Troy

Sure they did we all have choices. It is just, generally speaking our choices are selfish, but this is the culture. Here you make a distinction between different types of white folks, because you recognize their are differences. Black folks regardless of ethnicity or national origin are just "Black." This too is part of the culture. The first statement is true. The second is completely false. Are you suggesting that Jazz is or some other genre of Black is nearly as profitable as rap? This is what rappers and the folks who make money on them say. But it is no more true than the film Precious was art imitating life -- unless you are solely interested in presenting the most egregiously dysfunctional portion of Black people as if it was typical behavior. @Chevdove Frances Cress Welsing a student of Neely Fuller gets deep on the subject. While I don't agree with some of what she says, she makes a lot more sense that most women who the media gave a platform to today. Can you image a sister like Dr. Welsing being on a major talk show today? Her evisceration of Dr. William Shockley on Tony Brown's Show (video below) is awe inspiring.

I REALLY wish the media would stop writing shit like "strong economy" and "low unemployment rate." The terms are even used in an article describing how 7 million American are about to have their cars repossessed. Strong economy for who, the rich corporations and the people who run and own them? What does low unemployment rate mean when you don't count the incarcerated or those who have given up looking but want to work. Even those who do work the wages are are low and benefits are nonexistent. In states like Florida almost half the population makes less than $20 an hour. At some point, the chickens will come home to roost and we will have to deal with this nation's wealth inequality. The election of 45 was the tip of the iceberg. We will see more incidences of white boys shooting up public places. The US already has more mass shootings than any other country on Earth. People are angry and stressed but have no understanding why because they are consistently misled to by the media. The Washington Post's article does not attempt to explain why so many people are behind on their car notes, "despite the strong economy," as if it was some freaking enigma. Perhaps they should look at the business practices of the owner of their publication and how he has adversely impacted the economy. Of course this will never happen, for obvious reasons.

@Delano your statement reveals a lack of experience with forums -- including this one. I'm quite confident I have far more experience and as a result a much broader and deeper experience and perspective as result. If you like to share some of the depth of your experience I'd like to read it..., I'll wait. My experience, for example, predates the WWW and goes back to days of bulletin boards and acoustic couplers, plus over 20 years of running this forum and moderating the comments left all over this website (which you may be completely oblivious to). Then there is my blog and social media site like YouTube where I have to moderate comments. Obviously I participate on other forums. Understanding your experience Del will help me understand how you justify so easily discounting what I've related to you. That was a good one! Glad you have not lost you sense of humor LOL! True dat! Guys, what was it about K2 that ruffled your feathers so? Was it because he was new and came with guns blazing without showing you any deference?

I know Hunts Point well. Us fatherless boys used to cruise up there for fun. Hookers would be on the stroll stark naked! There were strip clubs galore (whore houses in actuality). Uniformed police would be at the door. I always thought about the people who lived in thbe area. I mean they had plenty of hookers walking street where i lived too, but hunts point was off the chain.

Come on man, you are really going off the deep end here. First, you have limited experience with forums including this one. The lack of partipcipation is due to a wide variety of factors, the least of which is our manner of communication. A decade ago the forum had much more controversy and the posts were so racy Google banned me from serving ads on the entire domain. Look it up, it is still online http://thumperscorner.com there were far more regular posters then and forum was often laugh out loud funny. @Cynique am i lying? Why so morose all of a sudden?

OK @Mel Hopkins I misunderstood what you were objecting to. When I wrote "women can't raise boys," I did not mean all attempts would be abject failures, as demonstrated by Joy Thomas Moore. What I really meant is that a woman's effort would be optimized with a male partner.

I can think of many who are dead. I don't blame the mothers thought most of whom did the best they could...

