Troy

It is just my opinion Del, but we are close in age and grew up in similar environments, so I'd imagine some of what I said might resonate with you. I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in, so it is easy for me to make a direct comparison. Despite my neighborhood being much safer now, I'm not sure the kids here are actually before off--all things considered. I think the way we are driven to use technology is a big part of the problem. The cell phone is great. However, the Instagram and Snapchat apps which is what the cell phone is actually primarily used for, by many, does enough harm to outweigh the benefits of the cell phone itself. Corporations are working feverously on wearable devices so that we can be engaged with Facebook 100% of the time. Many potential users think this is a great thing and can't wait; they will also be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks a month for the privilege.

Del, maybe the high schoolers were engaged in required reading--which is better than scrolling through Snapchat. The alienation may have been there, but I think the technology, at least the way we are programmed to use it increases the alienation by provider optimal conditions for it. Why do you need a person when you have virtual reality. I don't consider myself a dinosaur, I'm far more tech savvy than most. I just don't consume technology I use it to produce content, build community, business, etc. or at least I try to. But I'm fighting an uphill battle. When I was a kid it was hard to find an open basketball court to shoot hoops, the playgrounds were full of kids running around playing a bazillion variations of tag. it was a miracle to go to the park and find an empty swing. Today the basketball courts are empty and the playgrounds largely deserted. I can't remember the last time I saw a stickball game or even girls jumping double dutch. The swings hang idly. What are these kids doing instead? Is swapping memes on Instagram better than a game of hide-n-go seek? I dunno, but I doubt it. The exercise alone is probably worth it. I'm just glad I knew a time before people were controlled by their cell phones and grew up in an era where we played games outdoors.

Pioneer, you realize of course that Obama could have come out looking as white as the Jesus you envision. It was just the roll of the genetic dice that resulted in his physical appearance. If Obama was born looking like his mother and could pass for what you define as "white," you would be calling him white--and there would be no difference in his ancestry. Further, despite an identical upbringing you would treat and think of Obama completely differently applying a completely different set of stereotypes to him. Pioneer define "sex."

@CDBurns , one of the enhancements to the site is that I can create customized buy links for each individual book. So if you want me to direct readers to you, lighting source or any other place all I need is the URL. The cool thing is that this is something Amazon is not likely to ever do, so I have a small competitive advantage over them.

Since I shared this information, sent to me by the Art Sanctuary, I subsequently learned that Extra Mile Books is NOT an imprint of Akashic Books. As a result, I can not vouch for the information previously shared above. Sorry for any confusion.

...and I'm not that old. In a few days, God willing I will be 55 years of age. I would like to live to be 100, but I'm not doing anything to help accomplish the feat, but I digress... Sometimes I wonder if why I want to even bother sticking around that long. It is not like the culture values the elderly for their wisdom and experience, but that is a minor consideration. Lately, I feel like I'm surrounded by a bunch of mindless zombies. Case in point; leaving my apartment building yesterday, I got into the elevator with a woman, who was fullly engrossed in whatever she was doing on her phone. I glanced over to see what it was (she did not notice me), and saw she was on Instagram. The doors to the elevator opened, and we both exited. We followed the same path out the front door. We crossed the street and went our separate ways. Not once, even to cross the street, did the woman take her face out of the phone. It seems no matter where I go or what I'm doing the majority of people around me have their heads buried in a cell phone. When I'm on the subway and look (I usually look), they are playing candy crush (really popular) watching a video, or scrolling through social media. Rarely do I see people reading books or articles, they are usually just mindlessly scrolling. They don't even appear to be that entertained. I'm beginning to wonder if the nature of humanity is changing and I'm being left behind. What will it be like in another 10 years or even 20? Will it be a world that I even want to be a part of where people are more tied to their technology that each other? All of the trends people talk about enthusiastically actually concern, if not outright scare me; virtual reality, connecting everything to the net, the growth of social media, etc. Even that device Amazon sells that allow people to order more Coke just by asking for it gives me the willies. We had a snow storm about a week ago, so they did not collect trash of a couple of days. The amount of trash piled up on the street waiting to be collected was astonishing. I wondered what do they do with all of that trash, why do we create so much of it, and why doesn't anyone care? Sometimes I just wish I lived in a time when you could still see the stars at night. I'm no technophobe--far from it, but I remember a time before all this technology dominated our world and I'm not convinced we are better off. @Cynique, you've seen more profound changes over a longer period of time. What do you think? Is it even possible to answer the question and discount the overt racism and sexism from years ago?

