Troy

Four of Dr. Claud Anderson’s Most Popular Books, including a hardcover copy of PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America, are now available on AALBC. Of course you may buy these books individually.

Yes @Delano?

A society dominated by oligarchs and a legacy of structural racism.

I bet that was done to protect these home and other assets from the inevitable civil suit. They can't, short of a vaccine. But they will, cause our economy is service based. People have to eat out and get the "nails did."

Those who have rarely been the target of organized police gangsterism are once again lecturing those who have about how best to respond to it. Be peaceful, they implore, as protesters rise up in Minneapolis and across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd. This, coming from the same people who melted down when Colin Kaepernick took a knee — a decidedly peaceful type of protest. Because apparently, when white folks say, “protest peacefully,” we mean “stop protesting.” Read the entire article by Tim Wise. https://medium.com/@timjwise/violence-never-works-really-e0af884c03b4

I have not watched the video either, nor do intend to seek it out to watch. I did see the photo. Yes, they also find this evil entertaining and it drives revenue. This country is unraveling before our eyes. Hopefully we will work this out. The rich like Mark, Jeff, and 45 have little to worry about. They will do quite well. The rest if, us especially those with darker complexions, will need to be prepared for a world of hurt. Some of us think we are experiencing this now ... you haven't seen anything yet. Hopefully we'll pull ourselves together, at least in time to keep the planet inhabitable for human life.

I have been asked by a number of people to make it easy to buy all the books on the popular Top 150 Books for Black Children. Here is the link: https://store.aalbc.com/top-150-african-american-childrens-books/ You can now buy them all in one shot at AALBC (free shipping and no sales tax in 49 states):

Yes, indeed this is a conservative talking point. The difference, and this is a big one, is that the police are paid to serve and PROTECT us, not murder us. Just face it man you are, overall, a pretty conservative Brother. That does not make you bad. As I've gotten older I've been a bit more conservative as well. Sorry to hear about your ordeal @Chevdove.

😇 whaddya talkin' 'bout? We used to own more platforms and had more control over how we were portrayed in the media, but much of the is gone today.

...oh brother. @Pioneer1 ok I concede the mask is beneficial -- even some of the silly ones, including the klansman's

This is a consequence of our education.

Liberals are supportive, not critical, of the alphabet people.

This came to me in an email from the American Booksellers Association. They host a weekly Zoom conference "Coffee Break." It strikes me as absurd that an organization purportedly advocating from booksellers would expressly prohibit conversation about boycotting the monopoly Amazon. Damn, it should be the ONLY freaking thing they are talking about! But Amazon can bring a publisher to it's knees by refusing to carrier their books. Remember how Amazon pimp-slapped Macmillan. Antitrust Guidelines The booksellers in the room (virtual or otherwise) are, by definition, competitors. This means that under the law, they are prohibited from discussing certain things. Specifically: There can be no discussions of price or pricing policies. Competitors are never allowed to agree on the price at which merchandise is sold, or discounts at which merchandise is offered. All discussions of price and pricing policies are strictly off-limits. There can be no discussion of boycotts. Competitors cannot agree to cease doing business with any supplier for any reason. Nor can competitors agree to urge consumers to boycott a third competitor. It’s collusion, and is strictly prohibited. There can be no discussion of dividing up a market. For example, if there are two booksellers in New York City, they cannot agree that one will market only to consumers north of 57th Street while the other markets only to customers south of 57th street. This is also collusion and is prohibited. All three of these prohibitions come to us via the Sherman Antitrust Act, which carries treble damages and jail time. All three are per se violations, which means it only has to be proved that you engaged in the activity—whether or not there was intent to harm, or actual harm caused—for you to be guilty of violating the law.

I heard a news story that Trump's tweets were being flagged if they failed a fact check. So for the first time in my life, I logged into Twitter and looked at 45's twitter feed; I wanted to see what these "flagged" tweets looked like. I could not find a single one. But what I did discover is that 45 tweets a lot, I mean a heck of a lot. I was also surprised to see that half the people that follow AALBC also follow 45. Why do so many of us follow 45 on Twitter? Below is a screen grab from yesterday's tweets. This does not include his retweets or all of the tweets he made that day. The engagement is off the charts. Who knows how much revenue this is creating for Twitter. The scandal surrounding the flagged tweets just increases Twitter's traffic. If even got me to look at 45's feed. Because 45 tweets so often, and what he tweets is so outlandish, the behavior is really is not very different than that of a troll. The best way to deal with Trolls is not to feed them, but Twitter has done nothing but lavish 45 with food. People with useful or important information to share get little or no engagement, while 45 random tweets becomes prime-time news. This encourages 45, but just as importantly it discourages those with important things to share from tweeting because they are crowded out by 45's rants. You don't even hear about Katie Perry or Kim Kardashian -- not that I followed them either, but you could not avoid hearing about their impact on Twitter. Of course this is how Twitter makes money, but it really is a microcosm of what the WWW has become in the 2020s -- a troll farm. It is a shame because the web held so much great potential. I wonder what Twitter will do once 45 stops tweeting. Facebook apparently refuses to flag 45's lying tweets. Over the decades I have had posts post outrageous things here. These posts attracted attention

