and social justice titles exploded after George Floyd’s death" (WaPo).
I love the word "over-acknowledge."
The Reparations Club is a store in L.A. Here's its website and here's a NYT article about it, "Buying Black, Rebooted/In the newest iteration of the Buy Black movement, entrepreneurs are creating marketplaces that pool black-owned brands in one space":
There was a time when people looking for black-owned companies to patronize had a hard time finding them. Big-box stores and chains made convenience, not provenance, king. Why do the legwork of tracking down several different items when you can get everything you need in one place?That was published on Christmas Day, 2019, before there was any inkling that the coronavirus would completely change shopping.
“All the things I needed as a black person I typically wasn’t buying from black people,” said Jazzi McGilbert, the founder of Reparations Club, a marketplace that opened in Los Angeles in June. “We just needed the things that we needed when we needed them, and we got that where we could.”
Now a new wave of entrepreneurs have created businesses — e-commerce platforms, bricks-and-mortar shops, subscription boxes and pop-up markets — that primarily or exclusively sell black-owned products....
Is "over-acknowledge" a word in common circulation? Not yet, but it should be. Googling, I only found obscure examples:
1. "People ask: 'Is it possible to over-acknowledge someone?' Not if the acknowledgement is genuine. The concern should not be the quantity of acknowledgement..." (in "What Your Clients Really Want: The Key is Acknowledgement" at engagesales.com).So... the context is sales and life-coaching. Interesting to bring the concept into the realm of efforts to become more racially aware and appropriate.
2. "Some people ask me, 'Is it possible to over-acknowledge people?' Perhaps, but the issue is more likely to be the quality of the appreciation—whether our sincerity is in the acknowledgement—not whether there is too much of it" (in "There Is Nothing More Important..." at smallbusinessadvocate.com).
3. "The second roadblock that I want you to be attentive to is over-acknowledging, going, 'Wow. Great work. Great work. Great work. Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. You’re amazing. That’s amazing,' all the time. I find this to be rare because most Coaches that I’ve experienced through my Life Coach Certification Program is that they under-acknowledge rather than over-acknowledge. Listen to your tape. Notice, do you over-acknowledge because you don’t know what else to do? You’re lost a little bit so you think, 'Oh, I’ll just acknowledge them.' Remember, an acknowledgement has to be descriptive. It has to be real. It has to be based on fact. It has to be feelings-based, and it has to be complimentary. It has to be empowering. It has to have all those qualities or it is not an acknowledgment" (at "lifecoachcertificationprogram.com").
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58 comments:
I am so glad I don't have any black friends
Human interaction now has the spontaneity and utility of fly-tying. Over-acknowledge?
will they be allowing Kanye West to merchandise?
Jazzi on crack, yo...
The terms anti-racist and anti-fascist are examples of irony, right?
https://www.youtubedotcom/watch?v=l1IoqsFuNec
Wisdom from a crack baby
"anti-racist literature is up/These black bookstore owners"
The irony, it burns.
I might have a lot of books by black people. Or maybe not. I really couldn’t say.
Best to have some on your bookshelf during the Zoom meetings.
Keeps HR off your back.
or watch their films
Modern black authors write only about race and how the world has discriminated against them. There are a few serious exceptions like Thomas Sowell. What amused me is that, when I was a boy of ten or so, I tried to check a book out of the local library and the librarian called my mother to ask if I was permitted any book with such a racy subject. The book was "The Foxes of Harrow, " and the author of this popular novel was black. Here's a review by another who read it as a kid:
I was lucky enough to find a copy of this beautiful book, The Foxes of Harrow, printed in 1947 and still in lovely condition. I first read this story when I was in school (nearly 60 years ago) at 14 years old and have never forgotten it. I read it in my forward thinking school's library - and have had to wait until now to find a copy of my own. Unfortunately Frank Yerby seems to have become a forgotten author and I urge anyone who has never read one of his books to do so - you will not regret it. Frank writes in a wonderful, almost forgotten, way of drawing the reader into the setting and time in which the story unfolds - I doubt that there is another author who would bring the character, Stephen Fox, to life the way Yerby does, the way he makes you want to shake Mr Fox yet want to be him at the same time.
