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Where will the leadership on HIVAIDS
come from in the black community?
By Rev. Irene Monroe
Before a crowd of more than 24,000
activists, health workers and researchers from over 132
countries at the 16th International AIDS Conference in
Toronto last week, Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP,
announced to the crowd what African-American HIV
activists have been saying for decades: “It is time for
the African-American community to face the fact that
AIDS has become a black disease.”
According to the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, African Americans
account for half of all new HIV cases. With African
Americans comprising no more than 13 percent of the U.S.
population, 61 percent of us under the age of 25 have
been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS between 2001 and 2004. Equally alarming is that HIV/AIDS
is the leading cause of death for African-American women
between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the CDC,
with the primary mode of transmission being heterosexual
contact followed by IV-drug use.
At the “Women and Response to AIDS”
panel at the conference, Sheila Johnson, founder of the
Crump-Johnson Foundation in Washington D.C., pointed out
that another at-risk population in the African-American
community is teenage girls. Seventeen percent of the U.S. teen
population is African American, with 70 percent of black
teens testing HIV-positive. One in 10 African-American
teenage girls test HIV-positive in the nation’s capital,
the highest percentage in the country among this age
group.
When asked why such a high
percentage test positive, Johnson said, “As long as
girls see themselves as glorified sex objects in hip-hop
videos, HIV/AIDS will increase within this population.” With African Americans at younger
and younger ages being infected with the AIDS virus, the
life expectancy rate of African Americans will decline.
Soon we will no longer expect today’s young
African-Americans to become the elders of the community.
The third cause of death among
African-American men is AIDS, and the primary mode of
HIV transmission among them is having sexual contact
with other men, followed by heterosexual contact and
IV-drug use. And HIV/AIDS among black male inmates is
five times the rate of the general population and
transmitted primarily through male-to-male sex or
tattooing.
Are these statistics overwhelming? So too is the anemic leadership
African Americans have faced since the epidemic began 25
years ago. “The story of AIDS in America is
mostly one of a failure to lead, and nowhere is this
truer than in our black communities” said Bond. But where would the leadership on
HIV/AIDS come from? Our African-American lawmakers? While a few of our local
African-American elected officials and the Congressional
Black Caucus have spoken up about the AIDS epidemic in
the black community, the non-involvement by the majority
of them has been scandalous.
Some black officials say that their
inattention to HIV/AIDS is because they are overwhelmed
by the bigger and more important problems affecting
inner-city urban life such as crime, gang warfare,
homelessness, drugs and poverty. For example, today the Rev. Jesse
Jackson, chairman of the Rainbow Push Coalition, is in
support of addressing the AIDS epidemic in the black
community: “We have also been a compliant victim,
submitting through inaction. It is now time for us to
fight AIDS like the major civil rights issue it is.”
But in 1992, the HIV/AIDS issue was
not perceived as a priority by Jackson, albeit an
epidemic even then in the black community. “AIDS has had to compete with other
crises,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview back then.
“AIDS is in the competition for the champion crisis in a
community that has been abandoned. AIDS is working its
way up to be a priority.” Also while some black elected
officials have voted for money for AIDS programs, they
have generally resisted providing the leadership needed
to mobilize black and Hispanic groups to stem the spread
of HIV/AIDS.
But let’s confront the elephant in
the black community, by telling the truth and shaming
the devil. The biggest problem that black
lawmakers have had to confront concerning the HIV/AIDS
crisis in their communities is the political gag order
imposed on them by their voting constituency’s
homophobia and animus toward any discussion of the
disease.
Would the leadership to HIV/AIDS
come from the Black Church?
“I grew up in the Black Church,”
Dr. David Satcher, former Surgeon General and Assistant
Secretary for Health, told The New York Times in 1998.
“I think the church has problems with the lifestyle of
homosexuality. A real problem has been getting ministers
that are even willing to talk about it in their
pulpits.”
However, when it comes to the Black
Church and HIV/AIDS, I am always reminded of what my
mayor in Cambridge, Mass., Ken Reeves, who is both
African American and gay, told The Washington Blade in
March 1998 during a two-day Harvard University HIV/AIDS
conference: “African-American male ministers over 40 are
a tough nut to crack. If we wait for the Black Church on
this, we’ll all be dead.”
To date, the epidemic has claimed
over 200,000 lives.
The Black Church now understands
there is a problem. However, because of its discomfort
in addressing issues related to sexuality, the Black
Church’s “outstretched hand,” when extended, is offered
passively toward people who contracted the virus through
IV-drug use and not those who contracted HIV/AIDS
sexually. African Americans are bearing the
brunt of this epidemic. Why?
“Because of poverty, ignorance, and
prejudice, AIDS has been allowed to stalk and kill black
America like a serial killer,” Jackson said. As African Americans, we need a new
vision .We need to exorcise our unrelenting hysteria,
ignorance, and homophobia surrounding AIDS. If we don’t heed to the admonition
in Proverbs 29:18 — “Where there is no vision, the
people perish” — then we will have participated in our
own genocide. 27
August 2006
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 14 December
2011
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