Troy

I think Eddie Murphy or Jamie Foxx could probably do a decent rendition of James Brown. I bet there are many other talented actors, no one has heard of that could have done a terrific imitation of James Brown. Bit film was not about finding the best talent, it was like all Hollywood films, about making money. So we get a bankable actor like, Chadwick Boseman, who has to lip-synched through the film. Kam's review of the film was, what I'd call uncharacteristically unfavorable. Overall he said the film as "very Good" but after reading his review I'd probably see Planet of the Apes first (though some racist websites would not make a distinction between those two films). The other negative thing being held against the film is the fact that there were no Black people involved with crating the film (save the actors). Screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard, wrote; "There were several meetings. Eight white men and two white women. Was this a meeting of the Mormon Glee Club? The New White Citizens Council? Perhaps a Klan meeting? No. That meeting was the creative team for the new James Brown movie, "Get On Up." ...Indeed,all the producers, writers, and the director of the James Brown movie are white. No black people were hired until a few weeks before the cameras started rolling, the actors. In fact, several of the people involved in this whitewash are British. The Brits have a fetish for black projects." Read the rest of his commentary. We expect too much from Hollywood as far as Black culture is concerned. Perhaps this expectation is a result failing to recognize we are doing too little for ourselves. ------

NOTE: Our editors actually put up a correction on the story removing the Mickyel Bradford passages because he admitted to fabricating them. I find these revelations so irksome, it just seems to me that a story like this, not breaking news, could have been vetted before being published. I was talking to someone else about this article--relating Mickyel's experiences. Now I learn he made them all up...Sheesh!

When I read the this article The black HIV epidemic: A public health mystery—and love story—from Atlanta’s gay community A journey with the researchers and citizens struggling with the troubling disparity in HIV diagnoses. I could not help but be struck by the numbers so very alarming--42% infection rate! Atlanta is one of America's great cities, not some third world country, how can this be the case? The article points out this group Black men are less promiscuous and more likely to use a condom than their white male peers. So tragic.

Photo Credit: Photo by Branden Camp/For The Washington Post The Washington Post’s Storyline looks at the high rate of HIV among black gay men, examining the issue through interviews with the researchers and citizens struggling with the troubling disparity in HIV diagnoses. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/08/04/the-black-hiv-epidemic-a-public-health-mystery-and-love-story-from-atlantas-gay-community/ The researcher: In the early 2000s, a young researcher at the Centers for Disease Control named Greg Millett set out to solve an epidemiological mystery. Nobody could explain why black Americans, particularly black gay men, had such high rates of HIV infection compared to the rest of the population. How were they putting themselves in so much danger? What were they doing differently from everyone else? He began to wonder: What if the most dangerous thing a gay black man could do was what came naturally to him: to date the people he was attracted to, the people he was friends with, the people who surround him? The subject for this post was derived from this quote: The small size of the black gay community, and the sheer concentration of the virus within it, makes everyone more vulnerable, no question about it. Dating within the black community means a higher chance of encountering someone who is HIV positive — or worse, someone who is positive but doesn’t know it. But the theory remains stubbornly unproven. It’s a touchy subject. If scientists showed with experimental clarity that black men were putting themselves at risk by dating each other, what advice could they give? That black men should avoid each other? The citizen: Mickyel Bradford was raised to appreciate that black is beautiful. His celebrity crushes are Idris Elba and Tyson Beckford, tall dark men with seductive baritones and crevassed torsos. He lives in a suburb of Atlanta, the city known to some as the black gay mecca. His closest friends are black. Nearly all of his exes were black. He describes himself as an “ethical slut.” He believes in sex for sheer hell of it, but goes to great lengths to make sure that he and his partners are safe. Bradford serves on the board of two local gay nonprofits and works at a local clinic. He has to be responsible. It’s a matter of principle as much as it is a matter of health. So when he hooks up, which typically happens a couple times a month, Bradford makes his partners get tested for HIV. Ideally, they go together and make a lunch date out of it. Burgers and a blood test. The fastidiousness of this ritual can sometimes get in the way of his hormones, but Bradford says his process screens for character as much as it does for STDs. “It’s another judge of quality for me,” he says. “I’m very sure that if you’re are going to go through these steps with me, if you can have a conversation around these things, then the sex is going to be awesome.” These days, Bradford says, he never has bad sex. ---------------- My title for this post was pulled from this quote which was also obtained from the Washington Post's article. Sullivan’s preliminary results in Atlanta confirmed the huge racial differences that persist. Among black gay men, 43 percent were HIV positive, compared to 13 percent of white gay men, even though the black gay men had fewer sex partners and less unprotected sex. Everyone also reported a tendency to date within the same race. Black gay men said that 80 percent of their partners in the past year were also black. The white gay men said that 73 percent of their partners were also white.

