Troy

Hey Del, your predictions is interesting and more than a year old. I assume Lily = Donald Mark = Bernie Harry = Hillary And the Republicans are looking for someone to replace Donald at the convention so that may be your forth candidate who will almost certainly lose. Who do you predict will win? I think the best possible shot the Republicans have is Donald. Any alternative they try to shove down the voters throats will lose against any Democratic nominee. Bernie is the Democrats best shot. If he gets the Democratic nomination he will with the White house I think he has the best chance of beating Donald. Don v Bern, Bernie Wins Don v Hill, Don Wins Alt Rep Candidate v any Democrat, the Democrat Wins Mostly likely outcome, my prediction, Hillary barely beats Bern for the Democrat not, Trump survive Republican resistance at convention and win the Presidential Reality TV show.

Several years ago AALBC.com, following the lead of industry leaders like Kirkus, began offering fee based book reviews. This service was also added in reaction to the on going problem is receiving FAR more requests for book reviews than we could afford to pay writers to write. The fee based book review guarantees a review written by a professional book reviewer in 6 weeks or less. We continue to write and publish free (free to the author) book reviews, so the problem of receiving more requests than we can handle persists You may have noticed a recent increase in the number of authors posting information about their books on the website with some explicitly expressing an interest in a book review. This is the result in a recent procedure change, as it relates to requesting an AALBC.com book review (free). Previously AALBC.com accepted book review requests via email, but takes a significant portion of time to review and reply to these requests. As a result, I only replied to those authors whose books we chose to review. Given that the vast majority of these book would not be reviewed, this policy made sense in terms of efficiency. However the author's effort was wasted if their book was not reviewed. Recently I decided to instruct authors to post book review requests on our literature forum. This offers the author several significant benefits: The book will be seen by readers who visit the forum, which is free promotion and an opportunity to directly engage with readers. I use this forum to look for eNewsletter and website content, so there are, potentially, additional opportunities for book promotion beyond the book review. The book's information will become a permanent part of the website with is good for SEO. AALBC.com will only consider books posted on the forum for review. The likelihood a book being reviewed goes up dramatically, because the pool of books considered for reviews gets smaller, as many authors will continue to send emails (oblivious to, or ignoring the policy). This is win-win. I'm looking forward to discovering more books as a result of this policy and continuing to improve this platform for allowing authors to share information about their work.

Hi Nathan, thanks for sharing information about your book here. I took the liberty of posting the cover as well. ______________

43rd Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬: Activist Fannie Lou Hamer passed 39 years ago today. I missed a few days, but I was out of town--fortunate enough to be invited to participate in the Kingston Book Festival (more on that later). I really wanted to personally make a Black History Month post every day of the year, but it is just impractical. I really admire Fannie Lou Hamer.

Brilliant.

No of course they would not have referred to themselves in a language that was not yet invented, but there is no evidence that they referenced to themselves using the same constructs white racists use today. The word Negro comes from the Spanish, but they derived it from the Greek necro meaning dead. None of which has anything to do with African people. Worth reading:The Name Negro, It's Origin and Evil Use

Pioneer I have to side with Sara on this one both women pictured are obese; and I don't need calipers to make that distinction. There is one major difference between the two women; one is obviously pictured in a pleasing way with liberal use of photoshop, while the other is not. Sara the word Black (or Negro) was first used by Europeans. Think about it, why would people on the continent of Africa refer to themselves that way? If the government got out of the business of trying to put people into meaningless racial buckets I do not think racism would go away the next day, but as the government and the culture stopped focusing on it, maybe in a few generations it might. We do know continuing to fixate on race has not gotten rid of racism. But we will simply have to disagree on that point. Sara here is something else to consider, all humans on the planet are of African Descent. Sure we may be of more recent decent, but ultimately all humans come from Africa.

The only reason we're in here is we care about the culture says Troy Johnson. @aalbc #BusinessofBooks #KBF2016

Sure knowing there are pockets of unemployment can use useful in understanding causes. The are pockets of unemployment all over the country. In some places, like the industrial mid-west, it is due to outsourcing of manufacturing jobs overseas. Again I don't believe putting racing into the mix is necessary to deal with the problem. Again "Africa" is not a racial group, so I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Ethnicities are not racial group either. You are mixing apples with oranges and it is making what you are trying to say unclear to me. Again, the purpose of the site is to celebrate our culture (obviously), if someone of Irish descent wants to get down, I welcome them. I'm not clear why you are so dead set upon embracing a construct created by racists to denigrate us as "our" heritage. Our African ancestors did not refer to themselves as "Black" why should we? Why do you @Sara?

Sure a higher percentage of Black people are unemployed than white folks, I'm just saying let's deal with the problem of unemployment and leave race out of it. It obviously has not helped so far, and there is no indication that it will. I'm not sure why dropping "African" from the sites name matters, "African" and race have nothing to do with each other. That is like saying American means "white." Sure, class is a manmade construct too, but the U.S. does not attempt to categorize people by class on the census. Why should we continue to shoehorn 340 million people into a bunch of meaningless categories. I was not attempting to the describe the "causes" of obesity either. I was proposing a correlation between class and obesity, one which is independent of race.

