Seriously: Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's an excellent breakdown at Jezebel about the median wealth of women of color in comparison to white women and men of all ethnic groups. There's graphs, pie charts and tables to help illustrate this, but the main take-away is that wealth is your net worth minus all debts and the average single Black woman's "wealth" is $5, this is not a typo.

Married couples of all racial groups fared better than their single counterparts. See chart below for comparison:


Marriage appears to be a money-maker for all racial groups. Wealth is often passed down from generation to generation, so the lack of social justice and fair wages that most deeply impacted racial groups in the past (although, hey, check out the income chart in the story and you'll find wage discrimination is alive and kicking today) have repercussions for their descendants and confer privileges for others (read: white folks). At the same time, I think that this also speaks to the burdens of single-mothers carry (which impacts women of all colors), but is a proportionally more heavy burden for Black women.

Now, I can already anticipate all the "oh, dear" shaming articles and news segments that this will generate and I can already predict what they'll say: Women of Color need more Financial Literacy and Education. Like, somehow WofC are really all at fault for this predicament because they use their credit cards for sort-term purchases, like food. I love that particular piece of advice that shows up in every pamphlet on financial literacy--don't use credit cards for disposable or short-term purchases like food/eating out. If you are using your credit card at the grocery store, its probably because you need food to live and using credit is the only way you can at that particular moment. Yes, financial literacy is important, but a living wage, universal health care and affordable housing are more important and would do much more to increase the personal wealth of every American except for the top 1% who own 95% of the wealth currently.

Anyway, check out the article in full and/or leave a comment.

Exercise and the Economy

Taking a queue from Thealogian I will do a personal Blog post.

As you know I am doing WW and with the program I have to obtain Activity points (Measurements of Exercise).

I currently gain my Activity points from walking. My walking routines are as follows:

1. I will get off the Subway two stops and head or walk to a Subway stop two stops ahead.
2. I will walk my neighborhood
3. I will walk in the park with a friend.


But this Spring I was looking into joining a gym. Well in the past month, three of the gyms I visited this Spring have been calling me to see if I was still interested or if they could tell me about there specials.

Obviously the Gym industry has been hit hard by the economic down. Cause these same gyms were not very attentive when I was trying out there gyms in the Spring. I actually felt that the service people at one gym were on the verge of being rude.

Therefore, I told all 3 gyms that I was not interested and had no times for their calls.

So I would like to remind gyms and other business that you need to being good to customers and potential customers in the good times, because you just might need them in the lean times.

Marriage is more than economics

In a 2005 study, "The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans," five scholars concluded that in the black community, a healthy marriage keeps families from slipping into poverty.

I could live above the poverty line without my husband. While an extra paycheck is gravy, it is not what comforts you when times are bad or when kids grab your last nerve and hang on, or when the boss deems you expendable. Marriage is more than economics or shoring up a community.

Marriage is knowing someone else has your back. And it's not just the fragile wife standing next to a cheater who is hoping to save his political career.

Marriage means there is someone willing to wait out your temper tantrums, weight gain and hair loss, illnesses, job uncertainties, child-rearing woes and soul-searchings until someone recognizable returns.

I think America is very good at breaking marriage down to a science or overcovering the bad marriages in the media. I thinks this is why so many people are cynical about marriage and don't respect the people who enter into marriages.

I feel if people who are looking to get married approach it with respect, honesty, and feelings as well as social science. They would be happier about the instution of marriage.

Sleep Deprivation and Weight Gain

I think the busy American mantra of "Work Hard, Play Hard" is causing Sleep Deprivation. So many of us wear "working late at the office"as a badge of honor. Many people could leave work on time often if they stopped wasting office time doing the following:

• personal errands,


• surfing the net


• water cooler mingling


• not prioritizing work correctly


• spend the first 30 minutes of work eating breakfast at our desks

If we all changed our working habits we could do the following:

• make time for lunch break walks


• leave work in enough time to make it the gym


• work out before we head to work

I love...

I love food

I love feeling energized by movement

I love to cook and garden and grow herbs in my kitchen window

I love feeling flexible and strong

I love sharing a good meal among friends made from fresh ingredients justly grown and produced

I want to work toward what I love and not what I hate...I hate feeling guilty about eating "bad" foods, I hate feeling badly about being fat, I hate that paranoid sense that people are judging me for what I look like or what I might put in my mouth, and I hate that I see so many people suffer due to unhealthy diets pushed on Americans, and increasingly the world, by a food industry that doesn't seek to nourish, but to make profit by gaming the system (getting ridiculous subsidies for corn, soy, and wheat so that they can feed-lot animals kept in inhumane conditions--animals that are sick and injured, thus pumped with hormones, antibiotics, and Goddess knows what--in order to end up on dollar menus for overworked and underpaid Americans to eat on the go between the first and second jobs).

So, I want to live what I love and critique, and try to answer the why's behind what I hate. Let's see where this takes me...and perhaps, you, dear reader....if there are any.