Note: Authors United did not spend any money to have me post this letter here. (but I suspect most of you all would not better ) I could not help but be particularly intrigued by this letter. The implication from reading it is that Amazon is the only book seller on planet Earth. Unless I'm missing something, the most obvious solution is to tell readers to buy their books from another bookseller. Maybe they could even suggest a local, Black owned independent bookstore as an alternative OK, I know I reaching with that last suggestion... Where is B&N in all of this why are they not stepping up and picking up Amazon's slack? This line was so pathetic it is laughable; "...and over the years have contributed so much, free of charge, to the company by way of cooperation, joint promotions, reviews and blogs. This is no way to treat a business partner." When writers write for free, for a wealthy corporation, they are being exploited (read point #5 in this article). This is why Amazon's Goodreads is so successful and why Facebook makes billions.

Authors United P.O. Box 4790 Santa Fe, NM 87502 For information, email Douglas Preston at doug@authorsunited.net A Letter to Our Readers: Amazon is involved in a commercial dispute with the book publisher Hachette , which owns Little, Brown, Grand Central Publishing, and other familiar imprints. These sorts of disputes happen all the time between companies and they are usually resolved in a corporate back room. But in this case, Amazon has done something unusual. It has directly targeted Hachette's authors in an effort to force their publisher to agree to its terms. For the past several months, Amazon has been: --Boycotting Hachette authors, by refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette authors' books and eBooks, claiming they are "unavailable." --Refusing to discount the prices of many of Hachette authors' books. --Slowing the delivery of thousands of Hachette authors' books to Amazon customers, indicating that delivery will take as long as several weeks on most titles. --Suggesting on some Hachette authors' pages that readers might prefer a book from a non-Hachette author instead. As writers--most of us not published by Hachette--we feel strongly that no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want. It is not right for Amazon to single out a group of authors, who are not involved in the dispute, for selective retaliation. Moreover, by inconveniencing and misleading its own customers with unfair pricing and delayed delivery, Amazon is contradicting its own written promise to be "Earth's most customer-centric company." Many of us have supported Amazon since it was a struggling start-up. Our books launched Amazon on the road to selling everything and becoming one of the world's largest corporations. We have made Amazon many millions of dollars and over the years have contributed so much, free of charge, to the company by way of cooperation, joint promotions, reviews and blogs. This is no way to treat a business partner. Nor is it the right way to treat your friends. Without taking sides on the contractual dispute between Hachette and Amazon, we encourage Amazon in the strongest possible terms to stop harming the livelihood of the authors on whom it has built its business. None of us, neither readers nor authors, benefit when books are taken hostage. (We're not alone in our plea: the opinion pages of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which rarely agree on anything, have roundly condemned Amazon's corporate behavior.) We call on Amazon to resolve its dispute with Hachette without further hurting authors and without blocking or otherwise delaying the sale of books to its customers. We respectfully ask you, our loyal readers, to email Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, at jeff@amazon.com, and tell him what you think. He says he genuinely welcomes hearing from his customers and claims to read all emails at that account. We hope that, writers and readers together, we will be able to change his mind. Sincerely, Bliss Broyard Breena Clarke Junot Díaz Malcolm Gladwell Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Charlayne Hunter-Gault Elizabeth Nunez ZZ Packer April Sinclair [to see the the complete list of 900 authors visit: authorsunited.net] This advertisement was paid for by authors. Authors United, P.O. Box 4790, Santa Fe, NM 87502

