Troy

Yes. If someone self-identifies as Black they are Black as far as I'm concerned. It is not like there is a genetic test for Blackness and your subjective evaluation is far from perfect... obviously.

We have, but you continually reject it.

Sounds like even you understand your view is highly subjective. So while your evaluation leads you to believe the person is white everone else knows she is Black.

That's racist @Pioneer1. Using your reasoning, a lot of "high yellow" people who say they are "Black" you'd reject simply because they don't meet YOUR arbitrary standard of what it means to be Black... sort of like the "brown paper bag test," but in reverse.

Why, lawd help me, @Pioneer1 is this Sister, not Black?"

It is cool to know Charlotte NC was -- surely inadvertently -- named after a Sista! :-)

Kam did not use social media or do discussion forums, so it was not likely that you would have exchanged with him online. For a few years I was posting 2, 3, or more of Kam's articles or reviews a week.

Kam was his own wire service. Initially I paid for the entire "feed," ultimately paying on per article basis. The last book review I paid for was published late last year and the author tore me a new a-hole 🙂 (she overreacted IMHO) the review is still on the site: https://aalbc.com/books/bookreview.php?isbn13=9781250171085 No the article was essentially the same we both added our own platforms as publishers of Kam's content. They essentially copied and pasted the article. I added additional personal info at the intro. However if you read what the article as published can you tell who wrote it? Shouldn't they make that clear? Again, the family wrote it techically it is a press release. Insight News presented it as if they wrote it. Yeah i used to "customize" Kam's articles too. Generally "news" sources win the search battle, so ultimately it was not worth the effort -- even if the articles were free! Again I don't mind losing the battle for search on Kam's content but don't penalize the sites. For the and other reasons Google has killed web based indie booksellers. @Delano yeah ditching "Foogle" will be hard. Social is done. Amazon is next. Ill get to Google last but they have so many monoploies they are tough to crack. Man i use Google to save password even allowing them to create pws for me.... i know, i know give me time there are other providers of this service i just have to pay for it. Paper is not a viable option for me.

I recently recommended a book that might help explain why Black women catch hell in the U.S. Here the authors talk to Rock Newman about the book: I believe we have been treated so poorly so long we carry our disfunction in our genes. I'm in St. Thomas USVI as I write this and the sisters are kicking butt here -- running thangs! Mainland Americans may be a bit defective... some more than others. Any perceived sexism by men here is a function of the oppression or being the oppressor.

@Mel Hopkins my comments above will give you some insights into that "article" you read. The family sent it out using Kam's same self-syndication model. Some entities publish Kam's content without saying who wrote it or where it came from, leading the reader to assume they wrote it. I think this is wrong, but the web us rife with this. Often when one cites a source on socisl media we have no clue where is came from because it is often published without attribution. Who is Insight News anyway?

I remember learning this too. That is why the time of birth is important; even identical twins have different charts.

AALBC Mourns the Passing of Kam Williams, May 30, 2019 I have not shared this on social media but I'll mention it here. Despite publishing almost 900 of Kam's articles since the early years of AALBC's website and considering the Brother a friend. I had to stop publishing Kam's articles several years ago. Why, you might ask: Google. You see a Google does not like syndicated content, which was Kam's business model. The articles he wrote were published on, at his peak, over 100 websites and print publications — including many Black-owned newspapers. He got a number of awards. I attended one ceremony in which the Network Journal gave him an award and he attended a few of my events including a Black Pack Party almost exactly 10 years ago. Back to Google. One of the disastrous consequences of Google infamous Panda update is the sites publishing syndicated content were hurt. This was not a simple matter of Google picking a winner for whatever article was published and not ranking the others — no, Google punished the other websites. My traffic dropped overnight and took 5 years to recover — permanently and adversely altering the trajectory of the sites that survived and killing many more. Have you ever checked the traffic of the average Black-owned newspaper? I know one publisher of Kam's content who went to the trouble of deleting over 1,500 of Kam's articles. The site never recovered. The problems seems to have been made worse by a site that programmatically generated scores of websites using Kam's content. Google rather than penalizing that website they simply penalized ALL the websites who published this content. Google is not nearly as sophisticated and refined as they'd like you to believe. Google uses a sledgehammer and the WWW is less rich as a result. The email announcing Kam's passing, linked above, was shared to the same network of publishers and Google may screw us over again for sharing it — F them!

sharing book cover...

