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Today is St. Patrick’s Day and most likely no matter where you work, there’s bound to be a celebration of some sort, whether you like it or not. Legend has it that it has something to do with Irish pride, although it seems to be strongly embraced by Euro-Americans of all persuasions. One can assume that St. Patrick’s Day has some sort of cultural significance but the overabundance of shamrocks, Leprechauns, pots of gold, corned beef & cabbage beer and all things green manages to over shadow it.

Ultimately, St. Patty’s Day appears to be more of an overall celebration of “White Pride” (not that there’s anything wrong with that – as Seinfeld would say) with the whole nation in support of green clad drunkards committing various acts of obnoxious behavior in the middle of a workweek. Amidst the green beer guzzling festivities are those who would prefer to simply just avoid the whole majority-inflicted holiday, particularly those trapped for 8 hours in an office filled with tacky St. Patrick’s Day party favors and faded co-workers making unfamiliar cultural references while rockin’ Leprechaun shoes and green wigs. Taking the day off may not be an option, but there are ways you can get through the rest of the afternoon without making any unnecessary waves:

Headphones: This may not be an option for many, but if your place of work, and temporary Irish pub, allows for the use of them, they can provide you with the perfect distraction from all the foolery.

Take on a Big Project: Have you been procrastinating about re-organizing your workspace or file cabinet? If you want to get away from your obnoxious co-workers, this is a great opportunity to do so. You can avoid feeling like you’re rejecting the annoying bunch by actually doing work on St. Patrick’s Day, after all, that is why you’re there.

Call/IM Your Friends: Birds of a feather flick together so if you’re not keen on the holiday, most likely neither are your friends. Many of them may be a captive audience to Irish overload and would appreciate the distraction. While the population at your work gets tore up, you can take pleasure in a conversation of a good friend, boyfriend, relative or whomever you choose to help you “get away.”

Take An Extra Long Lunch or Leave Work Early: Desperate times may call for desperate measures if you’re surrounded by straight St. Patty’s Day fiends. If their festivities are so boisterous that they prevent you from actually being able to hear yourself think, then you may as well steal away. Chances are they’d be too wasted to notice your absence.

Woods has been on hiatus from golf since November 15^th when he won the Australian Open. It was nearly two weeks later that the world learned of his insatiable sexual appetite and its unfortunate affect on his marriage. TW admits, “I have undergone almost two months of inpatient therapy and I am continuing my treatment,” he said. “Although I’m returning to competition, I still have a lot of work to do in my personal life.”

Woods did his time at a Mississippi clinic from December 31 until February 11 followed by an additional week of family counseling at an Arizona facility. In the aftermath of this personal scandal going public, it remains to be seen how much this will affect his performance on the green – in addition to the impact of his sex addiction withdrawal on his overall conduct. In all likelihood, a grand return may be a bit premature, but it’s only Tiger who has the final say in this matter.

From The Grio.com

Wealth is generally determined by one’s total assets minus debts. According to the report, single, middle age white women have a median wealth of $42,600, which is still about 60 percent of single white men; the median wealth for single black women is only $5. Married white women have a median wealth of $167,500, but married black women have a median worth of $31,500.

I’m not surprised by these findings. While the economic disparities are complex, there are some clear reasons for the gap. Black women are more likely to be in careers that that pay less and offer little to no health insurance or retirement plans, which contribute to their debt problems. Over 40 percent of black women are single, making us the financial backbones for our families.

The study was conducted before the current recession, but clearly the decade long sub-prime loan crisis has stretched the wallets of many black women. In addition, jobless rates for both black women and men are nearly double the national unemployment average.

If this report doesn’t prove that America is nowhere close to being “post racial,” then I don’t know what will. President Obama has said he wants to deal with the social ills affecting the black community without actually framing them as black problems. For the last year, he has promoted the idea that the stimulus plan will save Americans of all racial backgrounds.

Nonetheless, a report from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity says just the opposite, stating that the “stimulus did not go far enough in terms of marginalized communities, and it lacked transparency and accountability in regard to racial equity.” In addition, the report states that the stimulus has not properly established an infrastructure that would help enable blacks to find jobs.

(Continue Reading @ The Grio…)

From Ms. Magazine — This February, billboards that read “black children are an endangered species” were plastered across Atlanta. They were sponsored by anti-abortion groups Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) and the Radiance Foundation, and they were meant to imply that abortion-rights activists target pregnant black women for eugenics reasons.

I know firsthand that it’s easy for the unwary to be seduced–or at least shaken–by these arguments. I watched bits and pieces of the slickly produced 2009 documentary Maafa 21, the foundation for these kind of  billboards, which alleges a “black genocide” perpetrated by the likes of Planned Parenthood, and I admit it threw me. I had no idea that Planned Parenthood, in its original incarnation as the American Birth Control League, was helmed by Margaret Sanger, who made many questionable assertions about race in her lifetime.

But in times of ballyhoo, it is always sage to revisit the facts.

Fact: Yes, a black woman is almost four times as likely as a white woman to have an abortion, but that is due to a higher rate of unintended pregnancy among African American women.

Fact: In 2002, about 15 percent of black women who were at risk for unintended pregnancy were not practicing contraception, compared to 12 percent of Latino and 9 percent of white women. But …

Fact: Black women are disproportionately low income and many contraceptives have exorbitant upfront costs; therefore, black woman are less able to afford prescription birth control methods or have access to highly effective contraception over extended periods of time.

Fact: When we are told to view issues of reproductive rights as separate from the larger narrative of public health, we must be skeptical.