Well Cynqiue, sort of... I'm not sure I'd use the Grammy Award categories (which I admittedly don't follow) as the benchmark for defining musical genres indeed they are part of the problem if you ask me. I see the Grammy as part of the problem. I also see that at a couple of white guys named, Ryan Lewis & Macklemore beat Jay-Z, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and Drake for best Rap Album of the Year....hummm, OK. Rap artists famously lifted beats from musicians without crediting, paying or acknowledging this fact (as I argue is true with Pharrell). James Brown and George Clinton are single-handedly responsible for catapulting Rap to where is is today. I doubt anyone would argue that they have been fairly compensated for this, no matter how much anyone thinks they should feel "flattered." I still think the terms R&B and Hip-Hop used to describe music is not clear at all. Rap is more clear in that it contains spoken word. Hip-hop music however does not have to have a rapper as it the case with Blurred Lines which apparently Pharrell considers hip-hop. It seems to be anything made by a young Black "artist" is considered hip-hop. Do you think Hip-Hop Music and R&B Music are mutually exclusive? Is Blurred Lines, for example Hip-Hop, or R&B? Every one knows classical music, funk music, the Blues, country music sounds like when they hear it. And sure music can be influenced from various genres and may be impossible to ascribe to a single one genre. In my mind R&B is like the term "World Music," Which like R&B does not really mean anything. In the world music case, it is just a marketing term to describe music not from America which does nothing to describe the nature of the actual music. I admit I'm biased. I miss bands. I miss singers. I miss actual musician. I miss performers. I miss Marvin Gaye... and have zero interest in the Pharrells--even with the Happy Song. Later this evening I will be going to see Gregory Porter and the Revive Big Band, for free, in Central Park. Thank God there are still a few remaining alternatives

Voices Beyond Bondage: An Anthology of Verse by African Americans of the 19th Century by Erika DeSimone (Author, Editor), Fidel Louis (Author, Editor) Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: NewSouth Books (October 1, 2013) Slaves in chains, toiling on master's plantation. Beatings, bloodied whips. This is what many of us envision when we think of 19th century African Americans; source materials penned by those who suffered in bondage validate this picture. Yet slavery was not the only identity of 19th century African Americans. Whether they were freeborn, self-liberated, or born in the years after the Emancipation, African Americans had a rich cultural heritage all their own, a heritage largely subsumed in popular history and collective memory by the atrocity of slavery. The early 19th century birthed the nation's first black-owned periodicals, the first media spaces to provide primary outlets for the empowerment of African American voices. For many, poetry became this empowerment. Almost every black-owned periodical featured an open call for poetry, and African Americans, both free and enslaved, responded by submitting droves of poems for publication. Yet until now, these poems -- and an entire literary movement -- have been lost to modern readers. The poems in Voices Beyond Bondage address the horrific and the mundane, the humorous and the ordinary and the extraordinary. Authors wrote about slavery, but also about love, morality, politics, perseverance, nature, and God. These poems evidence authors who were passionate, dedicated, vocal, and above all resolute in a bravery which was both weapon and shield against a world of prejudice and inequity. These authors wrote to be heard; more than 150 years later it is at last time for us to listen. While you are at it you may as well check out the early poets too: Jupiter Hammon was the first African-American writer to be published in what was to become the United States of America George Moses Horton the first African American to publish any book in the South. Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American woman published. Lucy Terry author of the first poem composed by an African American

Cynique, if you click the link you should be presented with a webpage that looks like the screen shot below. If you do not see a prompt for you to subscribe you may already be subscribed. If so, thanks, if not thanks for tryng. And thanks for your support!

