Troy

It is interesting that I had no idea about his website, or his book, until you posted the link.

Sawant described Obama's as "a presidency that has betrayed the hopes of tens of millions of people." She is also planning to do something about affordable housing. Sounds good to me. However, it was the HuffPost that attributing her to #occupy, which may or may not be valid. She identifies as a member of Socialist Alternative, an anti-capitalist, democratic-socialist party. Which is #occupy did not invent. The $15 minimum wage law is controversial. The problem is not what some small business owner pays their employees, the problem is why is the cost of living in cities like Seattle so high?. Often when fighting the symptoms of a problem, rather dealing with the root cause, you create more problems, in addition to the one you had to begin with. New York has the same problem. $15 and hour to a McDonald's worker will only increase prices and/or reducing services in the restaurant, while having no impact on the an employee ability to Pay rent--especially the ones who lose their jobs or have hours cut as a result.

Now this is really interesting. Now there are already plenty of sites that provide these referral services for each industry and more broadly, like Angie's List. It will be interesting to see if the Amazon brand is able to compete against all of these companies. If Amazon is successful this will be yet another step more control of the WWW going to a handful of companies.

Wow it is interesting to re-read my thoughts from over two years ago. On a whim I looked up the Brother that reject my supposition, Alfred Edmonds. He actually follows me, but he follows over 48,100 people (more people than follow him). My position over the past two years has become more nuanced regarding social media. But the underlying foundation of what I believe has not changed, I guess that is because it part of my nature. We HAVE to figure out how to use social media rather than having it use us. Just this morning I got this message on Facebook from an author friend of mine: "Hey Troy: Have you tried Facebook Custom Audiences for AALBC? Seems like it would be a good fit for advertising to newsletter subscribers. Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/custom-audiences" I have an open mind and am willing to take advantage of opportunities but after following the link and watching the video (twice), my reaction was; are you freaking kidding me?! Facebook wants people to upload their list of contacts (100 names minimum), so that we can target those contacts, who are on Facebook, with advertising--advertising that we have to pay for no less!! The fact the ANYONE thinks this is a good idea is mindboggling. I have a mailing list that I've developed over the past 18 years, why on Earth would I just hand it over to Facebook? I can already reach my contacts through email (even the ones not on Facebook). Why the hell would I pay Facebook to reach these folks through an advertisement most will ignore and virtually no one will click? Now I know there are social media gurus running around happily exclaiming what a great new service Facebook is offering us. The Black Enterprises of the world will have their Facebook seminars, someone like me, will describe what a stupid idea it is for anyone to use this new "service" and they'll be soundly rejected. That said, there are ways to effectively use social media. My most successful social media campaigns were the result of organic, not paid, reach. Organic reach is platform independent.

@Xeon, when you come like that, you are not late but right on time. @Sara, OK according to the dictionary; "...a series of organized activities working toward an objective," #blacklivesmatter is definitely a movement. My main concern was an expression of impact and building something sustainable. Lets see where #Blacklivesmatter is after a decade. I did not say you said the MLK statement was original, I was just providing the content and why I disagreed with it. I also don't buy into the argument that the long arc of justice was favorable for the Native Americans, because there are a billion Chinese people running around. With that logic we can extend all of humanity back to Africa, and if we did that the whole arc of justice argument becomes nonsensical. No dispute from me on striving for Black unity. Again I completely understand why Black people are pessimistic. All you really have to do is look around. The data on murder, depression, incarceration, poverty, unemployment, graduation rate, etc., is available. You can also look at how we are portrayed in popular media. Of all the TV shows available featuring Black folks what percentage of them even attempt to uplift Black people? Is it Housewives of ATL, is it even the fanatically popular Empire? Just because people assess a situation and point out problems does not mean they are not prepared to do something about it--even if they are pessimistic. You can't fix something unless we know the cause of the problem--and I'm afraid that is our biggest problem. @Mel Hopkins, http://www.joincampaignzero.org/solutions/#solutionsoverview is a compeling website, but again I reserve judgment on the effort until I see results. I'm also not sure I even agree with some of the goals. For example, you and I grew up in NYC during the worst periods in generations. Without realizing the underlying causes of the high crime and poverty, people welcomed the very policing tactics that #blacklivesmatters want to eliminate. But his is a much bigger conversation. A few years ago #occupy was the movement dujour, today it may be #blacklivesmatter, tomorrow given our fickle nature, it will be something else...

