Troy

Mel the question that led my last post was rhetorical. Many of the people who voted for Trump were simply lied to. They were misinformed and sold a bill of goods. They were conned. Sure victims have choices, but they are still victims. She was raped because she wore a revealing dress. He was robbed because he went to the ATM late at night. They voted for Trump because said "crooked Hillary" and the democrats gave you jobs to Mexican who illegally crossed the border. You see what I mean? Mel I think in this case you are viewing the world from your perspective They are plenty of decent people who are simply not nearly as informed, discerning, and smart as you are. They are easy prey for marketers. Mel, I think most people don't know they have choices. This could be through simple ignorance of, or laziness to pursue, options. Del yes it is true I work hard, but so do a lot of people. Del I believe men and women are different in numerous ways but I would never say all women are this way and all men are some other way. A good example would be height; the median height for a man is more than that of a woman, but there are of course women who are taller than some men. That said, men can climax more easily and quickly than women. Women can have multiple orgasms and sustain them longer, These physical characteristics inform the way we behave sexually.

Pioneer, you are looking for proof of something that will never be provable, at least to your level of satisfaction. The answer can't be recorded on a video camera or measured in a lab.

Hi @Indie Love , do you all have a website? If so post a link. Alternatively, plesse share some details about the event, preferably something that can be copied and pasted. What will the authors be doing? Will they be set up at tables selling their book or will there be readings and panel discussions?

The 2017 Black Pack Party - May 31, 2017 - New York City RSVP: https://aalbc.com/bpp2017

Well, Pioneer I agree; this is not an appealing photo of Viola. I probably would not have known this was Viola Davis--I think the hair threw me off. I would be willing to bet money no one Black person was involved with this photo shoot. If there were any involved they may as well have been white. It is obvious the look they were going for: Here are a few covers from Essence. The worse of these is far better than Time's cover. None of the Essence covers have Viola sporting Sambo red lipstick and exaggerated grin. The nicer shot have Viola sporting a more natural looking hairstyle. Is Time's cover a racist treatment? I think so. But Time know's their audience and don't have to worry about any sistaz raising a fuss.

Hi Mel, why then is obesity in impoverished communities to high and life expectancies so much lower? There is more to the story than just availability of healthy. Many people simply don't know any better and have fallen victim to highly sophisticated marketers who have preyed on them before they could even speak. I think this is more blaming the victim and letting marketers who take advantage of psychometric data, effectively brainwashing people completely off the hook. It is like saying the drug pusher and cigarette maker are blameless, because people are free to make their own choices. It just is not that simple. Also, there are people, who live in communities right here in America where healthy choices are extremely difficult to obtain, the people don't have cars and there is no public transportation, besides the stores are so far away they can't afford the gas to get to them. I could go on, but sometimes we take it for granted how much easier we have it compared to others. The people I'm talking about are nameless and faceless and for the most part no one advocates for them and they are only dealt with by the criminal justice system. Pioneer, of course, there is stuff in the food making us mushy and die earlier than normal. All one has to do is look around to see that. But I doubt Black folks are specifically targeted. If you go into a poor white community you see plenty of obese people. The real targets are the uneducated, largely poor, masses. Yes Pioneer, I do believe think men and women, in general, feel and behave differently when it comes to sex. I don't think this is solely due to socialization; there must be a biological basis as well.

I have to admit trolls often have a sense of humor. "Klan with a tan: was a new one on me. Unfortunately, if it were not for trolls I would have very few comments being made on the website...

The following title summarizes a comment left on an article about the City Sun, a defunct Black-owned newspaper from Brooklyn NY. "The City Sun was a racial toilet. It spewed anti-Semitic, Jew-hating, anti-Asian, anti-White bigotry. It was a racial cesspool of black bigotry which showed why black Americans in the ghetto can never make it: their leaders and informations sources are The Klan with a Tan." Read the rest of the comment. I actually approved the comment because maybe it will help people appreciate how important newspapers like The City Sun are...

