Troy

As far as ghosts, spirits, or souls are concerned. It I were a spirit, I seriously doubt I would give a crap about anyone who has done me wrong on this physical plain. I'd hope I've have better things to do in the spiritual realm...

New York City by itself has the population of the rest of the entire state. According to the stats that i recall. Hillary got more votes than all of the republican candidates combined--by far. Bernie got more popular votes than Trump. NY as usual, will go to the democratic candidate. None of the independent voters were allowed to cast a vote in this primary. New York only allows people registered in a party to vote for a candidate in a party. The belief is that many independent voters, who would have voted for Bernie, did not have an opportunity to do it; though it probably would not have make much of a difference. I was registered as an independent until Obama ran the first time. I switched my party affiliation so that I could vote for him. Trump won every county in New York State with the exception of the one I reside, New York county (Manhattan). @Pioneer1, sure based upon square footage NY State, like most states I suspect is pretty rural. However most of the people live in the cities and those cities are overwhelmingly liberal. Trump, not any republican candidate, has any hope of carrying NY in the general election. But if Hillary is indicted, who knows what will happen.

R.I.P. Prince Rogers Nelson 21 Nights

Lisa, everything you've written resonates with me. I guess the question is what do we do about it? Your last paragraph is particularly interesting, from my perspective as an online bookseller. In America it truly does comes down to what makes money. But "bad" books will never disappear. In many situations "bad" books subsidize "good" books. For example, E.L. James' novels are bestsellers on this website even though no one confuses these books with great literature. But those sales subsidize the promotion of good and important literature--that might not get promotion otherwise. There is room for both. The truth is publishing can survive if only "bad" books were published and not another work of great literature were published again However the opposite is not true.

Hi Leslie, I visited the website, it is probably me, but the copy reads as it the books are by Michelle Lindo-Rice please confirm the author's name.

They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America by Ivan Van Sertima is a very popular book on the website, making our bestsellers list 11 times. They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves.

I have not seen the film either. The review does not move me to see the film either--at least not in the theater. I would have expected Zoe to Lip-synch. No one would have expected her to sing well enough to mimic Nina Simone. I was actually surprised to read that the African-American Film Critics Association the film their "Seal of Approval," I have not seen any justification for this honor. Seems like a marketing ploy if you ask me. I know it is a "Critics" Association, but in 2016 this would not be surprising When I get a press release I will share it here

I just posted Kam's review of Nina (2016) If anyone would like to share their feedback on the presentation of the film review please do so. What is missing? Should the information be presented better? I still have not designed a template for film reviews.

77th Day of #blackhistorymonth: April 19, 1989, a brutal rape leads to tragic miscarriage of justice for "The Central Park Five" donald trump famously took out a full page ad calling for the execution of these boys who were later proven innocent. The newspaper ad Mr. Trump bought in 1989 after a female jogger was attacked in New York’s Central Park.

OK start a new conversation when you are ready to share... No I was not walking about like Washington as this character. While he won an academy award for this role, there is nothing about any of I would emulate.

I went to my polling place at 7:30 a.m.; one would have thought it was a midterm election--there was barely a soul in sight. Even our convoluted process of; determining your district, getting the ballot, filling out the ballot, and finally scanning it went quickly, simply because no one else was ahead of me. Interestingly, I did not have to show any form of identification. Given the scrawl that I use as my signature, I'm confident virtually anyone could walked in and voted in my place. One has to show identification just to walk into a local bar, but not to vote. Bernice seemed to have had much more buzz on a grassroots level. But Hillary was backed by many of the same NYC groups that backed her when she ran against Barack Obama. The teachers union backed Hillary, my local newspaper the Amsterdam News backed Hillary. However most people I talk to back Bernie. If they favor Hillary, they are less than enthusiastic about it--or are keeping to themselves. I bet if Bernie was 25 years younger Hillary would not have a chance. Some pundits believe Hillary will be indicted and her candidacy be rendered moot. If you have not heard about the Panama Papers, check it out. There are rumors she and Bill may have some concerns, over and above the mail server issues. It is fascinating how people generally think Bernie will not be able to do anything and everything he is saying he will do is unrealistic. I don't recall anyone saying that about Obama. Obama promised a lot and even got a Noble Peace Prize, based apparently on his promises. But we see American military action in the Middle east has not ended, drone strikes have escalated, Guantanamo is still open, etc. Maybe this is why Bernie's promises are criticized as being unreasonable. Then it is not clear to me why Hillary would be more believable. Even if Bernie ekes out a win in New York, it does not look like the powers that be want him as a candidate. The NY and CA results will be very interesting. The Donald is predicted to win the NY primary quite handily. But NY, and NYC in particular, is a blue state so I expect both Hillary and Bernie to beat The Donald in the popular vote.

Pioneer, you know that story about an Aryan invasion of India has been largely discredited as myth or perhaps British propaganda. At any rate there is not evidence that this occurred. There however is ample evidence to show that America's "peculiar institution" was indeed peculiar because enslavement was based upon one's phenotype (one's so called "race"), in perpetuity. This was an American invention. Again while eliminating ignorance, would help you still have to stamp out unbridled greed and evil. The guys running roughshod over the country, and our economy, know what they are doing and how they are hurting people to enrich themselves beyond imagination--They just don't care. And they are too powerful for anyone to do anything about it.

