Is AIDS A Black Disease???
“AIDS in America today is a black disease,” says Phill Wilson, founder and CEO of the The Black AIDS Institute (BAI) and himself HIV-positive for 20 years.” This statement came after BAI released the report, “Left Behind! Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic”. During the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico, he also stated in a press conference, “The U.S. is failing its people and that is a direct attack on Black America.” “This failure to respond is particularly acute in the epidemic in Black America.”
Is it true AIDS is a Black disease? If so, why isn’t there a national call to action among all the AIDS organizations that serve people of color and the African American community? Why has the Black community fail to respond with the same passion and anger the gay community demonstrated over twenty years ago?
Does stating AIDS as a Black disease increase the stigma, fear and ignorance around this epidemic? Does this labeling do more to hurt our efforts to end AIDS in the Black community? In a posting responding to CNN’s Black in America program last summer, the author writes, “I admire what they are attempting to accomplish, but labeling AIDS as a “Black disease” is WRONG and short-sighted. Your temporary headlines on CNN and a possible up tick in funding are nothing compared to the damage that will likely follow if people are able to write off AIDS as a problem for “that other group of people” I thought we already fought this battle. Anybody can contract this disease.”
Where do we go from here? Both arguments are right and both are wrong. One thing that we can agree is that the infection rates as well as the death rates are extremely high in the Black community, especially among Black women and Black MSM (men who have sex with men). The statistics certainly don’t lie despite what some naysayers want to believe. AIDS, as well as many others diseases are having a devastating effect among African Americans. How these diseases affect our community has as much to do with health as the psychological, social, economical and political climate we live in. We need to examine the role we have as mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives and partners, how that role plays out in our relationships and in our sexual practices.
I don’t claim to have the answers but I certainly want to extend the dialogue about AIDS in our community. I want to see individuals, AIDS organizations (local and national), community based non-profits as well as funders come together to address this issue. I want us as a community to start caring for each other the way we are suppose to. I want that caring to show up in the way we take a friend to get an HIV test, the way we practice safe sex and the way we talk to a love one if we know they are involved in reckless behavior. Be proactive!
Remember, the life you save might not only be someone you love, it might be yours!