:-) you don't have to read anything into it. Some people are exhibitionists. However, when one hides something that means you don't know about it, so you can't know what is being hidden from you unless the hider is not very good, or you are a budding detective. I would not put the food industry in the same category as sex workers--the food industry is far worse. Look at the some of the most poverty-stricken Black communities and you'll find communities racked with diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. There was a study just released that looked a longevity across all American counties, there was a 20-year longevity gap! I don't have to tell you which group died at the youngest ages. Poor black communities are preyed upon by the food industry.

One of my buddies is into the swingers scene too. There are clubs all over the country where you can go a have sex with other people. Married couples go, single men go, all types of folks. He described one situation when he'd brought a woman to climax and her man got bent out of shape... I guess these clubs are not for everyone. @Mel Hopkins, if your husband got horny and hired a hooker cause he just wanted to be serviced, do you view that the same engaging in an on going extramarital relationship? I hope ou do because there is a world of difference between to the too. The former is no different than masturbating--you are just not doing it yourself. Do you really want to know every time your husband masturbates? Why?

LOL! @Pioneer1, (here is where I would normally use the N-word), who you telling! There is no way I could have survived in those fields. I've been to the Mississippi Delta those white folks down there don't play. You probably would have made a good overseer, anything preferable to slaving away n them fields huh?

Openness, Mel can be even harder than monogamy. I'm not sure it is any more natural either. People are often not honest with themselves and don't bother to look deeply into their own hearts. How can they be open with someone else if they are not open with themselves? I believe everyone has secrets. I don't think that is necessarily bad. If I verbalized everything that crosses my mind to my wife she'd know I was crazy I think we all are a little "crazy" on some level and some things are really best kept to ourselves...

I did not take the "It's just books" as a put down, I just don't take the critique at face value. I write this because on every single page of the site, there is a menu says "Discussion" There is also a search box on every page which would direct anyone to the forums with a simple query. Again, finding the forms is not difficult if one put in an ounce of effort--unlesss I'm missing something. If I am please tell me. Also, the site gets at least 10 new sign ups a week, but the majority never post. This is something I really worth pursuing... because it is worth understanding why these people don't post I just don't have the time. Still, the forums are simply not as popular as they once were. I'm sure it is a combination of several factors but I suspect the strongest factor is Facebook. Facebook plays a zero sum game. They literally want to be the only place users ever go when they go on-line. Aldso people are still reading the pages they are just not commenting. One page for example that is really popular is the one about the Best Black websites. It ranks well in search and deserves better presentation I just don't have the time to address it now, Only 1 out every 2,000 visitors to the pages leaves a comment (not counting myself). I dunno, what motivates you to post here @Mel Hopkins ?

Also Facebook, earlier in the year, killed the ability to syndicate one's facebooks posts. They are starting to raise the walls of their walled garden. With just under 2 billion users, they are have effectively become the Internet.

True, cheating, by definition, is behaving in a way that goes counter to the rules, as in the case with conventional marriage vows. Most "cheaters" I'm aware of don't make much of an effort to cover up their tracks; Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, etc. Reapers simply wrote cheating is "fucked up end of discussion." I wonder what she (you know Guest Reaper is a she), believes we should do with cheaters? Should we execute them? Give them a stern talking to? What? Christian ministers cheat and eternal damnation does not seem to deter them. Public humiliation did not seem to bother Bill Clinton. Losing his family, many millions of dollars, and perhaps his career did not stop Tiger Woods.

