I read a chilling and disturbing article by Reuters today. HEADLINE: AIDS virus hits blacks harder in US: study
“What are you most disturbed about?,” I asked myself. Surely, I am familiar with these “death stats” and have been reading articles and books outlining this grim report for some time now.
But I guess from time to time it’s possible to lose sensitivity to such tragedy. This article certainly brought the sensitivity back. The 4 year study covered 33 states in which African Americans made up just 13% of the population yet they made up 51% of AIDS cases.
I was already on the roof after reading and re-reading the stats, but then I just had to read the last line of the article:
A second study presented at the same conference found that 32 percent of black men in Baltimore who had sex with other men, which includes homosexual and bisexual activity, were infected with HIV.
Baltimore makes the news again.
The Baltimore City Council and Mayor declared a State of Emergency as it relates to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Bmore. A pretty weak one if I can say so myself. When I think “STATE OF EMERGENCY” – I think…things have stopped
…the #1 Hip Hop/R&B station in Bmore has stopped asking “Will you give it up on the first date” on Wednesday mornings (while school kids are going to school) during their “Hump Day Hook Up” segment
…retail stores have stopped selling articles of clothing with sexually explicit messages creatively positioned where breasts and behinds will be
…parents have stopped being bashful about having sex talks with their kids – kids that are in far too many cases are already sexually active
…grown men have stopped gawking at underage girls walking down the street in pants that are too tight
…network television has stopped airing sexually suggestive ads like GoDaddy’s Superbowl commercial where a buxom blonde’s tight t-shirt literally pops off of her body
…MTV/BET are put on notice that if they continue to pump poison into the minds of our youth then the parents will rise up and challenge the entire music industry until artist become man and woman enough to refuse to participate in the destruction of little brown children that look like them…
Am I promoting excessive censorship – no. I’m just telling you what a STATE OF EMERGENCY looks like to me. At this point, what the Baltimore City Council and Mayor O’Malley have done is submitted a press release about HIV/AIDS – they haven’t really declared an emergency. They’ve done another study, but haven’t invited residents to the table to contribute to the report and give them ideas on how to craft and moblize a plan.
I’m just sick of it really. All these experts in the city and we still live in hell. Sometimes I wonder if the experts are here to create the hell so that Black folks will get the hell out of town and make room for 6 figure salaried suburban yuppies who want to live closer to work.
Forgive me. This is what happens when I get desensitized. The scripture is right – ignorance is bliss – knowledge is a powerful headache.
To read the Bmore City Council’s “press release”click here .
NOTE (Feb. 7th): While I blogged this post last night, this morning I read this Baltimore Sun article which expressed the same sentiments. Just for you folks who might think I’m being overly critical of the City Council and Mayor.
I agree with you 100% about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in African-Americans in this city and this country. Sadly, Blacks have been disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS since the virus was identified. Beyond this, it amazes me that White gay men, who initially had the highest prevalence and death rates from HIV, now have some of the lowest HIV-related death rates. How can this be? How can one of the most vulnerable populations see decreasing HIV cases, while another population (within the same country, mind you) experience increasing numbers of HIV cases?
The answer to this question could be simple, but I’ll refrain from saying that because I think there are a number of responses to this question. I think the first reason why Blacks have higher HIV rates is because there is a lack of all-inclusive focused prevention efforts in the African-American community. For Black folks, for us, we need people in every area of our life to “preach” the same message. It is no good for only our teachers to promote safe sexual behavior, but we need parents to promote safe sex, and we need our preachers and community leaders to promote safe sex. I personally believe that the church has the ability to be the strongest agent for change in the Black community.
The second reason why I believe we see higher HIV/AIDS rates in Blacks is because we only promote abstinence. I personally believe that it is not effective to tell our young people “Don’t have sex”. That does not work; instead, I am an advocate of promoting “safe” sex. Unfortunately, in order to recveive federal funding, agencies must promote an “abstinence-only” sexual education curriculum, at least under the Bush regime. This does not work. As a Christian, some would say that I am promoting behavior that is outside of God’s will for unwed persons, but my thoughts are “Be safe while you’re messing up, and ask for God’s forgiveness when you know better”. Perhaps this is not the correct mentality. Some could even argue that this is taking advantage of God’s grace and mercy, but we do have to face and accept reality. We should teach Biblical principles, but we also have to share alternative messages when we’re talking about sexual issues and adolescents.
Lastly, research suggests that Blacks experience higher prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS because we tend have different sexual mising patterns. A researcher out of Chicago, Dr. Ed Laumann has done extensive research on this subject. He editted a book about this and other topics called The Sexual Organization of the City. There are also some professors at Hopkins doing some work on this “sexual mixing” theory. Basically, the idea is that Blacks tend to have sex with persons residing in their neighborhoods, so if a particular neighborhood has high rates of sexually transmitted infections, disease tends to grow on a multiplicative scale. On the other hand, Whites tend to have sex with persons who live both in and outside of their communities, so they are not as affected by a high disease rate in a particular niehgborhood.
These are just some of my opinions on the sad statistics describing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African-American community. I could go on for days about this because this is largely the focus of my research that will some day be developed into a thesis project, hopefully. I’m very interested in what others have to say.
Peace
~Dawn
Thanks for your comments, Dawn.
I found your thoughts about HIV/AIDS and Gay White men vs. Gay Black men to be very interesting. You’re much more educated on the suggested reasonings behind this. I would be interested in hearing what some of them are. And what do you think about the conspiracy theories related to HIV/AIDS – mainly the one which claims that AIDS was created in MD and dessiminated around the world starting in South Africa. Also – have you heard of the goat’s blood “cure” for AIDS? (Carlton Pearson is a champion for this goat’s blood “cure”)
I totally agree with you that the Black Church has the greatest potential to be a change agent in Baltimore’s Black community (and other communities), however, too many churches have lost their focus. I am encouraged though at the fact that there are pockets of maverick minds and rogue religionists rising up in the Black Church.
Your challenge to the Church to preach the “safe” sex message is valid although I’m not sure yet if current church leaders are ready to preach it or know how.
As you and I know, far too many youth (church kids included) are sexually active. In my 5 years of youth ministry, I’ve encountered many MANY youth who decide to become sexually active much to my dismay. What I am most baffled about, though, are the parents of these kids who know that their child(ren) are sexually active and don’t have discussions with them about “safe” sex, STD’s,etc. How do I know this? The kids tell me. One teen told me today, “my Mom sees me come in the house fuc*ed up, but she doesn’t say anything.” She went on to say that if she knew her kids were sexually active and/or doing drugs that she would say something.
My point is that I believe that far too many preachers, community leaders, and parents don’t know how to have the “safe” sex talk and still feel like they have clung to the teachings of their beliefs or value system. I hope that came out right.
I didn’t know that this was your area of interest and study. Do you know of anyone that could come to my church and speak to parents about how to discuss sex with their kids? And someone to speak to youth about sex, STD’s, etc? Perhaps you do this.
Please let me know.
How do you fight an enemy you can not see?
i am a teenager who firmly believes that parents are afraid to confront their children when it comes to sex and drugs. Personally i do not understand. if i were a parent, i would want nothing more but to know that my children were safe and healthy where ever they were. I know too many of my friends and family members under the age of 17/18 who are sexually active and using or experimenting with drugs. I know for a fact that most of their parents are aware of what is goin on b/c it is happenin right in their homes. I think that the stats speak for themselves, parents need to do their jobs and act like and be the parents. Believe it or not if my mother was there like she should be, i would not do half of the things that i do. I know that i can get away with it..so y not do it.
So…I’d like to respond to both comments, but I don’t have the time right now, but to respond to anon’s question. We can see this enemy. HIV is identifiable through blood test results. It is identifiable through the onset of illnesses that typically do not occur in non-immunocomprimised persons (e.g. Kaposi’s Sarcoma – This is a form of cancer; Thrush – Excessive yeast particularly on the tongue; Wasting – Excessive weight loss; Lymphoma, etc.). As you can see, we see AIDS, but we do a poor job responding to what we see.