That is what I want to know. Don't hold your breath LOL! Yes I think Disney host a discussion forum... @DelanoI have yet to be on a discussion forum that at some point did not become confrontational? One the website proper I'm often attacked. This posts I generally delete because they service no purpose. Recently on one of the sites web pages someone left this comment: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/aalbc/books_by_african_american_or_black_writers_coming_out_soon_62/#comment-4340853637 "It is astonishing to me that you have no poetry on this list by the Cave Canem..." Out the gate the guy was hyper-critical, but I left the message because it gave me an opportunity to correct him and help others understand the site better. As part of the exchange I actually discovered an poetry I was previously unaware of who I've since dded to the site. I've said it before -- you can;t learn from someone who agrees with everything you believe. Often I observe people who take out rude and critical often change their tune when I reply -- they realize this site actually has an individual behind it. Sometime people just want to vent. In the early days of the net "flame wars" was a common thing. But you probably don't recall those days.

Such bizarre behavior. Clearly the young man needs help. Obviously the media would run with a story like this -- it is their bread and butter.

Cynique that is all true, but why is most of the stuff we get awarded for by the majority culture usually something negative. Denzel got an award for playing a villain too. The music award was a song about a pimp. I heard stripper turned, rapper, Cardi B, got a Grammy award. I'm not exactly proud of the role or the film, despite all the accolades white folks heaped upon it. As much as I griped about the lovefest surrounding Stan Lee's world of Wakanda that film was FAR more preferable than "Precious."

@Mel Hopkins I stand by the generalization and we'll agree to disagree. It is better for an man to be involved in a boy's upgrading than a woman alone. Indeed I think it is true for girls too. Sure some women are better than others at handling the task but "in general" it is sub-optimal. I would don't go by what people say in public, what successful dude trashes his mom?! Of course they'd praise her. I just posted a review of a book by Joy Thomas Moore who successfully raised a by by herself. In fact, I selected it for AALBC reading list., because it is a great story, but it was instructive too. Joy's was a remarkable mother but she was truly exception woman as was her son, Wes Moore (of The Other Wes Moore fame), was too. While Wes rearing was well done and the outcome spectacular, both mother and son would have preferred a father in the house. I'll leave it to you to speculate why. @Delano on my block is was mostly two parent households -- indeed it was a requirement when you moved into the projects. My father was away most of the time, so honestly it was like growing up without a father. Yes, I think I lost something. Rather than channeling my natural aggression and competitiveness it was viewed as an undesirable characteristic. I had to learn about everything from nocturnal emissions to how to deal with women, either on my own or in the streets. @Pioneer1 some women will call a brother a weak, broke-ass nigger in a heart beat. Walking down the streets of Harlem I've women scream this to guys in the street. I'm not sure anyone here really appreciates what it is like to grow up in an urban, crime-ridden, impoverished, segregated, ghetto -- and that is a very good thing. See when you have plenty of money, a comfortable home, good schools, and security, it is a lot easier for a woman to raise a child. But when a woman does not have these things, raising child becomes a hell of a lot more difficult and much more so for the boys. they are less likely to graduate fro college.more likely to go to jail, and die at a younger age... in general.

They have "fraternaties" in high school now? What was the name of his? Was it purely social, service oriented, or some combination? Sorry Ma, you had no choice in the matter; your son was a grow man at this point. Remember, grown-ass-man. You can't bark orders: suggestions and advise sure, but don't treat him like a little boy. Your husband let you get away with this? I'm trying to get the moral of your stories but I keep getting tripped up thinking this is why men must raise boys with mothers -- women can't raise boys (not saying you were a single mother). I read all three stories but don't really understand what this has to do with respecting Black men relative to white ones which i thought was the point.

Now that is an interesting statement, but I think it is WE (Black men) who are angry about being powerless; the women are just reflecting back how we view ourselves. It is not about Black women, it is about us. Twenty years ago Jeff Bezos, who is about my age, and I started selling books. Jeff is a multibazillionaire and I'm in debt. What is the difference? One has the full support and weight of the dominant culture behind him and the other is assaulted by it.

LOL! You crazy you know that right lol! Pioneer I was looking for someone to hel explain position on the results of the Cisby trail on manner the Del could understand. I think he is ckear on my approach to moderating the forum. He just disagrees with it.

