Troy

Harry you are back huh. I wonder if this forum's recent hacking impacted your ability to post.

Vocational training is no different that many of the schools of the day. Even white schools did the same. Only a small percentage of white were trained for management or leadership positions. Remember we are talking about a time when even the majority of white people did not have a college education, and a huge percentage of Black people were illiterate. It would be very interesting to look at the outcomes of Tuskegee graduates and their descendants and compare them to the outcomes of other Blacks of the day.

August 4th, 2015 For Immediate Release! Black & Hispanic Babies Make Up Over 80% of Planned Parenthood Abortions By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD In the wake of Center for Medical Progress release of videos showing Planned Parenthood’s sale of human baby organs for profit, there has been an outcry that those who protest such organ sales are “attacking women” or “blocking women’s health.” What an outrageous statement. As a physician specialist in Women’s Health for over 25 years, I say categorically that abortion is NOT “healthcare.” Medicine and physicians strive to preserve LIFE. Abortion is death. Abortion is the anti-thesis of life. That is why most physicians do not practice abortion and cringe at the thought. In fact, for over 2,500 years, the Oath of Hippocrates for physicians has prohibited us from performing abortions or prescribing abortifacient drugs. In my clinical practice seeing women, I find two victims of abortion: the soul and life of the baby who never had a choice, and the soul and psyche of the woman who chose to have her baby killed. Years later, the abortion takes its toll on women in higher rates of depression, anxiety, and even endocrine hormonal problems. Let’s be correct in terms: Abortion ends the life of a baby. In fact, if it isn’t a baby, then the woman isn’t pregnant. Planned Parenthood uses benign terms as fetus, tissue, specimen, or “glob of cells” is designed to confuse patients and the public, and to hide the emotional impact of the reality: this is a human baby whose life is being snuffed out. Now we see that PP is using body parts from this “blob of tissue” to bring in revenue, beyond its 500 million a year in federal funding from taxpayers! Planned Parenthood abortion practices are even more horrific than anyone knew. Doctors and their assistants actually use ultrasound, normally a life-saving diagnostic tool, as instrument of death to crush the baby in such a way to retrieve undamaged organs. Doctors who did this in a normal hospital setting would likely lose their license or possibly face jail. The baby’s death is not done in any gentle or humane way. Babies are crushed. Torn apart while alive. Cut into pieces in ways to save whole organs for sale and profit. Abortionists cannot use feticides such as digoxin to kill the baby first. That would make the saleable (profitable) organs then unusable. That means the baby is crushed for organ retrieval while still alive. The Planned Parenthood doctors make Dr. Joseph Menegle, Hitler’s “Doctor of Death” look like an angel of mercy by comparison. Planned Parenthood itself is a misleading name, designed to obscure the role as agency of death to 1.6 million babies annually. It is more correctly called Planned Infanticide. An even darker side of Planned “Parenthood” is the connection to the American Eugenics movement of the early 1900s that subsequently led Hitler to his views of racial cleansing to create a “Master Race”. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood in 1916 and idolized by feminists today, was a leader in the Eugenics movement, speaking and writing extensively on the urgency of “exterminating inferior races.” Sanger focused particularly on blacks, saying “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” Sanger also wrote “Slaves, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are…a deadweight of human waste. Blacks,soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the (human) race.” Sanger must be ecstatic. Her legacy of Planned Parenthood has cost the lives of over 57 million babies since 1973, with over 13 MILLION of them African-American babies. That makes Planned Parenthood the leader in Black Genocide. Over 80% of Planned Parenthood abortions are either Black or Hispanic babies. There are now more abortions among Blacks in New York than there are live births. Today’s Black Lives Matter proponents apparently do not know this hidden side of Planned Parenthood’s abortion deaths of Blacks, or they would not keep supporting political candidates who vote for taxpayer funding of Planned clinics that destroy so many black babies. CONSIDER: Planned Parenthood conducts 1.6 million abortions annually, according to CDC statistics. They receive more than half a billion dollars annually in taxpayer funding. It is against US law to perform abortions in a manner designed to preserve heart, lung, liver and other organs intact. Yet for Planned Parenthood, this is exactly what they are doing according to their own admissions on camera. Sales of baby organs are big business for Planned Parenthood’s coffers. Details of actual dollars generated are still withheld from public scrutiny. In another bizarre twist, typical of the cronyism and hidden agendas that dominate the Washington DC cartel today, House Speaker Boehner’s Health Policy Director Charlotte Ivancic, is the sister of Cate Dyer, the CEO of Stem Express, LLC that buys organs from Planned Parenthood. Could this explain Speaker Boehner’s block of the House vote to defund Planned Parenthood? Planned Parenthood reports to be a “women’s health” provider to justify its federal funding. Yet all of the non-abortion medical services are already available through taxpayer-funded federal community health clinics. Taxpayers should not be hit twice for the same services. America, what have we become that we allow such mass killing of human babies and selling of their organs? What have we become that our elected representatives do not enforce existing laws to stop criminal practices? Is this who we as a country really are? “Women’s health” needs to return to a focus on life, health, and the entirety of our humanness with multiple medical, emotional, and spiritual needs. ### The press release through extremist in tone; Dr. Menegle, looking like "an angel of mercy by comparison," is a bit much; the connection to the eugenics movement seems perfectly plausible. The selling of baby parts does doesn't help PP's cause either. But no worries, when Trump is president, perhaps PP will be defunded.