It depended upon how you define "financially secure?" I'm sure you'd agree it is a FAR cry from the ministers who have private jets, a fleet of cars, and huge mansions. Yes, I've seen a broke brother who was happy and at peace. I'm one. That does not mean that I don't have challenges, like everyone else, but I know money can't bring happiness. I know many people who get on a path of trying to get more and more money, believing it will make them happy. The problem is, "you can never get enough of what you don't need." Money is more likely to break up a marriage that hold one together. In the antebellum south when we WERE money -- that led to hundred of years of enslavement and a bitter war that killed a significant portion of the white male population. No. My argument is against though that exploit their congregations for monetary gain -- often imporveshing these hapless victims -- who were just seeking peace and spiritual enlightenment. I don't care about anyone's lifestyle and long as it does not infringement upon others. The minster's @harry brown decries are predators who take advantages of tax laws, people, and religion.

So.... you believe White folks are trying to destroy the black community with alcohol, tobacco, the feminization of men and other things because they are largely immune to these things? That is a diabolical scheme indeed. We could combat this by going on the offense. Let's start by denying climate change and increase our carbon foot prints. The increased exposure to the sun would give white folks skin cancer. We could kill all the cows so that they would die of calcium deficiency. We could stop play sports and making music and they would die from boredom. We could all become opioid dealers and let them all OD -- and become rich at the same time. Makes sense right?

@Delano have you read Butler's novel, The Parable of the Sower? Given what you wrote, I think you would like it.

But everthing you wrote is being done in the white community too -- argurable moreseo. I don't see how you can justify that this happening solely to destroy Black people.

Dude you are really fixated on financial wealth as one if life's ultimate goals huh? There is also health, happiness, spirituality, peace, and other things that money can't buy. These are some of the things that a spiritual leader should help others obtain. Only one fixated on money would see a con man convincing people to give them money as "sucessful and blessed." Also, I wrote, "Christ-like;" no one can die to absolve humanity of all their sins.

Why go to the extreme and say something like this; I dunno; Jesus was not wealthy man. While the ability to multiply fish eliminated the need to beg for a meal. Many preachers would benefit from being more Christ-like.

Well @Pioneer1 while I don't believe this conspiracy theory. The results would be indistinguishable from a world in which the theory were true. The problem presented is that if we believe in cabal of powerful, evil white devils, trying to destroy Black people we would need to find and destroy these people. However if we don't believe they exist then we have to make ourselves immune to their tactics, or rather, percieved tactics. MANY people don't allow their children to watch TV or use social media for this reason. I originally though this was too extreme when I first heard this, but now I get it. Again, this is one reason i don't watch much TV or engage in social media myself.

Fingers snapping

Yes they renovated it. It is very nice we. A brother is one of the owners. Man they "renovated" the whole west side the construction is off the chain...

I was there yesterday. Work at a We Work site in 36 and 8th. Our Black Pack Party was about a mile or so away at the Frying Pan on 26th and 12th. Have you ever hung out at the frying pan?

Yes Copelands was superior. I went up until the day they closed. I was not familiar with Soul Fixins on 34th. I usually go to the skylight diner if I'm in that area looking to grub.

I'm using the code below (see end of this post). When you paste it into your website make sure you are using HTML or Source mode. It you paste it as plain text it will not work. An RSS feed would be ideal for this sort of thing, I just have not gotten around to doing it.