#28. St. Patrick's Day

Murphy: Yeah, it's St. Patty's Day, everyone's Irish tonight. Why don't you just pull up a stool and have a drink with us?

So says one of the brothers from The Boondock Saints, a cult favorite that presupposes vigilantes would be greeted with fanfare and adulation in crime-ridden America.

Nothing is more fear inducing to Black people than a congregation of white people gathered in Bacchanalian revelry, partaking in a copious amount of inebriants and indulging in alcoholic induced straight talk.

And no day invites more white people to indulge their inhibitions than St. Patrick’s Day, a celebration universally recognized for its incomparable debauchery.

White people gather to celebrate the exploits of some long dead Catholic saint, who is of little consequence save for the annual festivities of the drink in his long dead honor. Though it is still a holy day of celebration, St. Patty’s Day is a theological only in the sense that being worshipped is booze, not some Saint.

What exactly is St. Patrick’s Day, and whose name graces this date reserved for insane amounts of alcohol consumption? :

Saint Patrick's Day (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig) is a yearly holiday celebrated on 17 March. It is named after Saint Patrick (circa AD 387–461), the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland. It began as a purely Catholic holiday and became an official feast day in the early 1600s. However, it has gradually become more of a secular celebration of Ireland's culture.

It is a public holiday on the island of Ireland (both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) and widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora in places such as Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and Montserrat.

A holiday in honor of a dead white male isn’t worthy of admiration or celebration. Blasphemy, as even in the waning days of Pre-Obama America every effort to curtail any implicit celebration of whiteness was near complete with the swift removal of Washington’s Day with the generic replacement of President’s Day.

Only Martin Luther King (a saint in every sense of the word to Black Run America) is worthy of celebration, however the types of drunken merriment in his honor might include a Compton Cookout or a Ghetto Party, unsavory propositions for the ruling elite.

St. Patrick’s Day is thus a cause for great alarm for Black people; the prospect of large groups of white people associating in pub crawls in formerly derelict neighborhoods where gentrification has decreased the acreage of what constitutes “the hood” posing unbelievable danger to Black political power.

Though they may be Disingenuous White Liberals, the scarcity of Token Blacks in the groups of green-clad white revelers is cause for deep dismay among Black people. Is it because Black people instinctively find anything with the color green (whether it is greenbacks for the future or for making it rain) nauseating and offensive?

No. Black people find St. Patrick’s Day a parade of whiteness, a date that greatly perturbs them for the joy white people derive out of an authentic celebration of cultural (or dare we mention it?), racial pride in being Irish.

Name another day that white people can enjoy their roots and celebrate them with parades, beer, shots and pinches (for those who dare defy the color-code of the holiday)? You can’t, and Black people are generally aware of this:

A green-clad man said: “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day” to which the brother responded “Yeah, you know, just trying to not get beat up.”

It’s kind of like that for black people on St. Patrick’s Day.

364 days of the year, I’ve got no problem with the Irish. But I don’t mess around and leave my house on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m too old, I’m too black, and no longer willing to risk bar brawls on a holiday. Don’t worry about me, I’ve still got Cinqo de Mayo and Purim and a host of other holidays that I can use to hide my alcoholism.

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s good time. If you love St. Patrick’s Day, keep right on loving it. No worries. Just don’t expect many of your black friends to join in the fun. As a “friend” told me on SPD-1996: “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Except you, Elie, ’cause you’re black.”

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day would be the finest admission of a desire to Act White, forcing Black people to boycott the holiday for fear of expulsion or punishment.

Worse, St. Patrick’s Day is a time to enjoy the Lord of the Dance, an Irish inspired dancing routine that always out-steps the best choreographed routine from a Black fraternity or sorority.

More importantly, Black people have the misfortune of constantly searching for the elusive pot of gold that has yet to be located, despite the well-intentioned efforts of Black would-be alchemists and Leprechaun hunters.

The television show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia pointedly illustrates the absurdity of the day and the fear Black people have in anything green or visually identifiable as Irish. A bar consultant is helping the owners of Paddy’s Irish Pub generate a more diverse clientele, and he recommends removing everything Irish:

Terrell: Nothing scares gays and black folks like Irish crap.

To the point and succinct, so we include St. Patrick’s Day in Stuff Black People Don’t Like, for the audacity of white people to celebrate their heritage is a cardinal sin only reserved for every other ethnic group in America, save white people.

Pride in ones heritage is a healthy trait in all racial communities save white people, where this odd declaration of love for ones people is diagnosed as a gross pathology on par with cancer.

Plus, Boston is viewed as a city where Irish life flourishes, and the hatred of forced busing by whites there still lingers in Black minds.

St. Patrick’s Day offers the surreptitious celebration of ethnic pride for white people, albeit disguised as a mere festival of booze.

Black people pass on that “everyone’s Irish on St. Patty’s Day” line from white people, because they know the truth. Now, you do to.

And you thought white people loved Larry Bird because he was just good at basketball.