Church is a big component of all the HBCU's as it is for most colleges and universities of the era. As far as creating "subservient graduates" that has been the goal of colleges particularly vocational colleges. College produce people who are ideal for corporate America. Most graduates produced today are in a far less able to fed for themselves than a graduate of Tuskegee 100 years ago. Black graduates today have it a lot harder, with the elimination of affirmative action, finding a job than I did over 30 years ago. At least at Tuskegee, people came out with skills that allowed them to create their own jobs.

Hi Richard this is an interesting program. I just shared my list of the remaining Black owned independent stores on the website. I'm not aware of any remaining Black owned bookstore chains. No Richard, you would not be going out on a limb to say that all Black owned bookstores are local. Author, Carl Weber operated several stores in several cities but those are closed as far as I can tell. Karibu have several using in DC, MD and VA, but those all closed. There were a couple of other with more than one stores, but again they are either closed or down to one store like Marcus Books in CA. I don't think the Kobo program will be very helpful, at least not in the Black community. Black people overwhelming by books/eBooks through Amazon. Indeed, I do not think I have sold a single Kobo eBook. On my Power List website, I link to IndieBound (they sell books online for local bookstores and ebooks for the kobo platform.) On the new version of AALBC.com website I will present the option to buy via Indiebound at the same level of prominence as buying from Amazon, but I have very little hope people will take advantage of that option. I have never earned a penny through affiliate commissions from Indiebound. When I publish surveys people never say they download Kobo ebooks. I also think there are indications that dedicated ebook readers have plateaued and may even be in the decline, along with readership eBooks Amazon's hugh push for Prime members with future bodes poorly for Kobo's position. Any slack B&N Nook has provided will be sucked up by Amazon. Even Amazon's opponents are Prime members...

Well I look forward to reading more of what you have to write Ivy. How did you discover the forum and what promoted you to post? Also adding videos is pretty easy; you just paste the youtube or vimeo URL and the forum will automatically embed it. For images you click the blue "insert other media" at the lower right-hand side of the editing window and paste the URL of the image you'd like to include. The image of your client's book is actually stored on Amazon's site. I usually only paste images that are stored on my server, because you never know what another site is going to do with an image in the future. For example, if Amazon decides to rename, move or delete the above image it will show that broken image icon. {It is also frowned upon to display images that are stored on someone else's server. But in this case Amazon has massive servers and I am linking back to their website, so they'll not likely complaint or notice.} You can also copy and paste form an email or word document. The system is pretty good at retaining the original formatting.

