Skip to main content

Bait-and-Switch Promotion and Bootleg Scam to Promote Michael Harriot’s Book Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

 

Bait-and-Switch Promotion and Bootleg Scam Targeting Michael Harriot’s Black AF History

A disturbing trend has emerged across social media platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram: a wave of viral, AI-generated videos claiming to reveal shocking or “hidden” stories from Black history. These short pseudo-documentary clips use realistic narration, synthetic voices, and fabricated visuals to appear authentic—but the stories they tell are entirely fictional.

Many of these videos are part of a coordinated bait-and-switch scheme falsely linking their content to Michael Harriot’s best-selling book Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America. The tactic preys on curiosity and trust, giving viewers the impression that these sensationalized narratives are drawn from Harriot’s meticulously researched work. In reality, they are not.

Social media influencer Bella Newberry, known online as @truecrimewithbella, has been one of the primary figures repackaging and promoting these AI-generated stories. By presenting them as previews or excerpts of Black AF History, she encourages viewers to engage with the content and follow links that may lead to counterfeit or unauthorized versions of the book. This practice misleads audiences and creates profits for opportunistic creators at the expense of both Harriot and genuine Black scholarship.

Michael Harriot’s book, by contrast, is a thoroughly researched, factual exploration of African American history. It contains no fabricated tales or exaggerated stories like those circulating online. Harriot himself has publicly warned that scammers are exploiting his name, image, and book title to generate views, clicks, and sales through misleading or AI-manufactured material. Such exploitation not only deceives the public but also undermines the integrity of real Black historical scholarship and authorship.

Important Links:

Tags: Black history, Michael Harriot, Black AF History, AI misinformation, social media scams, Bella Newberry, book fraud, historical integrity

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 1772–1773 Bladen County “Mob Raitously Assembled” and the Early Ancestors of the Lumbee

The 1772–1773 Bladen County “Mob Raitously Assembled” and the Early Ancestors of the Lumbee In 1772–1773, colonial North Carolina faced a crisis in Bladen County that would ripple across centuries, leaving its mark on families who would later be recognized as central to Lumbee history. Governor Arthur Dobbs, acting on intelligence from his agent and militia commander, Colonel Griffith Rutherford, reported to the General Assembly a startling list titled: “A list of the mob raitously assembled together in Bladen County October 13th 1773.” The report described the accused not as isolated lawbreakers but as a collective threat to civil order. What makes this document particularly significant is its explicit racial classification: “The above list of rogues is all free negroes and mullattoes living upon the King’s land.” This language reveals how the colonial government perceived these families. They were not simply settlers or Indian communities—they were a racially defined popula...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who are the Melungeons?

Who the Melungeons Are The Melungeons are a group of historically mixed-ancestry people who settled in the Appalachian borderlands, particularly in east Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and parts of Kentucky and North Carolina. They emerged in a society that demanded strict racial divisions, yet their appearance and family histories often defied such boundaries. Outsiders used the word “Melungeon” as a slur to describe families who seemed neither fully white nor fully Black, and the label stuck to entire communities. Historian Wayne Winkler explained that Melungeons “lived on the margins of society, neither enslaved nor fully free” and were often classified differently depending on the county or census taker. Census records from the 19th century alternately labeled them as “free people of color,” “mulatto,” “Indian,” or occasionally white. These inconsistent labels reflected the reality that their mixed ancestry — European, African, and Native American — plac...
Post a Comment
Read more

Debunking the “Black Japan” Story By Bella Newberry

  Bella Newberry’s Continuous Bait-and-Switch Scam: Debunking the “Black Japan” Story Social media influencer Bella Newberry, known online as @truecrimewithbella , has recently shared a viral video claiming that Japan had Black kings and dark-skinned queens, stating that the Meiji dynasty “bleached the bloodline” and that ancient Japanese dynasties had African ancestry. You can view the video here: In her narration, Newberry claims: "Japan had black kings and dark-skinned black women queens this is what they didn't tell you in school before they bleached the bloodline in the Meiji dynasty… you had the kuro the black kings yeah look it up kuro means black means king… ever heard of the jomon the people with thick hair dark skin and broad faces very broad nose those are from the original islanders… then you had the satsuma and ryoku noble dynasty this is black af history it goes into all of these things the things they did not teach you in school…" While these ...
Post a Comment
Read more