I know eyes are glazing over at this point but the following reports illustrate a problem I see. There may be a few folks who find this interesting or helpful in understanding how Google's search engine adversely impacts book web sites. The report at the end of this post shows the top twenty pages on AALBC for two different two-year periods. It is important to note that page views on AALBC are currently at an all-time high (though Google can take this away at anytime). One of the reasons is that AALBC's traffic has increased is that AALBC web site has dramatically over the last two years. AALBC has 10's of thousands of dynamically generated web pages that have been indexed by Goggle. However, AALBC's traffic has not grown at pace with it's size and is much lower than it should be. One issue is the nature of the pages that are getting Google's attention: in 2010 and 2011, 11 of the top 20 pages were author profile pages. During this period AALBC ranked well for many author's including popular ones like Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Huston. The reason for the drop in traffic for the most popular authors' pages is that Google is much more aggressive at putting content prominently on the search engine results page, often eliminating the need for searchers to visit the underlying websites, as they were in the past. Google copies author information from Wikipedia, and provides lists of books from their own store on the search engine result page (SERP) -- this greatly reduces the traffic to online book sellers. So while AALBC traffic is at an all-time high it is much lower than it would be if Google were not running their own bookstore on their SERP. The EU penalized Google Billions of Euros, in 2017 for doing this. Over the past two years only one author page, Octavia Butler's, made the top 20. AALBC's Events pages dominated. With the exception of my Top 102+ children's book pages and the upcoming books pages the remaining top pages don't feature books -- which is the primary focus of the website! in 2010 my Zane pages were viewed 100's of times a day. Today if you run a query on the author Zane, AALBC ranks on the first page (#9 on average). However even with over 2,400 impressions that has resulted in zero clicks on the search result -- and it is on the first page! Today my Zane pages are scores of times a day. Sure, Zane is not as popular an author as she was in 2010 and that would drive traffic down, but that is not the whole story. If you look at the screen shot of the Google's SERP; you'll see a photo of Zane (taken from another website--without clear attribution); a bio (taken from Wikipedia); and images of some (not all) of Zane's books with related content copied from Goodreads. Now if you click any of the book covers, you are prompted to buy the book from Google's Bookstore, and enter a review of the book. Google is running a complete online bookstore directly on the SERP and using content from other sites to do it! If this is not enough, Google search algorithm depreciating affiliate sites/pages. AALBC sells books directly, but I can tell you today people only want to buy from Amazon. So now the problem is if you want to sell books in a manner that people will actually purchase them, Google will penalize you in search. These conditions and others has effectively killed indie online book websites, including the brick and mortar stores that run them. Now if all the booksellers who wrote reviews of Zane books, published interviews, hosted readings, and promoted her work no longer exist has Google helped or hurt? Zane of course is just one author but the same is true of countless others. Of course the media will spin it to indicate there is less interest in reading Black books, but everything we do as a culture conspires to squash interest reading and focus on books -- especially Black ones, because our platforms are so very limited. Mainstream has not given this problem any attention because they could really care less about Black readership and our books. If I were not insane I would have given up running AALBC years ago, and while I wrote Black webmasters are an unprotected group there are enough people in my corner, who are supportive of our authors and their books to keep AALBC alive 🙂 But, collectively, we need to do more. Jan 1, 2010 to Dec 31, 2011 https://aalbc.com https://aalbc.com/authors/zane.htm https://aalbc.com/reviews/confessions_of_a_video_vixen.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/karrine_steffans.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/maya.htm https://aalbc.com/reviews/karrine_steffans.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/author1.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/walter1.htm https://aalbc.com/books/bestsellers.htm https://aalbc.com/fun/black1.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/alice.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/wahida_clark.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/zoraneal.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/ntozake.htm https://aalbc.com/books/thebesttitles.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/blackartsmovement.htm https://aalbc.com/books/related.htm https://aalbc.com/authors/ernest.htm https://aalbc.com/tc/index.html https://aalbc.com/authors/carterg.htm Jan 1, 2017 to Dec 31, 2018 https://aalbc.com/ https://aalbc.com/books/children.php https://aalbc.com/events/list.php https://aalbc.com/index.php https://aalbc.com/events/index.php https://aalbc.com/events/index.html https://aalbc.com/books/comingsoon.php https://aalbc.com/books/index.html https://aalbc.com/bookstores/list.php https://aalbc.com/authors/25_African_Women_Writers_You_Should_Read.php https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Octavia+Butler https://aalbc.com/books/children.php?offset=22 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/2287-the-10-best-damn-black-websites-period/index.html https://aalbc.com/books/index.php https://aalbc.com/tc/forum/5-culture-race-economy/index.html https://aalbc.com/authors/the_gilded_sixbits.html https://aalbc.com/tc/index.html https://aalbc.com/books/children.php?offset=44 https://aalbc.com/tc/forum/5-culture-race-economy/index.php https://aalbc.com/books/children.php?offset=110

