Troy

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?

Well Chris the likelihood is that I dropped the review when I moved to the new server last month. So she could been to the site as recently as a few weeks ago. I'm just glad she notified me about the missing file. I had to move a bazillion files, so losing a few is to be expected.

34th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬: Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Author, Sociologist, Historian, Civil Rights Activist, Pan-Africanist, and Editor

And therein lies one of the major problems with "Race." When one person looks at Maya they see a white woman, another sees a Black woman, and Maya can see herself as something else entirely.

Hi Sarnetha (I just approved your account). I remember you. You go back over ten years I'm sure :-) I did a quick search on your name and could not find the review. But don't worry the web never forgets, so I'm pretty sure I'll be able to retrieve your information. If you have the URL of your reviews that would be most helpful, otherwise what was the name of the book we reviewed. Thanks

@Pioneer1 I'm not mind reader Rachel was just a popular recent example. If I understand your logic regarding "race," then virtually all so called Black people in America would be Afro-American. But extending your reasoning so would most white people. If most so called "afro-americans" have some white ancestry, why would they not be "mixed race" too? What racial bucket would Walter White go in, mIxed race or Afro-American, or is he both? @Cynique regarding voluntary negro -- gotcha. Your explanation for Zoe getting the role sounds more plausible. If that is the case then it sounds like either the movie gets made with Zoe in the role or not at all. Which would you prefer? I'm inclined to pass on this film being made until we could get a Viola Davis in the role and, get the gun out of Nina's hand.

Thanks for sharing the information here. I'll update our events calendar http://aalbc.com/events/index.php?st=Maryland#Gaithersburg+Book+Festival with the missing info

33rd Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬: From Columbus To Castro: The History Of The Caribbean 1492-1969 by Eric Williams

@Cynique, this is from the Biography website: Walter Francis White was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 1, 1893. (Before he became president of the United States, William Henry Harrison fathered several children with one of his slaves. One of these children was Walter White's grandmother, making Harrison Walter White's great-grandfather.) In 1906, he was a witness to race riots in Atlanta, and saw his home come close to being destroyed. He only escaped the violence of the day because he was light-complexioned, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Since one of Walter's Grandparents was and enslaved Black woman, which by the rule of the day and Pioneer's definition make him "Black." It is just so crazy how President Harrison's serial rape an enslaved Black women was mentioned in the same fashion as Walter's birthday.

While I think casting Nina was a horrendous decision, I'm definitely not hatin' on her for taking the role. I guess she is not quite at the point where she can decline the paycheck that comes with a major role. She obviously was aware of the justified criticism, and apparently takes it to heart given her responding to a stupid tweet.

As I start to reduce my use of Facebook I'm beginning to realize just how entangled I am with the platform. Over the years, out of convenience, I've been using my Facebook ID to login to all types of websites--including this discussion forum. For the convenience of using my Facebook credentials to log into this discussion forum and other sites, I'm telling Facebook exactly what I'm doing, where I'm doing it and how long I'm doing it. Obviously Facebook is using this information to improve what they are doing, which of course means crushing any competition or assimilating their content. I'm sure this information is part of the dataset Facebook sells to marketers as well. As a result, I've been slowly removing my Facebook logins. Fortunately the forum's software allows me to merge accounts. So I created a new account just using my email address, then I merged my old account which used my Facebook credentials into the new account.