The story follows Stephen Fox from his life as a clever gambler in the early 19th century and it's trials, to becoming a planter of some renown and considerable wealth and his fixation with the beautiful woman he wanted as wife and mistress of his lovely plantation - acquired as a result of gambling and a duel.
Read it and become addicted!!
He was a pretty prolific author. and an had an interesting life. Of course he resented discrimination in the days it was real.
This shows the Calvinist nature of the movement. Original Sin left you tainted, and nothing you do in life is going to absolve you.
I expect a wave of books from black authors showing up in the Little Library boxes soon. That's where virtue signaling people put the trendy books they bought and don't want to finish reading.
Mind you, I still don't expect to find Little Libraries erected in certain neighborhoods. Unless, of course, they are placed there by Antifa as a training vehicle for young rioters and arsonists.
Funny- I don't look at the gender, color, race, or religion of an author when reading. If the book is good, that's enough for me. If it sucks, that too, is enough for me. It's not going to get better or worse because of a vagina, penis, melanin, or crucifix.
What I won't do is go into bookstores that segregate themselves by category. It may be a niche that they are trying to fill, and I get that. But it's not appealing to me. Typically those niche bookstores are merely pre-censoring or filtering. You will see only what they want you to see. If I go into a bookstore, I go in without an idea of what I want. And I like to browse all of it to see what hits me that day.
Of course, I wear a mask and don't walk anywhere near another person. And I disinfect the books I handle. And I use only my own credit card- no cash. And I remove my clothes as I walk out, so as to not infect my car or anyone I'm driving with. I drive home naked, with my mask on, and my new book.
" tim maguire said...
I might have a lot of books by black people. Or maybe not. I really couldn’t say."
You would know because it would be all the books that you have about about being black. That's all black people write or read about.
Anti-racism seems to be the latest flavor of Kool-aid.
A new element in our lexicon. Just in the last couple of weeks.
Michael K beat me to the punch, bringing up Frank Yerby. He was one of those historical novelists who were once very popular but are seldom read these days. My favorite was Edison Marshall, who not only wrote about stuff I was once crazy about--Vikings, King Arthur, etc.--but whose sex scenes were fairly explicit for the time and that I discovered just as I was in the throes of puberty. I guess they fell out of favor when people lost interest in history.But as I recall people didn't know Mr. Yerby's race but just gobbled his books up anyway.
These merchants need to be careful. Their desire for profit is so very white according to the latest expert understandings.
I read Thomas Sowell all the time. I assume that doesn't count though.
Searched their website, nothing by Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele. Not all black authors matter.
"Soul On Ice." 1968.
So there.
The obsession with 'race' in this country is just - systemic. Is there nothing can be done about it?
As a white male I don't really mind having a higher standard set for me, but don't blame me when I get better at stuff than other people. An example would be my level of racism being better controlled.
Alexandre Dumas is an option.
He was a writing machine, and operated a sort of novel-manufacturing system where his dozen or so collaborators wrote up drafts according to his outlines, which Dumas rewrote and polished as necessary.
Much of his work is not easily available, or not available at all in English.
Also ref. - Perez-Reverte "The Club Dumas", which has more about Dumas in it than you will ever want to know.
The great thing about these books is you don't have to read them; you can just prop them up in your front windows.
If you want a novel about Vikings, this may be the greatest of them all -
"The Long Ships", sometimes titled "Red Orm", Frans Bengtsson
Just get it.
Bengtsson wasn't black though.
Demand jumped from .08% to .085%? It’s a freakin’ Gold Rush...
Wouldn't whites reading black authors be considered cultural appropriation? We can't have that. Only blacks should be allowed to read black authors.
