemic is an apocalypse. So I'm not gonna try to defend that. So far, in least then a year, 788K people have died and countless others are suffering long term illnesses. If everyone believed as you do Danielle, the deaths would have been much higher. All of the economic slowdown you lament because of lockdowns, would have been a moot point because the increased number of deaths would have crippled the economy even more. How many people have to die before you take this seriously?

Sure it seems to me that people flirt more openly on blue collar jobs. That does not mean that people like it. They tolerate it. I'm not saying the behavior is not present in a corporate environment, but most of the employees know enough to behave professionally. Maybe because they are better educated or come from a culture where the behavior is frowned upon. Both environments (#1 and #2) sound like horrible environments for a woman (anyone) to work in. I have never worked a job where people behaved that way. But I've heard other describe this. People tolerate it because they need the job, other become quite adept of navigating these situation -- even taking advantage of them. Screwing a guy just to get ahead (pun not intended).

True, but you're ascribing these difference to genetics and therefore race (as you understand it). I don't agree with that. I believe it is more a function of culture.

Perhaps... I treat people as individuals.

@Pioneer1 it depends upon the environment. At work you would not say a woman looks fat for the same reason that you would not say she looks fine. Both statements objectify women and are inappropriate today in a work environment. Now on these forums or a nightclub or bar the rules are a little different -- say what you feel. If you say something some disagrees with you'll be called on it. I believe this is more a function of culture and power imbalance. In places when men are more powerful than women you'll see men behaving in an overtly sexual manner to women.

@daniellegfny "Lurker" describes someone who reads the forum but does not post comments. Posters, like you, are important for any discussion forum (thank you), but lurkers are important too because they provide the traffic required to sustain the website. No, that not it. My emotion attachment is to Black people. So when people do things, that I perceive will hurt us, I have an issue with that. There was a guy who posted here for just before you arrived. His name was Kareem. Like you he minimized covid-19, but he was in far deeper denial. He even maintained a blog in which is said that Black people were immune and that the deaths would never reach even a fraction of what they have already reached. I called him out on each provable piece of information shared. He ultimately he deleted all of his posts and left. I believe he was a true "troll." Danielle I don't think you are a troll, but i do believe that you have influenced by them. That Candice Owens meme you shared is evidence of this (do you know if the quite actually belongs to Owens?).

I'm no fan of Harris either, but you have three choices; Vote for Trump; Vote for Biden; or Sit out the election What are you gonna do @AJJones1007? Personally, I'ma hold my nose and do a #2 (pun intended).

I appreciate your candor @Jeffrey I wish more people would express themselves on the subject of book here, so thanks. Yeah, I was a diver back in the day the best in NYC Public schools my Sr. Year so I found Jabri Jumps cute yes the author is white https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Gaia+Cornwall in this case the author's race was immaterial to me. Same goes for Ezra Jack Keats, Diane Dillion, etc. This is America -- everthing is unfair to us especially in the book world. If you really believe in what you're created you'll figure it out. There is no other way. It will be hard, but try not to reinvent the wheel completely, learn from others.

Why don't you use this reasoning for you understanding of race? It wasn't the error that tells me that you are not a mathematician, how you interpret numbers reveals this. For example when you write, It just additional evidence. I won't waste time trying to explain to you why, on it's face, this is false, because you'll simply come up with reasons to dismiss it or ignore it like my reaction to your belief you can calculate covid death rate with the total population and the number of deaths. AIDS and Ebola require the exchange of bodily fluids. You can get covid19 from touching a surface or just being the same room with someone who has it. FAR more people will die from covid19 in any given period of time than will die from Elbola or AIDS. Maybe a few people close to you must die before this registers. Again, I know i'm wasting my time with you, but maybe some lurker who holds your belief will reconsider their position as a result of reading this exchange.

There are a couple of great friendships I have with a few white guys. If i treated them with the same distrust you would have my life would be less rich.

... and another thing @Mel Hopkins you know AALBC does not get get pre-publication galleys for any of the "big books" that come out. Books like Caste or How to Be an Anitracist , etc -- books that I sell a bazillion copies of... If I get one I have to request it every time. where white owned store get multiple copies final copies -- just because. I don't have to do this with indie publishers, like Akashic Books or Lee & Low or Red Sea Press or Black Classic Press or Kensington Books or Blue Nile I could go on ... Indie presses reach out and nurture relationships. with me. One exception, for me is is Amistad an Imprint of HarperCollins, they are exceptional, but that is due to the imprint's editorial director leader Tracy Sherrod. Our course I can go on about how Black booksellers are over looked by the large publishers for events. t is also true that big name Black authors themselves do not want to do Black bookstore events! In fact big name authors should, follow Walter Mosely's lead and do a lot more to support Black platforms. It is not just that the "Big 5" publishers do not give large advances to authors. Besides writers like Jesmyn Ward and NK Jemisen quickly earn out their advances and make a pretty penny on royalties. In fact, that is really what the conversation that should be -- forget advance size -- how much are Black authors earning and why, because the vast majority of published authors, or any color, do not get large advances. Where are The Big Five spending their ad dollars? Where are they touring their authors, do their in house publicists have a clue on how to reach Black readers? Do they even know the Black stores, sites, events to support utilize? At the end of the day the industry is steeped in classism founded in a culture of racism. the people who can made the changes are the ones writing Dana's check. Dana sounds serious about trying to make changes. I'm willing to give her a chance, but I'm definitively not holding my breath.

... you're learning 🙂

Do you understand why you can't perform the calculation that way? Why do you reject the CDC's guidelines and data? You obviously are not a mathematician; are you an epidemiologist? Have you even reviewed the CDC's guidelines, or just do you just rely on social media memes for your information?

So I'm supoosed to base my life on your paranoid imagination? Speaking of gators this photo was taken from my patio. The garage is on the otherside of the house.

@daniellegfny spare us the big calculator graphic it does not bolster your bad math, reasoning, and data. You simply refuse to see propoganda for what it is and are contorting the lie into your reality. Maybe @Pioneer1's explaination for you doing this is correct, because I have no clue.

If you are a bookseller and do not have a copy of Isabel Wilkerson's new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, in your hands right now, you are probably gonna have to wait until the end the month to score any copies -- assuming you placed your order soon enough in advance to get copies before they sell out again. That is unless of course you are Amazon. Now Amazon is always doing something devilish when popular books are really scarce. Today they are selling a paperback version of Caste, for $41.18 -- more than the $32 retail price of the hardcover. OK Amazon will argue that they are not actually selling the book, but Amazon is providing the platform and profiting from the transactions. Now Caste has been published in hardcover and audiobook formats, but not paperback. So how is Amazon selling paperback version of this book? Are they selling pre-publication galleys (you are not allowed to sell galleys)? Are they selling a bootlegged version (piracy is illegal)? Did Random House give them the exclusive right to sell this the paperback version (that would not surprise me)? Any ideas how are is selling a paperback version of Caste?