Remember when we had Black American's in Baseball?

Cynique, I never heard that about Black people being called Moors. That is the benefit of having access to someone who has been around more than 5 minutes. I notice that you included the fact the both were dead. Do you miss them? Do you miss the earlier times in which those two were alive? I think I will start another conversation with this question.

There you go again Pioneer using subjective means to access one's so called race. What about the mother influence? If Barack Obama went around trying to assert his whiteness based upon the 50% of the genes he got from his mother; Black folks would never have put him into office. We already know how Tiger Woods was treated by Black folks when he tries to embrace his mother's "race." As far as your question about the Puerto Rican's kid's children. I personally don't consider people born and raised in America anything else but American. I think that might be the legal definition as well. Do you know anything about people who are transgender, or have gender dysphoria? It is complicated stuff and not as black and white as you are trying to make it. @Delano It was not clear if you were asking questions, making rhetorical statement, or doing something else to prompt discussion Maybe using a question mark after your questions would make that clearer.

Pioneer why do Black people have to be predisposed to more creative? Could it be that for hundreds of years, entertaining white folks is the only option we had to acquire wealth.

Pioneer you agree with Aires conclusion, but not the way he expressed it. I guess that's 'cause we's real niggaz and you ain't down

Clarke actually addresses the "race" of Jesus in the video. Whether is it is Jesus or anybody else who lived during that time in the region, we know what those people looked like. They were not caucasion.

Pioneer, I used to think like you too, but I see thing differently When I first went to college I was talking to some other students they were Blond with blue eyes. I asked them where they were from and they said, "Puerto Rico." I could not believe it. All the Puerto Rican I knew looked Black or if they were light skinned they had dark hair and dark eyes. They look whiter than white, the only difference was they spoke Spanish. Puerto Rico is a culture and "nationality," neither have anything to do with one's so-called Race. Your friend's son is Puerto Rican, when he gets older he may decie to become a white American--like som many others have. Pray tell, what preferential treatment do Black people get that white people would renounce their whiteness to get? If a white man rapes a native American and the child is reared as a native America, and claims to be one, why can't he be? Human gender is determined by more than one's sex organs.

@Pioneer1 are you saying Jesus Christ was caucasian? Are you saying that the Moors were not Black, but of Greek (caucasian) descent? Yeah I like deepak's quote too.

Following up on an earlier conversation on the meaning on spirituality Just emphasizing the distinction between religion and spirituality: "The Romans and the Greeks had no color prejudice comparable to the kind of prejudice we would know later on, otherwise why would three Africans become Emperors of Rome? Why would there be three African Popes? Finally, Constantine decided to make Christianity the religion of the whole of the Roman Empire. Now we’re coming to the critical period when the Roman domination of the church has corrupted the church, the Africans began some disenchantment with the Roman interpretation of Christianity. Constantine called a council of Bishops and Priests at a place called Nice, this is the Nicene Conference. It is at this conference that the European created a European concept of Christianity. It was at this conference that they began to take the African Saints out of the literature of Christianity. Now the corruption had started. The physical concept of Jesus Christ did not exist. Now how did it come into existence? Because the Pope commissioned it to come into existence. Regarding the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michealangelo painted the picture using one of his relatives as a model, and that picture, one of the finest pieces of propaganda ever projected in history, has changed the minds of millions of people, as who is supposed to represent God, whoever He or She is, and I have no problem with the ‘She.’ Spirituality is a way of accepting the fact that: there is a spiritual force in the universe larger than all of mankind. But someone had to come along and invent a word called ‘God.’ Then someone had to say of another God, ‘Mine is better than yours.’ Someone had to create ‘faith’ and say ‘I have the True Faith.’ Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the handmaiden of conquerors. Nearly, all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors and used as the framework to control their minds. My main point here is if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, then in your imagination, God’s supposed to look like you! And when you accept a picture of the Deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people." —John Henrik Clarke from the in the documentary, A Great and Mighty Walk. The quote above is at the 39 minute 50 sec point in the video below This is not the first time I've posted this video here, but of course there are always people you have yet to discover Dr. Clarke and his work.

