Troy

No problem. Yeah I just wish I could pull some the the passionate Black folks.

Personally, I don't use Amazon any more I let my prime membership lapse back when I was collecting information on a proposed boycott of the Amazon bookstore. I read the article. I think it would have been better if it attempted to explain why we should stop giving Amazon all our money. From a business perspective, I still use Amazon by providing buy links to their website. Honestly if I were not an Amazon affiliate I would not make very much money selling books as crazy as that sounds this is the situation we are in today. Speaking of Goodreads (which Amazon owns). I reluctantly began a test of adding Goodreads reviews to AALBC.com pages. @Mel Hopkins here is an example for your novel, Sleeping with D-Man. I say reluctantly, because Amazon owns Goodreads, but I'm also trying to increase engagement on the book pages too, and I want to see if this will help. The crazy thing is that I have to pay people to write book reviews, but Amazon gets a deluge of them on both Goodreads and the Amzon.com site. Of course most of these reviews are not very good, are biased, or are sponsored (thought this is not made plain to the reader). If an authors asks I will post an excerpt of a reviews we've published on Amazon platforms but as a policy I don't gave Amazon, Goodread, or any massive corporate site content for free. Amazon (and the massive social media sites) make a bazillion dollars off the content we give them for free. They need to share the wealth, and they don't. This is how I define digital sharecropping. The problem today is that actual sharecroppers knew they were being exploited.

Wow that is really deep Del. This just reinforces my point. I would not have known that the Wakanda Salute is a thing unless you told me. I'm sorry man you will not see me doing the Wakanda salute, mimicking something from a disney film. This just empathizes how needy and sad we are.... But hey if the film bolsters pride in our African heritage that is great, but is seems to me we are elevating Wakanda which is just plain ludicrous to me. I would be willing to bet that if you ask anyone of those athletes who big upping Wakanda during their celebrations to name 5 Africans who lived before 1,400 they would not be able to to do it. Do you think they could do it? Indeed, as a sanity check for that matter, can you?

No, I don't see the connections because you are NOT making them. For example, what does the question you posed, "Does that also mean that Christianity endorsing the slave trade is of no consequence" have to do with the statement I previously made or the influences between religion and science that you are asserting?

Del you are all over the place now. Did the point I made have any impact on you? What does anything you wrote in your last post have to do with science?

Carole Boston Weatherford has teamed up with many brilliant illustrators including, Frank Morrison, Eric Velasquez, Ekua Holmes, R. Gregory Christie, Floyd Cooper, and more, to create some terrific books for children. Often you don't see these books -- even the in major bookstores, which historically made these books effectively nonexistent were it not for the web. Some of these titles win children's book awards and gain some level of success and prominence, but still readers seem to be under the impress that there aren't very many Black book being produced. The issue s really one of awareness rather than supply. #readingblack

Guest Ali, I can't get past "After spending 35 years of my life in some of the toughest prisons in the country," I don't even know what that means... All I know is that you must have some serious survival skills. The throw away the key for of punishment never made sense to me. The super max prisons they now use is just torture, worse than death if you ask me. I guess part of the justification is that no one locked down in a supermax facility will kill one else. The same thing you describe happening in prisons is happening on the outside too. You know when while men are spilling forth their resentment, shit is about to get ugly... I hope I'm wrong. Guest Ali, please create an account so that I don;t have to approve all of your posts -- thanks.

When I was younger I would not even consider an HBCU let alone an African one. You are old enough to remember when being call a "Black African" was in insult. Today I feel completely differently, because I know more and try to fight against propaganda that is feed us. @Delano, even if I were to agree with you on how Universities were founded, the point is of no consequence because how science is practiced has nothing to do with the manner in which a university was founded anymore than the tactics used on the school's football team or the lessons taught in the business schools. Wouldn't you agree? I actually teach web design at the college level right now. What I teach, and the how I teach it, has nothing to do with the way the school was founded.

