Troy

The Black Pack Party is an annual gathering of publishing industry professionals and authors, which is held during Book Expo America. RSVP and Join Us! #BPP2019

@Mel Hopkins the are many writren by both Black and white scholars. One of the most accessible would be by Anthony Browder, Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization But you can also read anything by John G. Jackson. The work of folks like Cheikh Anta Diop and John Herik Clark are worth checking out too. Hey @Delano at the 16:20 mark Browder discusses the African Origin of the Horusscope (my term). @Mel Hopkins at the 21:25 minute mark Browder talks about the Adrican origin of the Holy Trinity.

A.E.'s powm is nice. @Cynique this line: Is foreboding and a bit misanthropic. Growing old is not for the faint of heart huh? My recently deceased sister in law leaves behind her mother, who has already buried two husbands. I can't image what she must be feeling...

@Cynique I hear ya. I'm too old and too male to be moved by this public exchange of platitudes myself. I did not consider that they were endeavoring to be role models. It seems a bit self serving.... i mean we all have friends that we are proud of, but who goes on twitter to praise them... i dunno. Again, this is for the kids I guess. Maybe if Ms. Obama praised someone unknown but doing great work...

Chris Rock gets credit for this... really? I skimmed the last video. It was so much work -- wow! I'm so glad I'm a guy and don't have hair issues to deal with 🙂 The Maasi women of modern day Kenya and Tanzania don't either... By the way Chizi is cute. She could sport a baseball cap and still be foine 😉 If those videos are making her money, God bless her.

@Chevdove I don't know what this means either, or rather, where it actually comes from. I've used the term to describe Black people who degrade themselves to entertain white folks. I guess that is no different than people who use "uncle tom" to describe Black people who who sell out other Blacks to white people for personal benefit, without understanding the origin of the phrase. I will look up buck dancing... maybe it should nit be used as a derogatory term. @Mel Hopkins i was actually going back much farther than Christianity itself. There is evidence that Mary, Jesus, and Joseph are based upon the the Egyptians Asar, Auset, and Heru. Of course there is proof many other stories from the bible including the virgin birth, the flood, etc are derived from much older sources.

I consider it "cultural appropriation" when the original meaning is divorced from the practice -- particularly when it is done for profit. For example, the violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and misogyny we see in the most popular hip-hop music is cultural appropriation. Having nothing to do with hip-hop's origins and original intent because it has been co-opted and is no longer uniquely African American. A plainer example of the appropriation of Christianity into Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. Christianity itself was appropriated from African cultures again for profit. Anything uniquely African American is appropriated by others for profit. Whether it is our cuisine, hair care products, or music. I know that does not answer your question @Mel Hopkins but it was just a thought that came to mind.

So young too... As I learned of Singleton's passing, my sister-in-law passed under similar circumstances. She too was what I consider young -- early 50s. A poker buddy passed a few weeks ago (early 60's). If seems the older I get the more people around me die. I heard Smokey Robin say, during the Sam Cooke documentary, that Aretha was his "oldest living friend." Of course she too is now dead... I hear one of the hardest things about growing old is losing family and friends. Life really is quite fleeting. I guess one of the advantages of growing old(er) is the realization almost nothing we stress over is not worth the energy. Live Long and Prosper Y'all 🖖🏾

Lawson please post a link to your website and the ISBN13 of your book.

Me neither @Delano. Normally I would skip over stuff like this, but occasionally I'll check things just so that I'm not 100% out of the pop-culture loop. The headline I used for this post was the same one used by the Huntington Post -- another click-baity misleading head line they are prone to using. I wanted to see if it would attract more attention than other posts here (it did not). I'm curious to understand why Michelle produced a video to praise her friend -- when a call or text message to Beyonce would more than suffice. Is Michelle Obama no different than any of the other attention seeking social media junkies out there? My 20-something kid was in town this past weekend and we watched the Beyonce Chochella (sp?) convert documentary, for which Michelle Obama was praising Beyonce in the video above (@Chevdove) -- also something I would not normally do. It was a major production and I can only image how much money Beyonce made giving that performance. I have to say though I loved how she integrated the marching band into the performance -- but I love HBCU marching bands :-)

I'll be giving a presentation, at the 2019 Austin African American Book Festival, on a subject related to entrepreneurship and the book business. I'll also be selling select titles. If you are in the area please try to come by.