Following the display of these billboards, legislation was introduced in the Georgia Legislature–House Bill 1155, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act–that would criminalize providers who solicit abortion “with racial intent.” While this sounds reasonable in theory, Loretta Ross, national coordinator of the Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, explains that this bill could require health-care providers to ask patients why they are seeking abortions. Getting an abortion is already a stigmatized experience in our society without seekers having to undergo an inquisition. Ross also notes that the bill does not define what constitutes “solicitation,” meaning that its actual effect could be to create an abortion ban in Georgia by using incensed African Americans who may not have otherwise supported the cause.

Even though the bill has moved through the subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, Ross remains hopeful that it won’t pass:

It is very hard to persuade African American women in the city of Atlanta that this legislation headlined by rural white Republicans is truly about saving black children. These are the same legislators…that have fought against improving our schools, getting guns off the street and getting children into the SCHIP [State Children’s Health Insurance Program]…these are not people whose votes indicate that they care about children of color once they are here.

In the “endangered species” promotional video–almost insultingly backed with a hip-hop beat–there are truths. However, they are incomplete narratives that create divisions rather than solutions. The full story is that since Margaret Sanger’s death in 1966, the reproductive rights movement has seen dramatic changes in its leadership and relationships with women of color. Although we must always remain critical, it would do us all a great disservice to discount the importance of reproductive health care services in their contemporary context, especially for women of color. This includes access to prenatal care, which constitutes 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services.

Cecilia Marquez, a Swarthmore College student and reproductive justice advocate, reasonably argues:

If we’re really worried about genocide of the black community, we need to think about prison abolition. If we are really worried about this supposed genocide, let us talk about real solutions for HIV/AIDS. If we really care about genocide in the black community then we need to talk about gross inequities in our healthcare system–we don’t need to limit black women’s reproductive freedom.

It appears that the same white conservative leaders who consistently reject reform are the very people now trying to court the black community. As noted by journalist Michelle Goldberg:

For several years now, the religious right has been trying to appropriate the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s an audacious strategy, given that Christian conservative politics were forged in the white Southern backlash to school integration. But it’s had some successes, particularly in rousing black churches against the gay rights movement. Now, the anti-abortion movement is making a push to enlist African Americans in their cause by framing abortion as a tool of eugenics and genocide.

The fact that abortion rates are disproportionately higher in communities of color is neither the fault of black women nor of a conspiring group of women’s health-care providers. It is because of racist and classist public-health policy that has long rendered black women invisible.

Wyclef paid mistress with Yele Haiti funds?
According to reports, former Fugee Wyclef Jean paid his mistress a six-figure salary using funds from his charitable organization, Yele. The alleged mistress, Zakiya Khatou-Chevassus, was paid $105,000 as an independent contractor, working on the charity in 2008. “She worked for Wyclef on all Wyclef matters,” a source, told website Gawker. “She did whatever Wyclef needed that day, whether it was related to Yele or not. She would do things like book flights, and she wasn’t very good at it. It’s a shame that she made that much money.” (Continue Reading…)

African Americans get fewer heart-protecting drugs
Even within the Veterans Affairs health system, where everyone should have the same access to care, African Americans are less likely than their white counterparts to be prescribed heart-protecting medications or undergo bypass surgery to treat blocked heart arteries, a new study finds. The findings, based on data for nearly 475,000 VA patients, found that African Americans had lower rates of prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering statins, as well as ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers used to treat high blood pressure and certain heart problems. They were, however, more likely than white patients to be on aspirin. (Continue Reading…)

The Washington Post reported this week:

A Montgomery County teacher who told a high school sophomore last week that she was dressed like a prostitute has apologized to the student and her mother, the mother said Tuesday.

The Seneca Valley High School teacher made the remark Thursday and had a security guard escort the student to the main office, said Naomi Lynn, the girl’s mother. The incident was first reported by WJLA (Channel 7). Lynn said she wasn’t satisfied with the response; after a one-day absence, the teacher returned to class Tuesday, Lynn said.

“If my daughter had called her a prostitute, [the school] would have suspended her,” she said. The teacher “needs to be punished for what she did.”

Dana Tofig, a school system spokesman, said that he couldn’t comment on personnel matters, but that the teacher’s comment was “inappropriate.”

I personally want to thank this teacher for having the guts to say what so many teachers and school administrators are afraid to say.

Whatever happened to enforcing standards in our schools? I remember our principal would get on us if our jeans were a little too tight. At some point, it seems the school community just gave up:

You want to wear a thong hanging out of your jeans, you want to have your boobies falling out, your ass cheeks popping out of your low-riders, no problem.

Notably, the only person the parent in the above story is mad at is the teacher. She’s mad at the teacher for speaking the truth about her daughter. As a result, the teacher was suspended for a day, however, the mother seems to think this punishment was too light. Something tells me she needs to worry more about her daughter than this teacher’s career.

Children learn what is and isn’t appropriate from adults. How will this young lady ever learn how to function as a lady if her parents and school administrators, the people who spend the most time with her and are most influential in shaping her life, just let her run wild?

We forget that high school students are a mix of adult-bodies and children-brains. Many young women want to look like their favorite video hos but don’t understand the ramifications of the way they dress.

They don’t understand how they will be perceived, they don’t understand that they will invite more trouble than they can handle. And because they don’t understand, it is up to us to tell them and make them understand.

Whatever happened to “you are not going out the house like that”? I think it is the responsibility of the community and the schools need to step in.

(Continue Reading @ Black Voices….)