Well we all know Al Sharpton was a informant, and today he has the ear of the President. Carver wasn't even 60 when he passed but accomplished a great deal. I don't know if you've ever visited Tuskegee, but that is in the deeeep south and feels like it today. If Booker was not as anxious as the Brothers in the north to be so aggressive against white folks I would not be so willing to second guess his tactics. He was a man of his time and environment. It is bad in the south today, imagine what it was like 100 years ago.

Hi Ivy welcome to the forums. I added the cover of Dark Justice I also could not resist sharing this video I noticed on your website. At the 18:30 mark the host says your email address should reflect your business; it should not be @yahoo.com or @gmail.com I think the same thing should apply to social media. I believe business owners who send people to social media, instead of directing them to their website, are making a mistake.

Ashthereader, your wording is fine, but it would be a good idea to let us know what you think about the book to get the ball rolling. I was not familiar with this book, Uncle Tom or New Negro?, until you mentioned it. SO I can;t speak to it directly, but I do know the issue with Washington is not an either/or proposition when it comes to being an "Uncle Tom." Indeed, "Uncle Tom" is a confusing term generally meaning a Black who sells out to the white man, but the character from Stowe's book, where the term originates, did the exact opposite. I see from the PW review that Malveaux is quoted as saying some of what Washington did was pure evil. As a president of an HBCU, that is a bold statement. I hope she backed it up. Again, what do you think Ash? Here is the description from Amazon:

It is hard for me to be unbiased because I know Coates father, who I view as a mentor, so I'm pleased to see his son succeed and get paid. I'm also pretty confident Ta-Nehisi's success will have a direct and positive impact on indie Black businesses. For the book launch event a Black bookseller, MahoganyBooks, with was the bookseller. I also work with MahiganyBooks, Ta-Neshisi's success, is MahoganyBooks success, is my success, and so on. Chris, the Morrison's quote was indeed a big deal. It was like getting a nod from Oprah. But even that quote was not sufficient alone to propel this book to this level of success it currently enjoys. The Atlantic provided the platform that sadly no single Black platform could provide. In other words, Black folks did not anoint Ta-Nehisi, as the spokesperson for Black suffering, white people did. Perhaps part of West's frustration is that very fact. Imagine if "The Case for Reparations" was published by Ebony Magazine, assuming they had the funds to invest in the project, I doubt the article would have caught on. I think collectively we could make it happen, but getting Black folks to work together is like herding hyper kittens. We know when white folks chose our spokespeople that spokesperson will be completely innocuous as far as changing anything. They will not ruffle feathers or offend the sensibilities of white folks, they will not incite a riot, they will be perfectly acceptable, great at cocktail parties and never really show much anger. More importantly they will eclipse anyone else that might. Since I run AALBC.com I know there are countless books covering, in great detail, everything Coates is saying and more. But again Black people published this stuff and unless white folks embrace it; it is fringe, obscure, and certainly not the fodder for national morning talk shows. People like Tony Brown and Gil Noble covered this stuff, but shows like those are a thing of the past. We have to depend on NPR, Charlie Rose and the like who embrace folks like Ta-Nehisi with open arms to educate and information Black and white folks about the obvious. But none of this really matters much to the masses of Black folks, most of whom have not read The Case and have no clue who Ta-Neshisi is... Cynique how cynical is that?

Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me debuts at #1 on the New York Time Best Sellers List. The success of this book has been quite remarkable to watch unfold.

In an interview I heard on New York Magazine, it was stated that it was social media, initiated by the comedian, that brought this issue to the public's attention. From New York Magazine "‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen" By Noreen Malone and Amanda Demme All of this is very powerful imagery. Obviously the media has convicted Cosby, let's see what the criminal justice system does. Man, I'm still taken by the sheer number of the women. Who has the time to assault all of these women?

The program for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association 9th Conference I've been teaching at the Queens Library for almost 2 years and an increasingly impressed by what this library system does to improve the community.