I hear you Chris. Aside from books (which I no longer physically handle), the products I sell are intangible (advertising and services) and not available for purchase via Amazon, so my situation is different. But I can't help but wonder if Amazon sold my advertising would I sell more. The person who develops the software that displays my ad is working on a way to allow advertisers to buy and place ads directly, they way one might buy an ad on Facebook or Google. I hope to have this rolled out when I officially re-launch the website. BTW the are a lot of people who are very happy about the new Amazon stores.

Thanks for sharing information about your event Rochelle. I also added it to our events calendar: http://aalbc.com/events/index.php?st=California

True. And yes there are more ways to commit suicide that putting the business end of a shotgun in your mouth ala your typical white boy. We kill ourselves differently, we don't take care of ourselves. How many of us know folks who ate, smoked, OD'ed, or drank themselves to an early grave. How about our young brothers who engage in suicidal behaviors disguised as "gang violence." These stats are not captured under the suicide numbers. Have you looked at the suicide rate of those in the military--those numbers are horrific for some units rivaling the numbers of those killed in action.

What a story! I presume you are talking about TeeSee (R.I.P.)

@Mel Hopkins, I often hate reading the New York Times when they cover Black people, as they often write these condescending pieces which they think are sympathetic but I find downright racist. I usually read the Wall Street Journal, I only recently cancelled my subscription to save money. They strike me as a paper that reports the truth providing information that people can actually use. You would never read an article written the way the one above was. I may bite the bullet and resubscribe, as I miss the information. I'm more information when I also read a physical newspaper like the Wall Street Journal catching the miscellaneous articles from the times is sufficient. I find myself reading more articles from the Guardian.

Oh the writers seems to be much more concerned with flowery prose rather than relating formation. He described Clarence Reynolds, the director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College as, "a stocky man with yellow-brown skin, closely cropped hair and a heather gray goatee." He never mention his name or role. That is just stupid. if you ask me. I know Clarence. The impact the writer has by describing Clarence this way was to marginalized him--and the writer Vinson is Black. But again who is the target audience for this article.... And phrase like "... and shoes with insouciant laces ..." add nothing to the story. If was a struggle to get through the article because of so much useless prose. @Mel Hopkins, while I do share articles to the New York Times, if I have an issue with the article I'll send people here first. One thing I did find funny was that was that Chris and the author have been mistaken for Ta-Nehisi Coates. I'm 5'7'' and have been mistaken for Ta-Nehisi (who has to be 6'5'') too. Despite all I have written, net-net, this article on Chris was a good look for him. Chris along with Dawn Davis, and Andrea Davis Pinkney are among less than a handful of very senior Black people in publishing. You don't reach reach a high level in these organization without a great deal of ability.

@Delano, no I don't do a background check on people I listen to, but once I learn what they are I stop elevating them. Does that mean I'm gonna stop listening to Kind of Blue? No. The music is already out. I'm also not suggesting we burn all his music and make believe he did not exist. I just wish guys who beat women where not treated as if their behavior is cool because they are a celebrities. @Mel Hopkins. when NWA first came out I loved their music, but I was young and dumb. In hindsight, I appreciate how the music, and the similar music which came after it adversely effected our collective psyches for generations. It also adversely affected women, and white boys too...

"One of the publishing industry’s only black editors is transmitting ideas from writers on the margins to the mainstream readers who need to hear them." By Vinson Cunningham, Feb. 2, 2016 (Read the full article) Now is it a "Black Literary Movement" is the only beneficiaries are the corporations, who essentially do not employ Black people and a handful of Black authors?

@Sara, Can you site me a source that says in the 1990's that Black women purchased 50% of all the books sold in the United States. I'll go out on a limb here, and say that can't possibly be true. So please site a source to support that statement.

