|
The
sickness of HIV profiling
By Rev. Irene Monroe
In this conservative era of politics
and religion, I have noticed how the animus toward
people with HIV/AIDS has not abated, even though we are
now at the quarter-century milepost of the epidemic.
One of the ways a health care
initiative becomes enmeshed with conservative politics
and moral intolerance is the new HIV/AIDS prevention
program mandating all public health authorities and
agencies to report HIV-positive patients to the state.
With government funding for HIV/AIDS
prevention shrinking more and more these days, many
public health authorities and agencies will be requiring
physicians to report to the state the name, social
security number, age, address and date of birth of all
HIV-positive patients.
And many of these public health
authorities and agencies will find themselves in the
compromising position of either adhering to mandatory
government-imposed HIV name-listing or upholding the
confidentiality of the clinician-client relationship.
I asked Dr. David Duong, a gay
Vietnamese E.R. physician at Boston Medical Center, how
names reporting might impact the patient-physician
clinical encounter?
“Mandatory reporting of HIV-positive
patients only engenders mistrust in the
patient-physician relationship,” he said. “This would
potentially endanger both public health and individual
rights. There are existing therapies and programs
available to those with HIV. Due to the social stigma
and risk of social and economic losses from a known HIV
infection, these individuals would be less likely to
seek testing, treatment, and take precautions in
spreading the infection if doctors are seen as law
enforcers more than patient advocates. To view there is
a conflict between public health and individual rights
in mandatory reporting is not quite accurate. This view
downplays the therapeutic nature of the
patient-physician encounter in promoting both public
health and patient well-being.”
Proponents of name-based reporting,
however, contest that equitable funding and uniform
accounting and tracking of the epidemic can be obtained,
which would allow for not only a better
patient-physician clinical encounter, but also allow for
a more authentic representation of community-based
education and management care.
But public health authorities and
agencies failing to comply will feel the government’s
punitive sting by substantial monetary lost.
Washington D.C., for one, has a Sept.
30, 2006, deadline to comply or it will loss millions of
dollars. And in my home state of Massachusetts, the
state Department of Health would lose $9 million a year
and the Boston Public Health Commission $6 million,
money that is used for everything from medications to
meals to home health care.
Sadly, the underlying motive for this
initiative is not health; it is politically driven to
both police and profile people who test HIV-positive.
And the motive is not new.
In 1986, conservative political
commentator William F. Buckley Jr. suggested that the
judicious way to keep account of those who were infected
with the virus and methods of transmission was to take
those with HIV and tattoo their buttocks and forearms,
an act reminiscent of both American slavery and the
Holocaust in which Africans and Jews, respectively, were
tattooed and treated like animals.
But the people who would be most
impacted by this government intrusion in their lives—LGBTQ people, IV-drug users and people of African
descent—are already the moral whipping board for a
morally intolerant society in denial about how the
epidemic continues to grow at an exponential rate.
So I ask: given the fact that
physicians must report certain communicable diseases,
how would reporting patients who test HIV-positive be
different?
“HIV is separate from other
reportable communicable infections in that there is no
cure and that the medical and socioeconomic consequences
of infection are potentially so devastating,” Dr. Duong
told me. “HIV infection is associated with already
marginalized and discriminated populations. Reporting
HIV-positive patients would further alienate and
reinforce the vulnerability of these patients. The laws
protecting HIV-infected individuals are inadequate,
while for other reportable diseases protections are not
necessary due to their lack of stigma or their ease of
cure.”
And with this intrusion, the epidemic
would continue to soar rather than abate because the
moral and ethical issues of patient confidentiality,
their Fourth Amendment right to bodily integrity and
unreasonable searches, and their Fourteenth Amendment
right to privacy are all violated at the expense of our
government funding unproven HIV/AIDS prevention programs
that convey the impression of restoring so-called
traditional family values rather than fielding
scientifically proven ones that address the issue of
HIV/AIDS prevention head on.
The Bush administration, for example,
has done more to hinder the fight against AIDS, rather
than help it, by promoting an abstinence-only ideology,
taking monies from proven disease prevention
initiatives, denouncing the effectiveness of condoms,
and refusing to fund needle exchange programs.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once
said, “Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health
care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
And most shocking and inhumane is
when a government continues to believe, in the face of
hard evidence, that contracting the AIDS virus is a
direct and divine consequence of engaging in a
particular “lifestyle” and, therefore, continues to
devise and justify various name-based approaches to
erect its colonies for “lepers.”
Once a government-imposed health care
initiative such as this one is mandated for the sake of
restoring traditional family values, we as a nation will
have built our moral high ground by riding on the backs
of our weakest.
And this is not only an act of
inhospitality and moral intolerance toward the targeted
groups and individuals who test positive for HIV, but it
is also a symptom of a sick society that tests negative
for compassion.
posted 25 July 2006
* * *
* *
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* * * * *
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)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
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
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
29 February 2012
|