If you are ready this and are not subscribed to the AALBC.com YouTube channel you have may make up for it by subscribing now. YouTube, for now anyway, is one of the remaining (perhaps the only) major social networking platforms that still gives you a financial reward in return for the content your contribute to their platform and they provide a service to you without trying to completely cannibalize your website's traffic. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel you will help me spread the word about Black literature. Your support matters. Promoting Black literature has always been a grassroots effort; it is not done by corporations but by people you and me.

There are 31,392 others who have joined the campaign; a negligible portion of the Facebook user community. It is surprisingly difficult not to use Facebook. Someone is always telling me about something funny or cute they saw on someones wall. As I gather information about authors much of the information I'm finding in Google queries point to Facebook. I actually have to consciously avoid using Facebook. I also have a bunch of other social media platforms that automatically post to Facebook. I have not tried to stop this type of sharing. I'll just be satisfied with not logging onto he application or visiting the website. I also use my Facebook account to log into websites, like this one. I will start using my Twitter account to log into this discussion forum. I also deleted the social media aps from from my cell phone--all of them, not just Facebook. Interestingly, there has been a 50% increase in my referral traffic from Facebook in the two weeks I've stopped visiting the website. But keep in mind my referral traffic from Facebook is down 63% compared to 4 years ago when I had 4 times the number of friends/fans/followers/subscribers (whatever they are now called). This is another reason I'm considering abandoning Facebook for business purposes. Despite more frequent posting and and MANY more friends I'm getting less traffic from Facebook. I will most likely continue the automated posts as that does generate traffic, and business, with negligible effort.

Jeron, I have to assume the folks at Johnson Publications, responsible for publishing Jet magazine, did all of what you suggested. I assume they felt something was indeed broken so they are attempting to fix it. I would also assume sales at the newsstands were declining. I actually wanted to buy the last issue and i could not think of a single place, in Harlem, where I could by the magazine. I know Pathmark (a local supermarket) sells magazines at the check the out stand, but I did not feel like trekking over there. They used to have magazine and newspaper stands, but those went the way of the Blacksmith... I will check out the Jet Application. You get to use it for 30 days for free if you get a code the Jet website: http://www.jetmag.com/jet-digital-registration/

Cynique did you get a chance to read the article on Payton's Blog? Also "Hip-Hop," in this context, has been co-opted; becoming a meaningless marketing term like "R&B" which doesn't clearly describe musical genre. So you can call the tune R&B and young person would call the same tune hip-hop. The bottom line is so much of the so called "hip-hop" music is taken from music created by actual musicians--something we are all accustomed to at this point. But the problem here is that Pharrell won't even acknowledge this fact.