@Sara, I think it is premature to call #blacklivesmatter a movement, or even an example of Black unity. I know the media has done this and the hashtag is really popular, but time will tell if it ultimately becomes a movement--or if it even has any long term impact. #Blacklivesamtter isn't even 4 years old... MLK got the idea from the abolitionist Theodore Parker who in 1853 said; "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice." I guess one's belief on this matter it depends upon one's perspective. The indigenous people of the Americas were here for a millennia before the European came, and they were all but exterminated in less than 100 years. Of course one does not have to rack their brain to come up with additional examples of arc of history bending toward injustice. While I work everyday to foster Black unity I know it is not something that will happen because the arc of history bends toward justice. If it happens, it will have to happen because a critical mass of people bust their asses and sacrifice to make it happen. Given our history in this country I'm not at all surprised (definitely not "astonished") that some Black people are pessimistic.

@Xeon, despite my comment I've long since stopped thinking of biopics as documentaries. Biopics are designed to make money. Any resemblance to the truth is incidental. @CDBurns, sure if you'd beat up a woman you are a punk. Punks also run around firing weapons to compensate for being a punk. @Delano, The artist and the man are all the same. If it is true that he was running around shooting people and beating up women. I think society would be better off without him, and his music. Too often was are willing to gloss over violence perpetrated celebrities because it does not touch us personally. If Miles Davis, Bill Withers, O.J. Simpson, Chris Brown or anyone of these celebrity thugs beat up my daughter, society would not have to worry about them very long.

I discovered several years ago that Amazon does not always have the best prices. I wanted to buy a replacement filter from my coffee machine and I went to Amazon the price was over $50 for 1 filter. I thought that price was outrageous, O si searched from the product online and I found a website selling two filters for $25 dollars. From that day to this I never buy anything on Amazon with checking the web first. I usually find lower prices on the web. I have been look for a new pair of shoes recently. I checked Amazon and various websites. As a result I'm inundated with shoe advertisements as I browse the web. I popped into my local DSW store and found exactly what I wanted on the discount rack for 30 bucks a full $100 less that the online prices I was seeing for comparable shoes. If Amazon puts DSW, or other physical shoe stores, out of business because people are too lazy to go to the store, do we think we ultimately end up with better prices? Amazon has deluded people into believing that; (1) they have the best prices; (2) that they are actually comparison shopping when using market place; (3) that every retailer is on Amazon; and (4) that getting a product immediately is always better.

Well maybe I'm not that obscure. Seriously, Troy Johnson is a very common name and there are a several people in the public eye with the name, so ranking high on a search for my name is not easy--especially if you do not want social media to win. I put effort into making this happen. Ranking high in search does not happen automatically. Let me look into the image upload settings-- I thought they were pretty liberal.

The Wall Street Journal article is behind a paywall. However, it appears the article has been OCR'ed and converted to an audio file on Youtube. The crazy thing is thing is that the prices will be the same as they are on the Amazon website! How can they do it? Thank Wall Street. I wonder if they will have cafes and provide free WiFi like other so called bookstores? Will the employee just be low-level cashiers or knowledge sales people? I think Barnes and Noble can pretty much say goodnight The stick price is down 7% on this news, Nooks sales are down 25%, stores sales are down. You know I have to remove my Barnes and Noble buy links from this website because they killed their affiliate program for the 3 or 4th time since I've been running this site!

Oh I forgot to mention this: After seeing how search results skewed away from independent website--especially black owned sites. I decided to create search engine, Huria Search, that only returns search results from Black owned independent website. That way so many of the websites that are undiscoverable in regular search can now be found in a Huria Search. Check out the Huria Search results on Zane. The query is actually on the term Zane Author. You will see now that the top results come from Black Enterprise, Black America Web, Black News.com, and Jet Magazine. But the top pages in the search results ALL talk about scandal associated with Zane tax issues. In fact these are all the same articles--regurgitated clickbait designed to drive traffic. It is not until we get to Hello Beautiful site, #6 in the results, that we see information about Zane's literary or film accomplishments. AALBC.com is excluded from Huria Search results. One last note: A couple of years ago my social media started beating MY SIte on a query of my name! I went into Facebook and Twitter and ripped out all of my personal information and lied about anything I had to provide, like my age (I'm over 100 on Facebook). It took another year for my site to out rank my social media on Google Searches. This was probably due to an adjustment of Google's side rather than my own effort. How does AALBC.com rank when you run a search on Troy Johnson AALBC? Let me know, I'm curious.