OK I see you are referring to the Seminole Wars. No they never covered that in history class I learned about it later in life, but never dug deep into the details. Worthy of a Ken Burn documentary. That guy andrew jackson was something else huh?

In a word, "Yes." But the "we" is not Black folks but the collective we. Don't ask me how to "we" do it because I'm certain I don't know. Perhaps it is our lot as humanity; to never ever being able to have anything nice with without having to worry about someone else, who is willing to amass an army, and travel the Earth to rape, pillage and plunder all that you hold dear.

Surely it is pretty obvious that America's wealth was generated on the backs of enslaved Africans. But we are mistreated globally, not because of the color of our skin, but because of greed. The color of our skin, as the reason for mistreatment, is a relatively new idea. Evil and greedy people will mistreat others using a variety of reasons to justify their behavior. Religion has tool for this purpose oppressing people for longer than racism has. @Dr. Jazzy, even if we got rid of racism in it's entirely today, we would still be oppressed, because people will still be evil and greedy. In addition to evil and greedy people, we'd also have to deal with ignorant/stupid people. These are the people who are easily manipulated by the evil and greedy folks to believe in the racism, while only marginally benefiting from it. These ignorant ones are the ones who fight and die to support a system that does even benefit them. Like hundreds of thousands of the white people who fought and died in the Civil War for the right to enslave Black folks. The majority of those maimed and killed couldn't even afford to own a slave. So while racism continues to be a serious problem. Our biggest problem is evil, greed, and ignorance. You solve those problems, racism will take care of itself.

Hi Sheryl, thanks again for sharing information about your work here. I have added your books to our website: http://aalbc.it/sheryll It does not look like we will review Tender Kisses. Moving forward we will give stronger consideration to books prior to their publication date. Please follow up again prior to the publication of Places in My Heart. Peace.

OK so I presume it was a battle during the Civil war, but I await your response. It it was a battle during the civil war, I'm sure it has been documented (as you know, not everything can be found on Google).

I saw a trail for Ghost Brother last night. The show looks exceedingly stupid. I guess it will be wildly successful.

No doubt regarding Google. I have to admit I have not been targeted for so long by what appears to be the same entity. I'm not sure it was the same group that hit by edit1st site and that has been spamming AALBC.com, again this has always been an ongoing problem. I did notice that some of the other sites being hit by the same spammers include Bossip, Madamenoir, and Worldstarhiphop. Interestingly, Worldstarhiphop has apparently invested no effort in stopping the spamming. Some of their "articles" have thousands of comments many of the racist kind I've been fighting against. It looks like Worldstarhophip is using all of it to generate traffic. Most days the racism spammer comments outnumber actual comments on my site. But I'm targeting a completely different demographic so Worldstarhiphop tactics would not work for me. But at one point Worldstarhiphop generated the most traffic of any Black site owned or black demographic site.

The one good thing about Google is that they force you to keep your site tight. I'm sure my site is better than it would have been without Google's influence. On the other hand the idea that one company can exert so much influence is troubling, for Google does make mistakes from time to time, and those mistakes cost people money and even their livelihoods. Google has removed the "this site may be hacked message," and my Edit1st.com website and the site is better as a result, so in this instance Google was a benefit. But overall, collectively, I'm not convinced the benefits Google provides outweigh the negatives. I doubt, it was someone close to me that hacked the site. No one other than myself manages my websites. Because WordPress is so popular (something like 70% of websites use their software) it is a target of hackers. If a vulnerability is found millions of websites can be compromised.

We'll I'll admit I'm unaware of a war (formally declared or otherwise), fought on U.S. soil, in which darn near 100 white U.S. military men were killed for every one Black man. But I'm a product of the America's public education system. I did not cheat and try to look it up. (I'm not even sure how I would craft that search). But if you do share the information I'll make it an Black history month update.

I got the following message from Google last night, but did not see it until this morning. Search Console Hacked content detected on http://edit1st.com/ To: Webmaster of http://edit1st.com/, Google has detected that your site has been hacked by a third party who created malicious content on some of your pages. This critical issue utilizes your site’s reputation to show potential visitors unexpected or harmful content on your site or in search results. It also lowers the quality of results for Google Search users. Therefore, we have applied a manual action to your site that will warn users of hacked content when your site appears in search results. To remove this warning, clean up the hacked content, and file a reconsideration request. After we determine that your site no longer has hacked content, we will remove this manual action. Following are one or more example URLs where we found pages that have been compromised. Review them to gain a better sense of where this hacked content appears. The list is not exhaustive. http://edit1st.com/tethjf__xdyijr The first thing I did was run a Google search that would return my site (Edit1st.com) in the results and I saw the message. "This Site May Be Hacked" Now would you visit a site with this message? I wouldn't either, but so far organic traffic does not seem to have been hurt by the google warning. I guess people are missing or ignoring the warning for now, but it has been less than 24 hours since the warning was posted and Friday is literally the slowest time for website traffic on my websites. At any rate, I just removed the code seems to have been some php code added to one of my directories I have NO idea how that could have happened. The Edit.1st site is a WordPress site, so I added Wordfence plugin, changed my password using wordpress's password generation tool, deactivated plugins I no longer use, a took a few other precautions. Hopefully Google will get rid of this message soon.