Of course, that is the only reason way this nonsense has persisted so long. We have been trained to seek the validation and approval of whites for so long, and on so many, levels we engage in hairism and colorism even when white folks aren't around.

@Pioneer1 what d you think? @Chevdove, your answer to both of my questions was essentially, "It depends." Of course this is true, it depends of upon this being a fundamentally racist country where eurocentric standards, and people, determine what is beautiful. So colorism and Black hair need to have book written on the subject. I believe the messenger often just as important as the message.

Even the people who study mortality do not highlight the fact that Black on Black murder is a leading cause of Black male death. I guess they are scared of being labeled racist, or more likely, don't really care, and focus on police violence as a leading cause, while it is obvious other Black men kill far more Black men.

I obviously think she did a good job too. I asked the question because I don't think a Black man, as I described, could deliver the message. I asked about the complexion because I also wondered who else could not deliver this message. Could Gabourey Sidibe have delivered the same message?

Sadly, the science backs this up. #WTA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America "Risk is highest for black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the life course. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women."

So Maurice when you this link (or the image below), you do not get the search results shown in the image? Do you see the text big text that says "Learn More About Diary Malcolm X?"

Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Dr. Yusef Salaam is already an AALBC Bestseller for May/June (list will pub in July), and the book does not come out until 9/1/2020!

Yes What's Going On is a great album in my book for just that reason. I would have thought Sgt Pepper's song were related. I had both albums (original printings) for many years but moving and a divorce tend to make things "disappear."

That is curious @Maurice, did you try our search engine? That is the best please to start. Here is a link to our search engine and the results of a Gwendolyn Brook query. The search engine, linked above, is the last item on the menu of every page of the website, except this discussion forum that uses 3rd party software. The search engine on the discussion forum only searches the discussion forum, while the search, linked above, searches the entire site, including the discussion forum. Now I could customize the discussion forum software to search the whole site, but customizations make the discussion forum harder to maintain. Plus the discussion forum's search engine is presumably better at finding things here (blogs, forums, clubs, etc).

@Kiran H. J. Dellimore, Yes I realize the google search (https://www.google.com/search?q=979-8642874554) should have pulled up Amazon. The question is why didn't it. I think the answer is because Amazon would rather people use Amazon to search for books rather than the Google search engine. I under that you might not be aware of this. This is why I'm bringing it up, so that you and other authors are aware. The terms are set by the publish not Ingram, at least this is what Ingram told me when inquired why all the Amazon published books have such bad terms. Again Amazon touts their titles as being in distribution while this is technically true, the terms are so bad as to make the books unattractive to booksellers. Amazon surely knows this and are clearly misleading authors, which make them untrustworthy as a business partner. Of course Ingram is not the only distributor. I also deal with Lushena Books out of chicago, who gives me better terms than Ingram, but Ingram has a much larger inventory and of course they have the software to track and move books. Honestly I was surprised to see that many books in stock (or backorder myself). This is a relatively high number. Are you aware of any extra demand for Walking in Footsteps of Promise? It is worth checking with Lulu. Why so many titles were printed and send to Ingram's warehouses? If this is indeed a POD book, ask them who pays the printing costs and who is responsible for the returns? Yes some absolutely do. Even some booksellers leverage Amazon's site to make money -- largely because no one knows there site exists and Amazon provides the only venue these websites can make real money. But the is at the expense of the the collective benefit of the entire book economy -- especially the Black book economy. (you wrote that Amazon has approximately 50% of the entire print book market, for Black books the number if probably closer to 90%) Simple, we all have to stop using Amazon. Reader will have to leave Amazon too because they will have to go to where the books are being sold. The pandemic has made it clear that there are indeed people willing to support independent booksellers. No, I do not believe this can be done. Nothing short of a boycott will make a difference. I understand that consider the prospect of boycotting Amazon scary -- especially for authors who have published and now sell exclusively through Amazon. Look even major publishers cower under Amazon's power. But again, nothing short of us not using Amazon will make a difference. So either you want an Amazon to be the only company who can sell Black books or you don't. The loss of physical and even web based booksellers is incalculable.