Brother Leroy Baylor Co-host of The Communicators The Black management of WHCR has been told by the heads of City College and the CUNY system to take The Communicators off WHCR-90.3FM immediately. This is due to the false charge of antisemitism . I and the show have been portrayed as antisemitism in an ongoing campaign beginning formerly in 2006. It has increased since Minister Farrakhan appeared on The Communicators when Libya was invaded. It is a campaign to defame my name and character. The onslaught of charges of antisemitism relate to any time I mention Minister Farrkahan's name and The Final Call newspaper and articles within it. For example, this is no joke, one complaint said that I mentioned Dr Shabazz's obituary appearing in The Final Call. Dr Shabazz was the premier math educator who produced more Black PHD holders in math than any other educator. He was one of us and served Black students regardless of religion. Any mention of The Final Call is antisemitic because, according to the writer, this newspaper is antisemitic and features an ad for the book, "The Secret Relationship of Blacks and Jews." Another antisemitic charge points to our mentioning that Professor Griff was coming to Harlem. We make announcements based on the information value to listeners and to serve the Black organizers who bring forums to Black people. When we interviewed Minister Farrakhan, the complaint said that he was on WHCR ranting for 45 minutes. It was an interview. No rants. Clear, deliberate answers to our questions. Based on what I was allowed to see, the complaints are from a team of Caucasians who say they are not Jewish but want to defend Jewish people. These individuals have software to transcribe the shows we do and then forward to the Chancellor of CUNY the comments they say are antisemitic. When the Chancellor looks at this, he thinks the whole two-hour show is dedicated to antisemitic rants. Meanwhile, we have produced for the Harlem Community outstanding shows that no one else bothers to bring to Black people. We are not concerned with Jewish people. Fact is, we interview more Caucasians on The Communicators than WNYC (so-called liberal) interviews Blacks. Another tactic of this team is to call guests whom we have had on The Communicators, telling them they should not appear again. This speaks of an operation as opposed to individuals complaining. We are reminded of the Anti-Defamation League spying on Harlemites Elombe Brath and Kermit Eady. This surveillance was exposed several years ago by a white police officer on the West Coast. The ADL was transferring this surveillance of the late Elombe Brath (and his contacts) to South Africa's apartheid regime which was torturing and killing Black freedom fighters while portraying them as terrorists. Another most important fact is that I am a follower of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and a supporter of Brother Minister Farrakhan. Their teachings and The Holy Quran guide us to respecting all peoples. Imagine doing a talk show with a vendetta against Jewish people or Christians and inviting Jews and Christians to be guests on the show. WABC radio and WOR radio in New York seldom feature any Black guests and every day are relentless in blaming everything imaginable on a Black man named, Obama. What is pathetic about this situation that forces WHCR's Black management to take The Communicators off the air is that the heads of CUNY and City College have avoided the fact that these charges of antisemitism have no basis at all except someones do not like Minister Farrakhan, The Final Call and intelligent Black men and women. It is indeed a lynching. A low-tech lynching on a campus of higher learning. A white woman says rape and the negro is beat, stripped and strung up. NEXT! Amazing, it's 2014 and Dred Scott as usual. This email is not a beg to be on the air. We can never beg "educators of high institutions" for the right to inform and educate Black people of Harlem with the programming that has made The Communicators one of the most popular Black talk shows in New York City. It is a lesson for Muslims that The Final Call is hated by the slavemaster's children because of its valuable in getting knowledge to our people. Remember the point made by Mr. Muhammad in "Message To The BlackMan In America." He quotes a slave owner saying, "they had almost closed the light of knowledge entering the minds of Black people." This aim has always been a part of this society, witness Black babies entering their schools and coming out dumb as can be. Witness our college students spending their grants on "remedial" classes. The effort to get us off the air should speak for itself and prompt Black people to read every issue of The Final Call and collect every dvd of Brother Minister Farrakhan. We fight with knowledge. CAST TRUTH AT FALSEHOOD TILL YOU KNOCK ITS BRAINS OUT.

8th Annual Leimert Park Village Book Fair Saturday, Aug. 9, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, 3650 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

"And to those of you who say I know nothing about Hiphop, if “Blurred Lines” is Hiphop, I don’t want to know anything about it. So let me officially go on record now and say that I hate Hiphop. There are certain artists who claim Hiphop that I dig, but Hiphop as a whole is wack. It’s a parasitic culture that preys on real musicians for its livelihood. I may not know anything about Hiphop, but I don’t have to. Without real artists and musicians like me, you’d have nothing to steal. I know enough about it all to know that." Nicholas Payton in, "An Open Letter To Pharrell Williams (Blurred Lines Vol. 3)" where he castigates Pharrell over his unwillingness to knowledge that he stole Marvin Gaye's tune, ‘Got to Give It Up.’ Payton goes on to quote Robin Thicke: “Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up.’ I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.’ Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it.” Now the Mashup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZNA8ExCdZA Read Payton's article he has the vocabulary to articulates what I find lacking in so called hip-hop music.