Wesley Snipes punched Halley Berry, causing her to lose her hearing--what?! Pioneer I agree with the last thing you wrote, which addresses a completely different issue than what Chastie wrote about; an individual young lady with an apparent self-esteem issue. Now if the young lady Chastie was talking about, looks like a "sack of sweet potatoes walking on two feet," then the young lady would benefit tremendously by losing some weight. But since we don't know what she looks like who knows. Growing up and getting a job can correct many of these self esteem issues: nicer clothing, braces, vision correction, healthier food, a trainer, a psychologist, a better set of friends, etc The weight issue reminds me of the "Thick" conversation we had a few years ago, where I was essentially arguing your point. Some Brothers like their women "Thick," which I viewed as a euphemism for "fat." Sara, one easy way to get rid of the problem of "...making AMERICAN problems the exclusive problems of black Americans," is to simply stop framing these issues based upon race. Again I believe obesity is more an issue of culture and class. American's are fat.

Join us for an afternoon of Black Books with two Black book pioneers, Wade and Cheryl Hudson of Just Us Books. Get books for you, your kids, family and friends. Just Us Books will be popping up in our store for one afternoon. WHEN: Saturday, March 19, 2016 from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM (EDT) WHERE: Calabar Imports, Harlem - 2504 Frederick Douglass Boulevard Calabar Imports, New York, NY 10030 RSVP (free)

Jim you wrote, "Please consider reviewing this book on the QBR web site." I assumed you got the websites mixed up. This site is AALBC.com, a completely separate entity. I was pointing you in the right direction.

NIna also had a serious, largely untreated, mental condition. This explains her erratic behavior and perhaps even her art. Again being "Mr. Antirace" I would be willing to bet money that there is a much stronger correlation between obesity and class than there is by race. Where lower class people tend to be overweight, and upper middle class people less so.

36th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬: The 3 Bestselling Poetry Books for 1998 I sold a lot of these books back in 1998, this was during a time when folks said poetry does not sell. But what did I know, I was just starting out as a bookseller.

Your Book on two of AALBC.com's most popular pages for 50 Days - Only $50 (5 spaces available these will go quickly).

Well Pioneer I see you are really fixed on outward appearance :-) I can't debate you on rising obesity and related health risks, cause I agree with you there. But Chasitie, never said what the girl actually looks like from a physical perspective. Who know she may actually be physically even by your standard, but may not see it. This is common with women who are overwhelmed with images of celebrities photoshopped to an unattainable level of beauty. Of course the impact is even more severe today since many young women can't put their phones down for more than 5 minutes. Of course, beauty goes beyond how someone looks. We often marginalize people who may have a lot to offer simply because they are unattractive, or Black. Since we are unique, I believe we are all beautiful in some way. It is just that our culture is so damn shallow, that we are only trained to judge "beauty" based upon some European standard, and we actually miss out on the beauty we all have.

Cynique, I would argue that O.J. getting off was a travesty of justice and makes my point. If race were not a issue The Juice would have almost certainly have gone to jail for decapitating those two people. The L.A.P.D. could should have been crucified for beating Rodney King the way they did. It does not matter what the skin color was of anyone involved. Again, I'm not saying that people are not racist. I'm even not saying let's make believe racism does not exist. It obviously does. I'm saying let's punish the behavior independent of race, and let's stop behaving as if the color of someone's skin makes any difference. All this has done is perpetuate the racist mentality into the 21st century and has stopped us from moving past it. I know people want to hold onto race, just like they want to hold onto believing in Zeus. But the science has demonstrated that genetically we are essentially identical, and the concept of race is as fictional as the Easter Bunny.

JIm reach out to the qbr.com website.

@Pioneer1, of course I considered that argument. But we can deal with all of those problems without adding race into the mix. If the police, or anyone does not want hire someone, then deal with why that person was not hired. If the cops gun someone down in the street for no reason; that by itself is reason enough to deal with the injustice. The so called race of the victim does not matter. This is a fight against police brutality, that everyone can join, because white boys get tuned up and killed by the Po-Po too. Someone starts a twitter hash tag called #blacklivesmatter, then folks compliant and and state the obvious that; "all live matter" and rather than dealing with bad policing we are fighting about whose lives matter most. Pioneer, give me one example of when bringing the issue of race into the discussion actually worked better than dealing with the underlying injustice.

YES! Cynique that should have been the first thing we mentioned. I saw the documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone on Netflix sometime ago, and learned quite a bit. Nina's daughter was quite impressive. I may just boycott the Zoe film altogether.

35th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬: History of Storer College, Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria's first president) Attended

Our course I know all of western culture looks at skin color then makes judgements about people. I simply trying not to do it because it is impossible. I wish the government would stop trying to collect the data and save us some money. Cynique, the enumerator was actually doing their each time, it was just that every 10 years the categories changed, one day you are a Mulatto the next you are Negro Pioneer, as far as the "AA" or African-American in the website's name, this speaks to culture, and has nothing to do with "race," one's phenotype, or what one looks like. If you celebrate the culture, rather than trying to marginalize it, I don't care what you look like.

Nationality is a well defined technical term, no argument there. I think what you describe as Ethnicity is more accurately described as Culture. Throwing in the racial (physical appearance) aspect muddies the water. People can look very different and be part of the same culture. As far as Race is concerned, I know what you are saying and would have agreed with you in the past. However, a few years ago I began stopping myself from thinking of humans in terms of racial categories. The term were devised to put us at the bottom, and only serve to perpetuate stereotypes. Upon further contemplation I can not think of a single good reason to continue using the concept of race, so I don't unless I'm communicating with someone who only understands the world in those terms.

Mulattos is a sloppy term too. In fact the census reflects this sloppiness.. My grandmother was listed on three different censuses, over a 30 year period as Negro, Black, and Mulatto. All based upon the whim of the enumerator. What was she?