I was too lazy a moment ago to type anything into tonight’s other blog but have decided to gut it out and type a little something about my rather somber topic – AIDS in the Black (African-American, Colored, Nubian, fill in the blank) community.
A lot of time, energy and money is spent on trying to solve the issue of AIDS around the world. By the year 2010, five countries (Ethiopia, Nigeria, China, India, and Russia) with 40 percent of the world’s population will add 50 to 75 million infected people to the worldwide pool of HIV disease.¹ However the problem is not only proliferating in other countries but right here at home as well. A little too close to home for me because I am a part of the community that is silently being devastated by the disease.
By race, 54 percent of the new infections in the United States occur among African Americans, and 64 percent of the new infections in women occur in African American women.¹ I’m not using the statistics as an accusation but rather as a talking point to open dialogue. With those kinds of statistics, most of us (us being African-Americans) know someone or a couple of someones who are HIV positive – more than likely you don’t know their status. I myself both know someone and faced a scare a couple of years ago. Because of this incident, I try to be more careful with what I do (and what I allow others to do), pitch in with organizations that work with AIDS in the community and the hardest/easiest thing of all – talk about it.
Unfortunately in our community, we have not come to terms with or moved beyond the stigma surrounding the disease. As a result, we’ve created a vacuum of silence in which those who are positive must live and a vacuum of silence around the magnitude of the problem. I’m glad to see that the issue is being addressed on network television so that it may (hopefully) open a national dialogue, force us to acknowledge the problem and attempt to address it with love and compassion.
This has been my tired and exhausted attempt to write about this tonight before the segment airs tomorrow (Thursday). Maybe you’ll see something a little more thought provoking later…
¹ Until There’s A Cure
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
ABC probes AIDS crisis among American blacks
By Erik Pedersen
Reuters
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “There is a crisis in America that almost nobody wants to talk about.”
It sounds like just another attention-grabbing opening line for a TV newsmagazine story about impending doom tied to bird flu or maybe killer bees. But this time, the ominous tone is warranted and difficult to shrug off.
“Out of Control: AIDS in Black America,” a special edition of “Primetime” on ABC, encounters a brace of touchy subjects — from race and sex to politics and religion — in an attempt to carve through the apathy that engulfs this issue. The numbers are numbing: Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population but 50% of all new AIDS cases, including 68% among women. “We should be in the streets,” one activist says.
The report lists five main reasons the crisis has mushroomed, and each is backed up by strong arguments both subjective (interviews with politicians, clergy and ordinary people) and objective (hard numbers). “Out of Control” is alarming without being alarmist; it hammers away in making its case but is never judgmental. That includes reporter Terry Moran’s tough but fair questioning of Jesse Jackson.
Moran took over the story from Peter Jennings, who briefly appears sitting in on a support group of HIV-positive black men. The piece was taped 10 days before Jennings was diagnosed with the cancer that claimed his life last year. He would have been proud of this report — if not the need for it.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter