Due to technical difficulties beyond her control, Rebecca didn't get her blog post in on Friday. But it's coming soon.
Sadly, the internet has made it possible for ignorant people (and they come in every skin shade) to post vitriolic comments all over the place without leaving their real names and email addresses. Cowards. Go get your own blogs :)
Mean-spirited cowards (who can't even read well enough to recognize that the "romance" in the title was with a romanticized version of Harlem, not with a thug) aren't welcome here; and I will delete their posts Keep sending them and I publish names and email addresses. They may not show up on the comment section in the blog, but Gmail sends them to me. (Rebecca calls these venom-spitters "the internet trolls who come out at night because, where else can they go?")
I DO welcome intelligent, enlightened commentary, whether I agree with it or not.
I just don't have time for trolls. (I'm told there is an angry African American woman blogger still outraged about a piece i wrote three years ago; I haven't read her; I don't care what irrationally enraged people have to say about anything.) Too bad some people out there have invested so much of their time into becoming trolls.
SexyPrime is primarily a place for celebrating, supporting and empowering female sexuality. (We love men here too! Because it's my blog and I am a devotee and avid supporter of jazz and art, I sometimes blog about those subjects too.) I get more emails than posts to the blog, but until last night, every communication came from an interesting, intelligent person with something to say. It's rather shocking how the subject of race brings out such anger and hatred from white and black...and encourages the ugliest trolls to crawl out of the muck under the bridge.
I am a Barack Obama supporter. His Philadelphia speech on race was one of the finest things I've ever heard in my life. You can still find it online. Listen to it. Read the words. We need to have a civilized dialogue between the races where, as Obama said, each side can even state a grievance--and I would add, without being threatened with graphic beatings, rape and murder.
And to the white woman who asked me how I could find anything to love in Harlem: Some of the world's best people live here. They say "good morning" to you on the street. That only happens in this part of Manhattan. The architecture is the best in the city. This is the "home base" of jazz, arguably American's only original art form. There is plenty of good food, mostly at affordable prices. One of the best little restaurants in the city, Native, is on 118th Street and Lenox Avenue. Most Harlemites, old and new, African American, Latino, African, Asian, white--are trying to live together in peace and mutual respect; and most of the time, we succeed in doing that.
And there is more creative energy in Harlem than anywhere else in the city now.
I hate thug culture, but I love Harlem. And I wrote that piece in the hopes that more people in Harlem would stand up against thug culture too.
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