It's December 1st, do you remember when your last AIDS test was?

One week, one month, one year ago? Never?

The annual examination of this global epidemic is no cause for celebration when you put the cold, harsh data of its circulation in the African American community in the U.S. alone under the microscope.

• African-American women account for approximately 70 percent of new AIDS cases; yet they only comprise 12 to 13 percent of the U.S. population.
• One out of 160 African-American women is HIV positive, compared to one in 3,000 white women.
• AIDS has become one of the top three causes of death for African-American women aged 25-34.
• African-American women are more than a dozen times as likely to be infected with HIV than their white counterparts.
• Approximately 20 African-American women become infected with HIV in America every day.

Today is all about awareness, educating ourselves and there's no time than the better to take stock of our self-preservation (and sorely lack thereof) practices on safer sex. The Center for Disease Control released a report last week that the number of newly-diagnosed HIV infection cases among African-Americans has dropped an average of 5% a year for the past 3 years. Under different circumstances, statistics like that would be viewed as an encouraging sign, but when you look closer at the bottom line, it's still a disturbing ratio in proportion to other racial counterparts. Blacks are still 8.4 times more likely to contract the AIDS virus than Whites. Overall the stigma of being a "homosexual disease" still pervades and the laissez-faire attitudes of so many young women regarding the insistence of their partners to use condoms EVERY TIME is clearly a problem. Can we stop pointing the fingers solely at the DL witch hunt as the only cause for at-risk behavior and start being responsible for ourselves?!

Coincidentally, today also marks the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' protest on a Montgomery, AL bus. It would've been so fitting had she lived for her to be alive on such a momentous occasion. Nevertheless, one of the few times I'll give credit to the Metropolitan Transit Authority for anything... I thought it was a very appropriate tribute to her memory to have the front seat adjacent to the driver reserved on all public buses today.

However, some folks never take the time to read the goddamn sign when it's staring them right in the face. More than a few people didn't even bother to notice it taped up after their fare was paid, but this snippet from today's New York Times did my heart good.

In Midtown Manhattan, a white couple boarded the M4 bus going south on Fifth Avenue and sat in the first two seats, including the Rosa Parks seat. From 52nd Street to the Empire State Building, the couple talked animatedly until they got off at 34th Street.Then a black man boarded the bus and began to sit in the Rosa Parks seat, but stopped in midair when he noticed the authority's sign."History, history, Rosa Parks," he said to the black woman sitting across the aisle. "But people were sitting here."The black woman said gently, "They couldn't see the sign.""Well," the black man said, peeling away the sign and moving it to the edge of the seat, "they will now."