My appreciation of the various idioms of black music is unfeigned and enthusiastic. Black literature not so much. I've read some of it. It's okay, but I can't think of a single black novelist I've wanted to read and re-read. I've never gotten into German writers either. The Russians are pretty good.....Does anyone still read Mika Waltari. He is the best Finnish historical novelist of all time.
It’s okay to over-acknowledge, as long as you don’t overdo it.
Richard Wright, some Langston Hughes, Soul on Ice, Malcolm X’s autobiography. I was done by the time I was 18. Maybe it’s not a race thing but a denizens-of-a-literate-age thing. Those men could write. Their (supposed) successors spew.
When black people start writing physics, cosmology, and math books, I'll read them. (And no, Neil deGrasse Tyson does not count.)
Frank Yerby for those that interested
https://www.google.com/amp/s/people.com/archive/expatriate-writer-frank-yerby-is-grousing-even-though-his-30th-best-seller-is-coming-up-vol-15-no-12/%3famp=true
"So why is Yerby angry? For one thing, critics ignore him. “Too many of them are failed novelists who don’t know how to read,” Yerby says. “They should be licensed like doctors and lawyers.” His fellow black writers offer him little support. “They’ve gotten on me for not dealing with racial issues,” Yerby complains. “But that’s an artistic dead end. I’m glad to have escaped. There’s no hope for racial harmony in the U.S. and never was. America is just the world’s biggest banana republic. It does everything badly.”
that is the thing, kendi, (henry rodgers) thinks he's wannabe baldwin, coates, the next dubois, michelle alexander, that's another category of mind arson all together, what is ghasi, a ghanian doing in this list,
Thomas Sowell is flying off the shelves?
I have a few of his and now it looks like I was cool before this got trendy.
"My appreciation of the various idioms of black music is unfeigned and enthusiastic....The Russians are pretty good..."
Bruh my French half huffs and puffs at the exclusion ;)
You could not read aloud three pages of The Sellout by Paul Beatty in a public forum without the mob torching your house and damning you for a cracker bigot. So much for black authors and that vile n***** word.
buwaya, I read THE LONG SHIPS. I was by then savvy enough to know movies often don't follow the book very faithfully, but I was surprised how different--and a little disappoited--that the book was so different from the movie, which I enjoyed very much.
Richard Wright is worth re-reading. His description of the white lefties is pretty devastating in both "Native Son" and "Black Boy." I re-read "Their Eyes Were Watching God" recently and it was great. Back when there were bookstores I stopped picking up books by black people because they were segregated away from the fiction and literature section. But at Amazon I have to think about what I might like. I wouldn't know about the folks who write mysteries, thrillers and sci-fi other than Walter Mosely who makes point of it.
In the contest of the greatest black writer that has ever lived, the argument is between Dumas and Pushkin. I have no good idea of Pushkin as poetry in translation is difficult to appreciate, usually. So for me anyway Dumas it is, but Pushkin may have been more historically significant. He certainly had a real-world effect that is difficult to underestimate.
I dont see how anyone else can compare.
I'm not interested in Affirmative Action literature. Or reading because the AUTHOR is diverse. Here's my suggestion, just take all the copies of "War and Peace" and put a black guys picture on the back, with a blurb that says Tolstoy was discovered to be 1/2 African.
When I first read a novel by George Eliot I thought the author was a man. Knowing she was actually a woman didn't change my opinion of the book. Or her other books.
I am all for reparations. But, like open borders and a welfare state (you can't have both...choose one) it should only be done with a constitutional amendment to end all affirmative action programs.
Dumas wasn't really a great author, he was the Co-author. He had writer(s) who helped write his stuff. He had the name (his father had been a famous General) and was good at plots and ideas. And he really wasn't that black. Dumas' mother was white, his father was 1/4 black (mulatto Haitian mother, white father).
I liked James Baldwin and Richard Wright as authors. Langston Hughes "Not without Laughter" was enjoyable.