Bucked teeth never stopped me from getting a girlfriend or a wife either, but Chris I would recommend correcting your bite. Keeping it real is one thing, but not fixing you bite, when you can afford it, is like not buying glasses. Now if may be possible that your bite really is not that bad at all and correcting it not worth the effort. I could not bite into a sandwich without using my incisors/molars. The cap was really not an option as 1/2 of my front tooth was knocked out when I was a teenager. Now if you are someone like Michael Strahan where your gap-tooth smile is part of your signature that is one thing and may not be worth changing, I got braces for both of my daughters, not only do they have nice smiles they also have a set of properly working chompers, that will hopefully serve them for a lifetime. Rap artists are not typically role models for me. ;-)

Well as someone who got veneers and a cap to replace bucked, crooked and a chipped teeth. I will admit the motivation was cosmetic, but my improved bite was a tremendous benefit; any dentist will attest to that. Improving my bite alone was worth the dental work. I also wore contacts for most of my life to correct very bad myopia. Sure switching to contacts was an improvement of my appearance (IMHO), but contacts improved my vision better than glasses ever did, and glasses have additional downsides. About a 15 years ago I had the lasik procedure done, again this was a permanent fix to my vision problems having nothing to do with my appearance because I was already wearing contacts. I also loss about 20 pounds about 7 years ago, sure I look better, my clothes fix better, but the real benefit was my heath. But we can agree to disagree on those points. As far as Black women and hair, you are my senior and a woman, so of course I'm very much inclined to yield to your wisdom on issues like this. I also have to admit you have a point when you say "...sistas 'consciously' copying white women since they are who so many brothas are 'unconsciously' attracted to." But you hit upon nuance I overlooked. It makes all the sense in the world that women would wear their hair in such a way that is attractive to men. Black men of course are not immune to the europeanized standard of beauty, and probably do find women with straightened hair more attractive. I think you underestimate the amount of time, effort and money some women put into their hair. None of the sista's I know are going to go 3 months without getting a touch up. Many professional women I know go to the salon far more regularly; weekly is not unusual. To be clear, I'm not critiquing any woman's hair style. What I'm attempting to do is understand the motivation for imagery we see on the Ebony cover, why a blond haired, blue eyed white girl can pass for Black, and why all of this might point to some cultural confusion. I'm also suggesting that all of does not do us very much good mentally or financially

Thanks everyone. Here is the latest bestellers list which is baed upon the new website's design I still have some a lot fo work to do, but you see where I'm going: http://75.103.68.29/books/bestsellersmay2015.php?genre=Children%26rsquo%3Bs the new bestsellers list. The new list removes my dependency on the Amazon widget I've been using for years. It also makes creating the bestsellers list FAR easier. I can even use the code on the current site until I finish the upgrade next year: http://aalbc.com/books/mayjun_2015.htm If I decide to sell books directly, making the switch will be trivial. I was looking at drop shipping using Ingram but it does not look to be cost effective...

Cynique, changing one's hair color and texture are never done to improve one's health or physical condition. Hair styles, unlike the other examples you've attempted to equate, are changed for mental reasons; how they make someone feel about their own appearance. Indeed people will disagree about whether the person actually looks better. If you are obese losing weight is virtually always a good idea, as is correcting crooked teeth or bad vision. People can not reasonably disagree about this. While the improvement in physical appearance may an additional motivator some some, it could be incidental for others. But we'll agree to disagree on this. Cynique, I believe some Black women change their hair to mimic European standards of beauty imposed upon them; even if they comply unconsciously. Do you disagree? If you agree, do you think this would tend to have a positive or negative impact on that person's self-esteem? In my mind, this is particularly evident by the number of women who fair at the attempt to turn Black hair into white hair, despite prodigious efforts. The overabundance of Black women blogging about natural hair care is in direct reaction to this condition.

I don't either Akia, but that should be readily apparent from what I've already posted. But when it comes to religious issues it is not really open for debate is it? What matters is what the person believes, Facts don't matter, the science does not matter; it doesn't even matter what other Christians people believe. There are some openly gay Christians leading Churches. While other Christians believe it is a damnable sin.