I have to check out your video @CDBurns. @Mel Hopkins, Google's search results OFTEN push "official sites lower in search results." They will absolutely favor social media, wikipedia, scandalous news, etc over an official site, which is a serious problem for smaller sites, regardless of quality. Consider an article I wrote about the search results on the author Zane, back in 2014 Now I will admit that Google has gotten better over time and the problems that I noticed a few years ago are not nearly as bad. But this is mostly because it is much more difficult to game Google's search results. Still small books sites don't really have a chance today. Take a look at the screenshot from Google search result that I posted below (taken at 10:00 a.m. February 2, 2016 using privacy mode) Notice how Google inserts their Zane information prominently on the upper right hand side of the search results page. Actually it is not "their" Zane information, in that the text is usually copied from Wikipedia and the images are copied from other websites including this one. As a result, people looking for something about Zane do have to leave the google page, Google is also a book seller, so people can learn more about books and buy them from Google without even leaving the search results page! Wikipedia is #1 (no surprise there--Google oddly skews toward wikipedia on virtually every subject). Simon and Schuster has the first and 2nd search results. Amazon's has two sites in the top 7. AALBC.com is #7 in the results. Your result will vary especially if you login to Google. When I login, for example, AALBC.com comes in #3 for this Zane search. Zane's Blog is on page 2. Admittedly Zane's Blog has not been updated since 2012, instead she is hyper-active on social media. I think it is a mistake for Zane to publish so much content on Facebook, rather than her own website. Indeed it was her website that launched her prominence. But Zane is famous and has earned millions. I'm obscure and broke, so what do I know? As Google becomes more of a content aggregator they can hijack the traffic that would have normally gone to other websites, because they own search. Facebook is positioning themselves quite well to do that same thing. Facebook and Google are oligarchist gatekeepers.

OK I'm glad the image insertion is now working. That was a problem before I migrated the board to the new server. Yes this young lady has gained a lot of attention as of late. Her Mother, Dr. Janice Johnson Dias' not-for-profit, GrassROOTS Community Foundation (cofounded by Black Thought of the Roots) is her platform. Their not-for-profit has substantial corporate backing; supporters include Red Bull (who knew?) and many others. GrassROOTS (you know the "ROOTS" name just now dawned on me..duh), seem to be doing great things in Philly.

Mel when I first populated the blog directory I used those Black Blogs award sites as a source. The fact that many of the award winning blogs listed on those sites are no longer up, only supported my belief that we had to do more to support each other--that is if we have any interest in long term survival. I have already emailed all of the bloggers in my database. I was unable to generate any interest in doing anything collectively. I did connect with a group of bloggers (a group whose name I will not mention), but the members seem to be more interested in using the platform to promote their own sites rather than brainstorming ways to work together for mutual benefit. Getting folks to sacrifice a bit of their time to work with others is a very hard thing to convince people to do--even if they will benefit in the long term. I continue to try... Once this website's upgrade is complete (still several months away), I will redirect energies to more collective efforts. BTW if anyone notices any other problems on these forums please let me know. It appears all of the bugs have been worked out.

I'm not sure why this image is not displaying. Did it ever display properly?

There is a saying, "When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible." The Black religious experience is much older that what we see in America today. There are some who feel the religion as it was "given" to the enslaved African was a tool to placate them. Harry Brown is far from alone in his sentiment. During a King celebration I heard Rev. Mike Walrond speak, and he was very critical of ministries that were more concerned with enriching their pastors and accumulating material things, rather than serving the people. Also, it is no secret that there were many in the Black church that were not supporters of Dr. King, when he was most active -- even up to the point when he was killed. So while the Brothers and Sisters in The Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam and other groups disagreed with King on tactics, they were clear on one thing; the oppression had to stop. So while white racist clearly don't want Black unity, I would not suggest that the Black Church is the only institution Black American has that can bring us unity. No one institution can.