Well it depends Del. If they throw 45's monkey butt into prison, I seriously doubt he'd be an alpha male in that environment. However, on the outside, even without the title, he will still be surrounded by sycophants willing to do his bidding and defend his child like behavior. If he and I were in a room full of a random selection of sistaz, I think Trump would command far more attention than I. Who would Omarosa gravitate to? The poor, short, Black dude or the tall, rich, white guy? I dunno; you tell me?

The following is a feed of Chris Burns' comments from various websites, including this one. The commenting software is provided by a company called Disqus. Here is my Disqus main page: https://disqus.com/by/AALBC/ Disqus also allows you to provide links to other pages on your site as well as serve ads. These are both services that Google also provides. Google also does a better job. The scrolling display below was created by software from a company called FeedWind. I could do this myself, but they make it easier for anyone to do this. If you pay $50 per year, you can remove the "Powered by Feedwind." I used these type of feeds on the upgraded author profiles here on AALBC.com. Here is Christopher D. Burns (@CDBurns) author profile page: https://aalbc.com/authors/home.php?author_name=Christopher+D.+Burns where you can see his comments as well. My thinking is that people can users can use feeds like this to consume content created on indie websites from across the. This is not new technology. In fact, it is pretty old. Before the advent of the high-end cell phones with 4G connections and tons of storage, we could have information from website send directly to our cell phones and see content from websites. Before that, email programs could be configured receive updates from bloggers, news sources, or anyone who provided an RSS feed. Today social media has taken this over. I'm trying to take back control. This also explains why Facebook has killed the RSS feeds they previously supplied.

Yep they work now. Man, did not know you wrote so many books. I've been sleeping!

Hey Richard these links are not working for me.

This is Science Fiction’s new Golden Age. That is what they would have you believe. Short fiction markets are better than ever before, exploring ideas of equality, gender, sexuality, neurodivergence, disability, and most of all what it means to be human. It really is science fiction’s new Golden Age. If you’re white. What does it mean to be black and look at intersectional issues of equality through the lens of science fiction and fantasy? Where are those stories in the canon? There is black excellence out there waiting to be discovered and not tokenized. Octavia Butler is our past and she is an amazing ancestor, but she should not be our only storyteller. This is the future of Black SFF. FIYAH rises from the ashes of the Black literary tradition started by Fire!! in 1926. We aren’t here for respectability. We’re here to ask what it means to Black and extraordinary. We are a place to showcase your stories and grow your career. Part literary incubator, part middle-finger to the establishment, we know you have stories to tell, and we are here for it. I discovered this magazine on Richard Murray's Hearth blog. The magazine is currently seeking submissions.

Del like the concept of race, what is means to be Black is arbitrary and in the eye of the beholder. As a result, there can never be an objective determination of what Blackness means; it is up to the individual Even the government allows people to self-assess. As illustrated in conversations over the years here, there is no objective or subjective agreement on what it mean to be culturally, socially, mentally, or even physically black. "Black people are not a monolith" has become a cliche. Speaking of what it means to be Black, Rachel Dolezal, a former leader in the Black community, just had a new book published, In Full Color Finding My Place in a Black and White World:

Oh brother... So if I disagree with you, I'm a know-it-all. Do you really believe that about me?

Mrs Mommy I don't agree with the premise of your question that Colin risked his life. Colin has passed his prime as it relates to football. He got, I suspect, as much positive press as he got negative. Besides professional athletes are already accustomed to this it is part of the job. I'm glad to hear he donated a million dollars. That is commendable. Of course who it went to and what it be used for would be interesting to know. It would also be interesting to know what percentage of his net worth that million dollars represented. There are people who tithe at their church, making a relatively greater sacrifice. Football careers end. They last, on average, 3 years or so. Colin is full aware of this and was on the tail end of his career when he started kneeling. The vast majority of professional athletes do not become commentators at the end of their careers. It is a completely different skill set and very few opportunities. Again, I don't buy into your assumptions. If Colin had the skill of a Dak Prescott, he would still be playing. All I'm trying to do is strip away the media hype (both positive and negative) and put Colin kneeling into perspective. Colin aside for moment; do you, Mrs.Mommy, or anyone else believe that athletes, professional or otherwise, should not stand for the National Anthem? Why or why not?

Thanks for the reply it was very helpful. Please keep us posted on the progress with your website.

@drewskinnerjr no problem regarding the support I gather you don't have a website of your own; why not?