[Locomotive Breath]

Ms. Duke, when you can get the men of your own race to treat you with respect, you get back to me with that whole white-men black-women thing. Your black men can start by cleaning up rap music and taking responsibility for the children they father by marrying the mother and supporting both the mother and child.

[Alia]

Among my eclectic and constant reading habits, I've always read the newer fictions authored by black authors and authoresses. Some of them are fine reading; and always instructive. This issue about the sisters and wishing their "men" would be more responsible had been a constant in these books. I detected a change in the very late 90s/early 2000s -- almost as though they'd all been given their marching orders. Jerome Dickey, for example, had authored some very sensible books (surrounding the "race" issue) which were about peace and accord. He's back on the "black be the thang" -- dittos, the others.

It was so darned startling to me -- all these different authors and authoresses whose books I'd been reading all these years -- came out, in total, with a "be black here now" agenda in their latest books. And as though someone had told them all they'd better get back on the "plantation" or lose their careers.

Their latest books are too boring to read!