@Mel Hopkins here's the thing: no search result on the 2nd page is "good" anymore. Bottom half of the first page is good. In fact, the image i posted illustrates this: Google says im averaging 11.9 (top of the 2nd page), that position resulted in zero clicks. I really should rank #1 on a search for Dave's book, given the content I've produced. Ranking on Morrions or Lavalle are tougher because there is much more competing content for these authors -- much of it coming from the content Google aggregates on the search engine results page. I have videos of lavalle including him reading at an event i cohosted. I have video of Morrison presenting an award to Maya Angelou and a variety of photos some exclusive.... I rank "good" on a lot of queries, but the geeks at Google has decided to hit sites that are "affliate sites" hard. In other words, if you create a site the sells products as an affiliate of Amazon, as i do, you are shit out of luck when it comes to ranking in search. I can almost guarantee the page that im ranking best for on Dave's book is the AALBC Store's page -- even though the regular AALBC page for the book is more comprehensive -- it just has affiliate links to Amazon, indie bound, B&N, etc. Now Google themselves exploit Amazon with their own affiliate links -- they frown on other sites do it. Why shoukd they bother with competition when they can just bury them. In order to react, im seriously thinging about dropping my affiliate links. A drastic measure to be sure, but the traffic i would gain by ranking higher would be worrh more than the affiliate commission im earning now from Amazon. Google sucks.

I told you that Google will exact revenge for some of the things I have been writing about the on the web. They have pushed AALBC onto page #6 when one runs a search on the term, African American Literature. This is a virtual death sentence for this particular search term. No one will find AALBC.com the largest most in-depth website ever built to highlight African American Literature if they search on the term "African American Literature!" I'd argue that Black webmasters can give Black women a run for their money as the least protected group in America. At least women have #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. Black webmasters have nothing and virtually no one they can depend upon other than themselves and that is simply is not enough. I can't beat Google all I can say to them is, "eat shit and die." It is so very frustrating with Google running the World Wide Web. Do I really think that Google has their eye on me and rewards and punishes me based upon what I write.... yes, I do. If you would have asked me this a few years ago it would have sounded crazy to me but I have a few instances that I can demonstrate with supports my conspiracy theory. Back in October I wrote a Blog post explaining about how Google was referencing AALBC content on the their Google Home device, and complaining that they should pay me for this. Shortly after my post someone anonymously wrote, that I should not discount the positive impact of Google driving traffic to my site. My reaction was essentially "F*ck that." A day or two later Google stopped referencing my site's content. More recently I got an intern to write a 2,000 word article on African American Literature the article is planned to be a series of articles covering the subject from various angles. This would be useful to readers and certainly a bonus to the sites search engine ranking right? I even posted information about this article and the anticipated impact on search in this discussion forum. Google reports the results to me the there has been some improvement in the site's ranking on the term "African American Literature," shown in the report (on the right) Google shows me when I query the term. However, when I plow through the actual results. I don't find a single AALBC.com page until page 6 of the google search results!? Would y'all please run this query https://www.google.com/search?q=african+american+literature and let me know if you find any AALBC pages in the top three page of their search results I need to collect some data, Thanks!