April 21, 2019 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lois Smyth, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, lsmyth@braf.org, (225) 387-6126 Mukul Verma, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, mverma@braf,org, (225) 362-9260 Baton Rouge Area Foundation Opens Entries for 13th Annual Gaines Award August 15 submissions deadline for $10,000 prize BATON ROUGE, LA. – Entries for the 13th annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence will be accepted through August 15. Information on criteria and entrance forms for the award, which includes a $10,000 cash prize, is available at www.ernestjgainesaward.org. Sponsored by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the Gaines Award was created to honor outstanding literary work from rising African-American authors while recognizing Louisiana native Ernest Gaines’ extraordinary contribution to the literary world. The upcoming Gaines Award will honor outstanding fiction – novels or short-story collections – published in 2019. Galleys for 2018 publications are also accepted. A native of Pointe Coupee Parish, Mr. Gaines’ critically acclaimed novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, was adapted into a 1974 made-for-TV movie that received nine Emmy awards. His 1993 book, A Lesson Before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. He is Writer-in-Residence Emeritus at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. The Gaines Award winner is chosen annually by a panel of professional writers and academics. The award has found promising writers early in their careers. For instance, two previous Gaines Award winners have later won the $50,000 Whiting Award. Another was chosen a MacArthur Fellow, a $625,000 award given over five years. Previous winners, starting with the latest in 2018, are Jamel Brinkley, Ladee Hubbard, Crystal Wilkinson, T. Geronimo Johnson, Mitchell Jackson, Attica Locke, Stephanie Powell Watts, Dinaw Mengestu, Victor Lavalle, Jeffery R. Allen, Ravi Howard, and Olympia Vernon. The Ernest Gaines Award event will be held Thursday January 30, 2020 at the Manship Theatre in downtown Baton Rouge. About the Baton Rouge Area Foundation The Baton Rouge Area Foundation is among more than 700 community foundations in the country. The Foundation works in three ways to improve the quality of life in Baton Rouge and across south Louisiana. The Foundation and its fund donors 1) grant about $40 million each year to nonprofits; 2) provide fundraising and management advice to nonprofits; 3) take on projects for civic good, such as reclaiming inner city neighborhoods. For more information, please visit BRAF.org. ###

I can understand why sites don't allow guest posting so many abuse the privilege. It is a pain to manage.

@Chevdove i don't do Instgram either and would like to see it destroyed. I was half joking with you though about nit embracing my comment 100%

Yeah I guess I dont really know how i would act if I were scared and the person did not want to go to the hospital and the person is adamant about not going.

Just hit the play button on the picture and the video will play @Chevdove.

That is interesting. Deviant Art requires creating an account to comment. Too bS they stopped allowing embedding

Yeah these videos are not available to view in the US. I'll need to use a VPN to watch them. But I will :-)

@Chevdove What, don't you cosign the bit about Instagram?

@Cynique I hear you. If you don't do it I'll do it for you :-) It would be best with your input. It would be interesting to read you take on GOT after the series ends. Yes the violence and the sex was gratuitous. In the later seasons they seemed to have back off on the sex and no one died in the season opener so... My kid and her coworkers have a pool and chart for who will die first this season. So far those who picked no one are winning :-) The acting and production of GOT in on the scale of a major motion picture. My favorite character is Tyrion Lannister, that dwarf is too cool! But was he too trust of his conniving and incestuous sister? @Delano I was not familiar with the series American Gods it looks worth checking out. But I don't have access to Starz. I'll check to see if it is on Amazon Prime before I allow my subscription to lapse.

Hey @Chevdove thanks again for sharing your story. You know me I was like the message should have sent to 9-1-1 not you :-) Seriously, why didn't those folks, on the job, call 911 when the girl looked like she was about to pass out? Why didn't you drive her to the emergency room? Trust me, if you looked "gray" and "waxy," and then passed out in my call we'd be headed to the nearest emergency room. Why didn't the boyfriend take her to the hospital or to see a doctor? Also, reading this story it seems to me that religions are the underlying cause of all of this difficulty. Is this something that you'd ever considered?

Well any little girl who has a parents that would allow her to see this film has bigger problems to deal with than this film. Look, this is a dumb comedy that was critically crapped on and will have zero cultural significance. We have bigger fish to fry like Facebook's Instagram.

@Pioneer1 you've missed the point. Don't you see that the video I shared is part of a strategy to get a wage increase? You are speaking as if the professors are complete morons without agency. In the short time I've been teaching my wages have increased twice once retroactively resulting in a 4 figure check. Not a ton of money, but what i make working part time, from home, is the more than what some wage earners make working full time. The adjuncts are unionized. I posted the video because the claim we make poverty wages is hyperbolic and I thought it might be interesting to share my story of poverty 🙂 Look, no one will get rich being adjunct, but poverty is a bit extreme. Again, it is a part time job and if it is your only source of income, living in NYC, then yeah, you are in for a world of hurt.... Of course I also feel more resources should be directed to education.

Clearly, @Pioneer1 we are not the target audience for this film. But the film is rated PG-13 and not intended for "little Black girls" either. While I feel you, in this case you may be reading too much into it. You know major motion pictures have to have good white people in them or they can't be made. This is par for the course.