The Baltimore African American Book Festival will take place October 11, 2014, from 10am to 5pm, at the Enoch Pratt Central Library, 400 Cathedral St Baltimore MD 21201. Scheduled speakers include; Trice Hickman, author of new novel Troublemaker; Sherri Booker, winner of an NAACP Image Award for her memoir Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner City Funeral Home; Nikki Woods, senior producer of the “Tom Joyner Morning Show” and author of the AALBC.com #1 bestseller, Easier Said Than Done ; Ella Curry, Owner of EDC Creations; and AALBC.com’s Founder, Troy Johnson.

Hi TaylorMadePub, first I have to apologize I deleted one of your posts. It appeared to be a duplicate post, but I just noticed this post did not have you book covers, so I reposted them below. I've seen a lot of book trailers in my day, in fact I used to run a Best Book Trailer Book Trailer Contest These two trailers rank at the top. The production value is much higher than most I've seen. The other cool thing is that the people on book covers match the actors in the trailers which, surprisingly, is unusual. I also like the excerpt, from the novel in the trailer a combination of imagery and a sampling of the prose. Excellent.

Dr. Ben Carson is certainly a brilliant surgeon. I would assume, as a medical doctor, that he knows much more abut Obama's help care plan than I do. I also trust that Carson is giving his honest opinion and not simply making statement purely for political gain -- though his hyperbolic statement that "Obamacare" it is the worst thing since slavery calls into question Carson's political motives and my trust in his statements.

Hidden Colors 3 is out now: It is so odd that I just learned today (July 29, 2014) that the producer and director of this film Tariq Nasheed is also a NY Times Best selling author. I first learned about the first Hidden Colors documentary film in a Black owned independent bookstore in Virgina, Positive Vibes. I asked the Brother who was showing me around the store. What was the best selling thing they had. He showed me the Hidden Colors DVD; which I purchased. The DVD had been out for over a year (I posted information above at that time). I can't help but think that 10 years ago I would not have missed, the fact this Brother had a NY Times bestselling book or even the popularity of the Hidden Colors documentary. Despite our so called interconnectedness with social media, there really has been a great reduction in the amount of useful information being propagated online over years. I just noticed Tariq was discussed on our discussion forums back in 2008. I was not part of that conversation. I also see that Emmanuel said he was reading Tariq's bestseller, back in 2004. So I guess there was opportunities for me to learn about Tariq's work here on my own website.

Cynique, the answer to your question is never. I don't expect it to happen. I've spoken to too many Black professionals, for example, who are all-in as far as social media is concerned. Part of the problem is that many of these Brothers and Sisters work for corporations, so the sensibilities are very different. I worked in corporate America for over 2 decades--I get it. I don't think the war mongers running the country are crazy enough to go to "war" with a Russia. Who would America get to risk their lives in an armed battle with Russia? This "war" would be drones, bombs and terrorism. If that is the type of conflict Pioneer is suggesting then it may have already started.

Win copy of Walter Mosley’s New eBook, Jack Strong: A Story of Life after Life The rules are simple; Follow the link from our eNewsletter to this page (contest starts AFTER the eNewsletter is emailed). Create an account on our discussion forum (if you don't already have one), by clicking this link or the green Create Account button on the upper right hand side of this page. Finally, reply to this post by typing, "I want Walter's eBook Jack Strong." That's it! The prize is Walter Mosley’s New eBook, Jack Strong: A Story of Life after Life provided courtesy of Open Road Media Only current subscribers to the AALBC.com eNewsletter are eligible to win (you must have received our July 29th eNewsletter announcing the contest). The contest will close one week after the emailing was sent or when the first five (validated) entries have been submitted--whichever comes first. I will confirm the valid entries, here, on this discussion forum. Once five validated entries have been submitted (or one week has passed), I will close the contest and send each contestant their eBook The winners will be confirmed here. Good luck!

An the winner is: Winner you may email me troy@aalbc.com to claim your prize.

Needless to say, I hope you are wrong Pioneer. I don't think we can win an engagement between Russia and China without rendering the planet uninhabitable for all but the wealthiest people.