OK @Coach Michael Taylor I have all of your books posted: https://aalbc.com/authors/imprint.php?imprint=Creation+Publishing+Group

Sounds like a fascinating story. We often discuss relative benefits of establishing our own communities. Groups like the Nation of Islam often come up as potentially offering benefits over our white-male-dominated-profit-driven culture, or maybe the Nation is simply replacing it with another oppressive way of life. Does The Ranch community still exist? I get the sense that it was more like a cult rather than a desirable alternative the dominant culture. Is this right?

Again if someone can relate to Del my position on this matter, I'd appreciate, because I give up.

This statement is confusing @Delano and it seems to inidicate that you really did not understand my last reply. Perhaps someone else can explain this to Del....? This is probably because to don't answer question and go off on tangents. Like the recent Cosby case you condemn me for supporting a rapist while comlpletely missing the point that I disagree with the grounds for his conviction. While i know you disapprove of his overall behavior, as do i, I still don't know what you think about the case becuase you refuse to view it in isoltation or respond to my question about it. @NubianFellow you call Obama a sellout in public around other Black people-- that is you rappeal in my mind on the forum you are fearlesss. People get way too emotional when you criticize Obama, so i don't even bother.... Again, Nubian's combined response to @Loren Carle's post is far more nuansed and complex beause he is human (I hope Loren appreciates it). People want black and white, uncomplicated answers, but people and opinions are usually not that simple... that is what Twitter is for.

@Delano you should know by now, other than trolls and spammers, i don't place any restrictions on what people say here. That would defeat the purpose. Obviously I dont agree with everthing people say here. When you deny climate change I don't delete your posts, i want to better understand your reasoning maybe hear something i dont know. Look if I or any of you want to read only things that fit your world view, go to Facebook. For example, @NubianFellow's reaction to the white guy's was quite harsh and a weak person might be put off to the point that wo n't reply. If you are too intimidated to reply then this forum is not for you...again there is always Facebook. @Cynique came through and explained why Nubian's reaction was misguided. That exchange between two smart and talented writers (Nubian and Cynique) was much better that me deleting a post and the exchange never taking place. The "tone" I set Del is free expression. The benefit is in the diversity of expression. Me "setting the tone" is the opposite if that.

You can stop right there because everything else is hype, spin, and speculation. You and I both know what people choose to post on social media and their morivations for doing it is more about them and less about reflecting truth. Exactly. People have formed negative opinions about the little girl out if thin air. She'll need to deal with the nonsense, for the video will never go away... she'll be the poster child for Black self hate, simply because some gave her a wig to play with. Again, you're looking at it wrong. It is not white worhsip or Black self hate. Mel's husband's so called race was incidental to her. For us, it would been a showstopper, for all the reasons mentioned, but she obviously does not think the way we do about it race. Too bad everyone does not think the way she does. The world would be a better place.

The woman, Constan, made that agreement Del, long before we learned about the situation.

In a word, "yes." Slavery imposed strict rules, incarceration imposes strict rules, living in your momma's house imposes strict rules. Free adults abhor strict rules -- it is the opposite of freedom. I've often said I understand where @Pioneer1 is coming from, because some of what he says are postions I once held but the we disagree on so much now because my positions have changed. Similarly with @NubianFellow he is so striden, forcefull, and skilled in expressing his opinions he is hard to ignore. But he too, on this issue, is painting with too broad a brush. I'd seen the video before and depending upon your world view it might seem like compeling proof of a little Black girl who wants deperately to be white and have long flowing hair. The reality is shit is often more complex. I've raised to girls and if you take a toy from them yhat they were playing, for no apparent reason, they might get upset and if could be a stick they just found on the ground. Maybe the kid was minimiking a older person whose hair was blown dry (a natural hair style that would presumably pass muster with pioneer and nubian). Maybe her parents have her in front of the TV all day and she watched one too many Pantene commercials. This video proves nothing. What Black women do what they with their is far more complex than being brainwashed to be like white people. The Maasai women shave their hair and the warriors (men) run around braiding there hair. How do you think American Brothers would react if Black women adopted the hair styles of our African sisters in present day Kenya/Tanzania?