Cynique, no one really likes reading a review, from an entity they respect, that is negative. Of course, if they respect the entity the take the critique, not personally, learn what they can from it and move on. I've published many unfavorable reviews of authors books over the years--especially during the Thumper era. Sometimes authors react very negatively, but they are a small minority. Readers however always appreciate an honest review. Now that does not mean the reader will agree with the reviewer. But many readers appreciate a well written honest review written by an informed reader. Of course a favorable review on a respected platform is great for the authors. I still remember the grief Wanda Coleman got for writing an unfavorable review of one of Maya Angelou's books. You would have thought she pimp slapped Michelle Obama given the public's reaction; “In writing that is bad to God-awful, Song is a tell-all that tells nothing in empty phrases and sweeping generalities. Dead metaphors ("sobbing embrace," "my heart fell in my chest") and clumsy similes ("like the sound of buffaloes running into each other at rutting time") are indulged. Twice-told crises (being molested, her son's auto accident) are milked for residual drama. Extravagant statements come without explication, and schmooze substitutes for action… There is too much coulda shoulda woulda. Unfortunately, the Maya Angelou of A Song Flung Up to Heaven seems small and inauthentic, without ideas, wisdom or vision. Something is being flung up to heaven all right, but it isn't a song.” —Wanda Coleman, April 14, 2002   Sara, I first covered Dyson back in 2001, I was unfamiliar with him at the time. It was one of the first audio file I put on the site. His delivery was exactly the same back then, and I found him interesting. A couple of years later I did meet him, and gave him a card. He said, "I've heard of y'all." That was over a decade ago, over that period of time the site has only grown, and there are fewer sites like mine nowadays, but it is possible he forgot. It however is more likely that he does not appreciate why the support of folks like him is crucial to the Black book ecosystem. The video I shot of Michael was during the National Black Writers Conference, one of the things I would like to see happen, during that even is for us to develop strategies that will empower and enrich us.

Oh there is another reason Michael Dyson may not have been supportive of AALBC.com; we've been pretty critical of his work.

One of the biggest problems we face culturally is that we have essentially lost our ability to critically critique ourselves. One of the things I hear over and over again from books reviewers is that, "If I'm too harsh on an author, they'll get mad and I'll lose access." or, "If I can't write a favorable review I won't bother writing one at all?" Far worse is the reviewer who writes favorable reviews simply to get on an author's good side or who write a positive review to as a way to promote the book--all unbeknownst to readers. It is very difficult for a reviewer to write a review, of book written by a Black writer, and be paid for their effort. As a result, far fewer reviews are written, and the quality of what is written is weakened. Any decent reviews that do get published are usually published on blogs few people read or rendered undiscoverable on social media. In the world of books it is crucial that we critically critique our literature and literary nonfiction. This came to mind as I was thinking about the apparent lack of support shown on Michael Eric Dyson's website for indie Black book platforms (Websites, booksellers, magazines, etc). Then it occurred to me that Michael may not be very supportive of an AALBC.com because we've been pretty critical of his work; “As a critic who has reviewed several of his books, I have been so underwhelmed by the earlier work of Dyson that I had, quite frankly, long since dismissed him as an intellectual lightweight more given to a superficial sensationalism than to anything of substance. How else might one respond to his building a biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. around a false FBI allegation that the slain civil rights leader was gay? Or, by contrast, his uncritical veneration of Tupac Shakur despite the late rapper's felonious, misogynistic, profane, violent and self-destructive ways? In fact, I found one opus so awful, that I put in unreturned calls to Dyson's colleagues to ask why they had praised it in blurbs on the back cover, because it was readily apparent that they couldn't possibly have bothered to read it.” —Kam Williams, January 2006 “Dyson correctly points out that the current situation faced by African Americans is a "complex nexus of poor education, and limited life options leading to self-destructive choices made out of desperation." But he offers no suggestions for improvement, only repeating the importance of loving one another and being compassionate. These are necessary components, but only part of what is needed. Many readers will conclude that "Michael Eric Dyson Has Lost His Mind", for 288 pages of one-note, convolutions of Cosby's remarks wears real thin, real quick.” —Paige Turner, January 2006 It would not be unreasonable to assume that Michael would choose not to support an AALBC.com. As I said in the other post I do not share Michael's work to get anything from him. I share his work because he is a prominent voice in the Black community, but one that also must be critiqued. This does not just go for authors. We see a Donald Trump go around exaggerating, lying, saying anything he wants, while never being seriously challenged by journalists in a meaningful way, treating him as if he deserves to be considered as a serious candidate. We also know the major media conglomerates do not want to risk losing access to Trump and the huge windfall in revenue he has created for them. Sooner or later we will have to figure this out. Otherwise we will just be lied to in our nonfiction and told our fiction is great when it is really is not.