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The Era of
Black Woman and HIV/AIDS
By
Irene Monroe The unrelenting tenacity of HIV/AIDS
has taught us much about the preciousness and
fleetingness of life. And it has also taught us about
the various people — across race, class and gender — who
wore and continue to wear the face of this disease.
With this week marking the 25th year
of AIDS, the face of the disease is most often a
heterosexual woman. And no group of women is as affected
by this epidemic as women of African descent —
throughout the U.S. and on the continent of Africa.
However, the invisibility of the
plight of African American women and their struggle
against the AIDS epidemic was never so glaringly obvious
as in the 2004 vice presidential debate between Dick
Cheney and John Edwards.
And the invisibility of my group’s
plight has less to do with African American women’s
agency to combat the epidemic than with how race and
gender biases inherent in the problem collude with
African American women’s efforts to get help.
Gwen Ifill, an African American
female journalist with PBS’ “Washington Week” and
moderator of the vice presidential debate, brought the
issue of AIDS in the U.S. front and center when she
asked the men to comment on its devastating impact on
African American women.
“I want to talk to you about AIDS,
and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right
here in this country, where black women between the ages
of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the
disease than their counterparts. What should the
government’s role be in helping to end the growth of
this epidemic?” Ifill asked.
Neither man could answer the
question.
When the color of the epidemic
shifted from white to black, the inherent gender bias
focused only on the needs of African American men and
rendered women invisible.
And when gender became a new lens to
track the epidemic, white women were the focus. The
invisibility of African American women in this epidemic
has much to do with how the absence of a gendered race
analysis makes African American women invisible to the
larger society.
According to the Kaiser Family
Foundation, a nonprofit health organization, African
American women account for 72 percent of all new HIV
cases in women, and they are 23 times more likely to be
infected with the virus than white women.
But the disparities within the
healthcare system also contribute to the
disproportionately higher number of HIV cases among
African American women, which directly affects their
quality of life and the spread of HIV.
The black church continues to play a
part in the epidemic because women with AIDS are as
unwelcome in the black church as gay people.
One of our sister warriors in Boston,
Belynda Dunn, died of AIDS in March 2002 at the age of
49. A tireless AIDS activist and a heterosexual African
American church woman, Dunn’s death was the wake-up call
to the African American community and the black church
that HIV/AIDS is not solely a gay disease, but an equal
opportunity virus.
In African American communities
across this country, the disease still shows no sign of
abating. These women have hid and still hide from the
community and each other. And with its harsher judgment
against women with HIV/AIDS, African American women are
less likely than any other group to seek help.
And although many of us in our black
communities averted our eyes pretending we did not see
them, we all saw them. We all knew them, and we all
silently watched them die because we have still done
nothing to stem the epidemic.
The feminization of this disease
makes many of us AIDS activists and scholars wonder if
the same amount of money, concern, communication, and
moral outrage that was put into white gay men with the
disease will be put into curbing its spread among women.
Because of the paucity of funds and
prevention strategies targeted to African American women
with HIV/AIDS, we have not adequately come up with
community-based approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention and
education for black women. Few if any services speak to
these specific needs of black women.
The AIDS epidemic among African
American women is also symptomatic of the dialogue
African American women need to have about their bodies
and sexuality, which has been choked for centuries by a
“politic of silence.”
The silence African American women
created around their bodies and sexuality that had been
exploited during slavery was viewed as a revolutionary
act against the white oppressive gaze. Only through
secrecy could African American women achieve the psychic
and sexual space to protect their bodies and sexuality.
However, in breaking the “politic of
silence,” mothers, daughters, and grandmothers must
access their beliefs, attitudes, experiences, and
perceptions of HIV/AIDS.
African American women are no more
promiscuous than white women; however, stereotypes about
African American women’s bodies and sexualities prevent
the proper prevention and education needed to stem the
tide.
With the image of the “strong black
women” who can endure anything and “make a way out of no
way,” her strength is either demonized as being
emasculating of black men or impervious to the human
condition.
Consequently, African American
woman’s humanity is distorted and made invisible through
a prism of racist and sexist stereotypes. So too is our
suffering. * *
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* * * * posted 22 June 2006 |