Dirty Little Secret: Four out of five book purchasers never get beyond the third chapter.
I hadn't really thought about it until it was noted above, that all black authored literature was race related. This is only, mostly true. As a science fiction fan, I had read and enjoyed a fair bit of work from Samuel Delany and only learned sometime later that he was black, and homosexual.
I read based on subject matter and how well it's written. I'm not really interested in the author's back-story.
Making decisions based entirely upon the color of one's skin.
Nope. Not racist at all.
Dumas' mother was white, his father was 1/4 black (mulatto Haitian mother, white father).
Dumas' father was mulatto, 1/2 black. His mother, Dumas grandmother, was a slave.
Dumas had a writers' factory but much of it was concerned with later works, most of which are lost.
Haven't black achievements been over-acknowledged for the past half century, partly due to the soft bigotry of low expectations?
The skin colors of the several attempted muggers I've encountered in my life seems the least important attribute they exhibited to me. All of them wanted money or goods. Of much more immediate interest were their weapons, their verbalized threats, and their proximity/distance to me. All things considered, the white Baltimore junkie who snuck up on me while I was loading groceries into my car - with my toddler in the buggy - was the scariest, because I could not retreat or defend myself, and keep my child safe. Fortunately, my screaming like a maniac brought enough unwanted attention to our evolving situation that he decided to depart.
Don't come asking me for reparations for something done to someone other than you, by someone other than me. That isn't what reparations are.
ebastian said...
Haven't black achievements been over-acknowledged for the past half century, partly due to the soft bigotry of low expectations?
Of course ! That's why people like Yerby are interesting. He was writing from "The belly of the Beast" and still sold lots of books. Nobody knew or cared about his race. Alexander Dumas fought lots of duels when he was insulted about his race. The present day hothouse flowers like Degrasse Tyson are phonies.
"Dumas' father was mulatto, 1/2 black. His mother, Dumas grandmother, was a slave.'
One doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Slave doesn't mean 100% black. Ask Sally Hemmings. We don't have an exact idea what Dumas' father looked like or his Grandmother.
Was his mother a mulatto or a Negro? I've read differing stories. We do know that General Dumas came to France at 14, spoke perfect French, had European features, and lived the life of young aristocrat (including horse riding and fencing) till the age of 24. His family, friends, colleagues, and wife were all white and French. He was French in every way, except skin color.
The assumption that the product of black writers will not only not be racist but anti-racist is racist, repugnant and retrograde
Over-acknowledging is a micro-aggression to the point at which you slobber, which is way worse than over-acknowledgement and is just full on aggression. And to top it off you have to laundry afterwards.
I just finished Andrew Roberts' biography of Napoleon. I recommend it. Marshall Dumas was a major figure in Napoleon's army. There is a story that the Directory sent a delegation to Dumas to ask if he would help put down the street rioting. His wife was tired of his being gone so much and told the delegation that he was out riding and she did not know when he would return. They then sent the delegation to Napoleon and the "Whiff of Grapeshot" followed. Interesting to speculate. Illustrations of Alexander, the son, show definite Negroid features.
By far my favorite black writer is Chester Himes. But then, I enjoy pulpy genre fiction, at which he excelled. Any of the Gravedigger and Coffin Ed series is a fun read. His more literary works are less renowned, but still worth a look: Pink Toes and the prison novel are both fascinating, as are many of his short stories. He wrote a lot about "high yaller" (yellow) women and men and the racial hierarchies within the black community.
I don't know if it was the censors at the time, or just a weird vernacular that Himes invented, but in Cast the First Stone, his prison novel, there are these weird expletives that I've never encountered anywhere else, e.g. "mother-raper" for, I assume, motherfucker, throughout the book.
I'm curious about "All the things I needed as a black person I typically wasn’t buying from black people". What sort of consumer goods are specific to black people, and that black people are better off obtaining from other black people?
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