No @Mel Hopkins, I have not tried Depop. I actually never heard of it until you mentioned it. I checked out the site and don't have any interest in it. I'm sorry to read that the initial reaction of those that you invited was "that it is nothing but books." I suspect if you probed you'd find there was a different reason because the reality is that the forums were always dominated by non-book conversations. But to your point, I can and will add discussion forum content to the homepage to reflect the conversations that are taking place on these forums. Maybe some variation of this feed:

Human sexuality is complex. I'm not sure why people believe humans are monogamous by nature, particularly since NOTHING in our collective behavior suggests that we are. If two people chose to only have sex with each other and actually accomplish it over a lifetime, and it makes them happy--that is great. To expect most humans to enthusiastically embrace and conform to this behavior is woefully naive and unrealistic.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017 at 6 p.m., Harlem, New York, NY Check it out if you can! The newly inaugurated president has proposed budget cuts that would seriously impact our nation's arts funding. Why are arts and cultural funding so important? What programs benefit from this? How could this potentially affect Harlem's art community and what can we do as, artists, authors, members of the writing world to involve ourselves and protect our arts initiatives? An exclusive talk with the curators and creators of the black literary world, Clarence Reynolds, director of The Center for Black Literature, Ron Kavanaugh, Mosaic Literary Magazine and Troy Johnson, AALBC.com of the Annual Black Pack After Party as part of on-going NY Book Festival on June 1st, 2017. Eartha Watts-Hicks, Senior Harlem World Magazine Editor in Chief, Eartha Watts-Hicks .

Moving Fannie Lou Hamer's page to the new format and I stumbled across her full testimony at the Democratic National Convention, August 22, 1964, Credentials Committee. Previously I'd only heard an excerpt. I can't imagine standing up to overt racism, in the deep south, the way she did. I spend enough time in Florida to have confronted over racism in 2017, but that is nothing compared to 50 years ago. I can't even image sharecropping. I had a job when I was 14 working in Central Park, pulling weeds and stuff like that. It was exhausting work--I can't image a life of that drudgery... Hamer is a remarkable woman brave and a brilliant orator.

I was just now migrating George S. Schuyler's page and discovered a link to a conversation we had about him back in 2004. At that time I had no idea who Schuyler was, but his story is fascinating. http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/23046/23797.html The book Black Empire, "...where this Black Doctor raises money by pimping and killing white women and selling dope, uses it to finance an Army by which he drives the colonial powers out of Africa and then uses biological warfare to exterminate the Italians, among others," is probably worth taking a look at: Black Empire by George S. Schuyler “Imagine W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and Marcus Garvey rolled into one fascist superman, and there you have Dr. Henry Belsidus…[The novels] are an Afrocentrist’s dream.”Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York Times Book Review

Seriously, look into the malware on your website--it will hurt the reach of everything that links to it--even your own social media. Do I have all of the books you’ve published on your page? My goal is to provide information on all Black-owned imprints, past and present, on the website.

Hey man congrats on the praise! Are you pubbing his book? Send me the info if you do. Also, with all of those links why don't you support a Brother and add AALBC.com: https://aalbc.com/authors/imprint.php?imprint=Ghettoheat Actually, I'll also give you some advice; from an SEO perspective, you actually hurt websites when you post so many hyperlinks. In your case the first hyperlink I checked as broken--which is MUCH worse. ....I actually checked your homepage ghettoheat.com and my operating system says it has a virus. At this point, I'm going to edit your post and remove all the links. Point to a site with a virus is SEO death, so please sort that out as soon as you can. I suggest you pick a few links and get rid of all the rest. make a webmaster's life easier... seriously.

Good find. I'm familiar with Terrance's work as a poet, in fact, he was nominated for a National book award a couple of years ago. However, Terrance did not write this book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education was written by Christopher Emdin. As a teacher, I think much of the failure in the classroom has less the student (or their families) and more to do with the administration. The can squash a potentially good teacher, demoralize and force good teachers how, and fail to hold crappy teachers accountable. My experience tells me if you give good teachers a decent wage and an opportunity to do their thing they will shine and the students will benefit. I can't speak to this book, but reinventing the pedagogical wheel has not helped Black boys since we relinquished responsibility.

Humm.. it looks like you have made my point Pioneer. Thanks!