I will most likely attend this event.

...but who does not like watermelons? Seriously And Black people really do talk too much in the movie theater. LOL Yes Akia I agree stereotyping people can lead to false assumptions about individuals, but it is natural, an important skill and indeed probably a necessary survival mechanism. This is why I don't give cops any lip. I know most of them have far less education that I do, probably hate their job, and are just looking for a reason to jam a brother up to meet their quota. Now are all cops like that? Of course not, but I'll be just safer if I assume that they are.

Cynique fixing one's teeth, so that one can eat properly; losing weight, to avoid heart disease and diabetes; or getting contacts so that you can see properly can't be compared to someone dying and straightening their hair. I'm surprised you tried using that analogy to support your argument ;-) That said, of course we all should be more interested in what's in a person's mind instead of what's on their head. Further, we can never truly know what a person is about until we get to know them and you'll probably be wrong 99% of the time if you judge a person by the style of their hair. There are devils rocking afros and some very conscious sisters with straight hair. My issue with hair styles stems from two main issues; (1) the standard of beautiful for Black women's hair is the exact opposite what grows out of their heads naturally. This is a big problem from self esteems issues, stress and huge resources going toward maintenance of hair. We did not create this standard but across the globe we perpetuate this mythology (see any cover of Ebony magazine); (2) We don't even benefit financially from all of the money spent on hair care; most of this money goes outside of our community. These two things combined define exploitation. I'm tired of seeing us exploited. But we are such easy marks, like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Yeah I went for a couple of hours talking the the vendors on the street. I did not go last year (the st year I missed it). It is sad there is not a lot of energy from the local Black book community for this event. Then again there is not a lot of support from mainstream publishing which is centered walking distance away. Of course it did not start that way.. It would be interesting to have a serious conversation about this event. What do you think? Is it worth the effort? Is it airing dirty laundry? Could it be constructive?

Akia coincidentally I just finished a post where I used the phrase Brother and Sisters. The fact of the matter is that we are all Brother and Sisters. Truth be told white folks are our Brothers and Sisters too, but I'm focused on my nuclear family, who is catching all the heel, before I can make overtures to and fully embrace my extended family. Some of my more Afrocentric Brother like to refer to everyone as "Kings and Queens" that is a bit for me. but I get way they do it and it is FAR better than niggas and bitchs. I've come to conclude the reason we use these terms and allow them to be used in our popular music so freely is that we are mentally ill. Seriously, we suffer, collectively from a mental condition that presents in many ways including low self esteem. I mean what else would explain why Black women support artists that refers to them in such a degrading manner? I mean I know why white people buy it, as it reaffirms their view of us, but why do we buy it? This very week I heard a bunch of young white kids saying "nigger" I was about to confront them (something way out of my character, but they caught off guard), I started to walk in their direction only to realize they were singing a song from a BLACK RAPPER! I couldn't say shit and I went about my business.

I attended the Harlem Book Fair, this past saturday. Being a Harlem resident and the owner of the largest website dedicated to Black books, one would think that would be a no-brainer, but it is not, and that is a story for another day. Anyhow, I decided to go to the book fair and speak to all of the street vendors. I did not leave myself enough time so I only got to about 3/4 of them. One of the people I spoke to, much longer than most, was the author of the article above. He is in my age range (one of the few on the street that day who was), and he has been involved in the book world for a longtime, so we actually had a lot to talk about. In fact, he wrote about our conversation in his article. It is interesting to note: that I had no expectation that our conversation would be fodder for a newspaper article, but in 2015 everything goes huh? At any rate, it was no big deal and I learned long ago never say or do anything in front of anyone you would not want to read about on the cover of the New York Times (and today see on Facebook). Here is Johnnie Bunting's book I did not run into Johnnie during the fair, but he was on the only formerly incarcerated authors on the street that day. I think books have provide and outlet and an avenue for some of our Brother and Sisters to make a way for themselves. But all writers they can't do it by themselves and unfortunately there are not many platforms around to help them.