@Delano here is a source you are likely to believe that talks about the discovery of a university that predated christianity. Does this help? (Also you don't have to always repost what I wrote -- especially your reply immediately follows my reply)

@Delano, I get it, a lot of people saw the film. But even the writer of the article pointed out that this film will "cannot reverse generations of negative imagery and distortion." The point you are missing and that was overlooked in the article is that first and foremost this film is a vehicle to make money. If someone did an analysis to see who will make the most money from the film this will be plain to you. Look I wish all of the ills heaped upon Black people globally would disappear as a result of this movie, but it is woefully idealistic to believe this will be the case. I'm surprised you would hold this position. Do you think this film will change 45's attitude toward "the Blacks?" Do you think Colin with get he QB job back. Do you think they will ever let more than 10 Black people into Stuyvesant HS? Do you think all the trigger happy Po-Po will stop gunning down unarmed Black people? Do you think more than a handful of Black people, if any will share proportionately in the fantastic profits generated by this film? Or will our role continue to be that of consumer; continually forking over our dough to people the owners of Disney who we have allowed to create our Mythology. You don't see Native Americans running around talking about how great Pocahontas was for the indigenous people of North America. The few that are left have more sense that we apparently have. You do realize that The Hollywood Reporter article you site, and well as all the other sources --including the NFL, is part of the same propaganda machine that made this film so fantastically popular. This material is created to get you to think exactly the why you are thinking. It is good that you visit sites like AALBC so that you are exposed to ideas not beholden to the same propaganda. that has figured out a way to both define your culture reap great financial rewards from it.

@Damani, that really was some introduction. Would you believe I had dinner with Paul just last night. He really is a great man. I'm glad he connected us and that you have connected here. I have responded to your email @Christy, I thoroughly convinced that everyone has an interesting bio. Now the individual, may not recognize this because they lived it. I'm so sorry to hear about you losing your spouse so young, but this is one of the reasons your story woud be interesting to others. We all must deal with loss, how you deal with it would be both interesting and helpful to others. Thanks for joining us!

Almost 1,000 book reviews have been published by AALBC.com. Learn how to have your book reviewed.

Del there you go again answering questions with questions... The data is pretty clear, and stark. Better than 75% of marriages fail and an increasing number of women never get married. Again, Del, are you willing to say that the film will change the world, or even Black people, for the better? Please don't respond with another oblique question. Thanks.

@Delano was that a typo or do you really not know that the first universities predated the 1500 by several thousand years. @Pioneer1 I think part of the problem is that you too are tying science to Western civilization which is relatively new even the stuff Hippocrates knew was taken from Kemet. Science predates Christianity. Science does not start with Europeans climbing out of the Dark Ages. Part of the way you guys are talking seems to indicate a belief that it does. I guess your Western education makes this so.

So you perfer to motivate people by telling them they have no control over their lives and to think negative thoughts?

@Delano, I don't think you are wrong but about me, but I also believe people are inherently good. A small minority of people F things up for the rest of us by creating the conditions in which good people do desperate things -- like vote for 45. Pioneer I completely disagree with you Seriously, I think you are right to the extent that the current system has not served us very well and if you'd gave to be super optimistic or naive to believe that it ever will. I don't know about poligamy, most people can't handle one spouse...

No the solution is not Black book, it just the battle I and some others have taken up. It is just one battle in a much larger war. Sure there are plenty of charitable people, but these people don't control anything. How else could wealth inequality be so great, or how could so many people, be so impoverished, or go without health coverage, with all the charitable people we have?

OK @Delano, I guess I can see how you could take my statement, "I will say this unless we do everything for ourselves we will never be able to truly define a culture..." as a proposed solution. The reality is that it is a broad statement of a goal, not an action plan of how to get there (i.e a solution). It was not intended as anything more than that, because I don't know of a solution for Black folks to achieve independence in the context of this society. Maybe we can all just move to Wakanda Since we ain't going anywhere. My solution is to fight for independence in my corner of the world, books, which not only entertain and inform they define, record, and celebrate a culture. We can at least control our books can't we?

Sorry it appears my information was stale, while Cosby's show had been pulled by all the network many have brought it back: https://mic.com/articles/180325/networks-dropped-the-cosby-show-amid-assault-accusations-now-two-networks-have-brought-it-back I stand corrected. It will be interesting to see what they do when he is convicted, which seems pretty likely if they open the floodgates and let all the past victims provide evidence of Cosby predatory behavior.

The possibilities are unlimited.

Most of us hope you are right Brother! ---------- I sat in a meeting with Gary Cohn when I was at Goldman. He spoke to my department, explaining how much of the work was moving to Bangalore.

Where is the flaw in telling people they in control of the own lives and to think positively?

Pioneer if you don't understand my analogy, you may not understand the word "never." Del it is not clear to me why you insist the science could not exist without religion. I'd argue that science -- especially in the last several hundred years -- exists despite religion. The BC/AD strikes me as weak way to draw a relationship between the two, indeed some use BCE. In any case, the names are irrelevant to how science is practiced. This is like arguing that since the planets are named after Roman gods, that science is would not exist without to Roman mythology. Would you also make that argument too?

This seems to be the case...