How do we fight this enemy?
We don’t keep the disease on the “hush, hush”. One of the first steps to overcoming this crisis in the African-American community is to simply talk about the “enemy”, but in the case of HIV/AIDS, we often don’t want to talk about it because we probably have a family member who has the illness, and if we talk about HIV too much, that might slip out (AND no one wants that!) We shouldn’t be ashamed of people in our community who are HIV-positive; instead, we should welcome these persons into our presence and learn from them. You’d be surprised at the number of positive individuals who will gladly share their stories in hopes that the same doesn’t happen to others.
Just my thoughts on your question.
~Dawn
I think HIV/AIDS is mostly a problem of education, because in my opinion the ones most exposed to it are those who have not received a proper and complete education. It is well known that development countries like mine are more proper to have people with HIV/AIDS than “first world” ones… this is just because of the education that population receives.
The kind of education I mean should begin in children’s houses, and of course in their schools.
Every school, in every city round the world, should have a class destinated to instruct the teenagers on how to have “safe sex” and prevent many diseases and also abortion. Of course not encourage them to have sex, but for those that are already iniciated and those who are thinking of it, give them the proper insturctions about the subject.
Also parents should do their job… they should be more opened to discuss this issue with their kids; they have to understand that it is their kid’s lifes the ones that are in jepardy.
Also goverments should do their job by providing information to the citizens. For example in every hospital could be a kind of “informal meetings” where everyone can assist and hear someone experienced talk about “safe sex”.
Well, that’s my point of view…
Be safe everyone.
Leticia
I’m sorry. I identified the enemy not as the disease but as the promiscuous behavior of folks on the down-low and on the up-high. Folks who shoot dope. Folks out and folks in.
I do agree with you about talking about HIV. But behavior transmits the disease. And I don’t know if there is a way to tell who is behaving in a disease transmitting way. I look forward to your help.
For those who do not know – Leticia is a wonderful human being and my sister from South America. We met online a few years ago and a true friendship was born.
Thanks for posting, Leti. As I increasingly identify myself as a member of the global community, I am more and more interested in what my “neighbors” from other parts of the world think about these types of issues.
Please continue to post when you find topics that interest you. Sometimes Americans need to be educated about how what we discuss impacts people in other parts of the world as well.
This is an exciting dialogue going on here.
About the conspiracy theory of AIDS being developed in MD. I don’t believe this. In fact, there’s a professor at Hopkins that has done some captivating work about identifying animal viruses that have mutated and can now survive in humans. Basically this scientist follows hunters and butchers in sub-Saharan Africa. Periodically he samples their blood (and hunting/butchering supplies, if I’m not mistaken) for the presence of viruses that have only been detected in animals. It’s much more technical than this, but this is the gist of his work. He has been able to identify a number of viruses that “jumped” species. I believe that HIV is a virus similar to these.
A little biology lesson (perhaps)…SIV is the non-human primate/monkey form of HIV. This virus is believed to have mutated and successfully infected a human in sub-Saharan Africa. This virus then spread around the world following the moving trend of African people. This is supported by evidence that shows all of the forms of HIV present in African, but not present in other areas of the world. So, I say all this to say that I do not believe that HIV is man-made virus. I’m not familiar with the goat blood cure theory, but I will definitely look into this.
The thought behind the decrease in disease among white gay men is that as these men saw many of their friends die, as a group they decided that they would have to change their behavior or they would die. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic before treatment was readily available, HIV and AIDS patients died horrific deaths. Because these men did not want to see this happen to them, they listened to prevention messages, and really changed their behavior. Now, with the use of HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy), we are seeing the rates of disease in white gay men rise because they no longer see their peers die, but their rates of disease are still not nearly as high as the disease rates in African-Americans.
One of the major challenges in the HIV/AIDS epidemic now relates to the availability of effective medicines. In African-Americans, in particular, many people in high risk populations no longer see HIV/AIDS as a fatal illness, which is true in some respects. People can now live with HIV, but it is not an easy life.
Leticia…I completely agree with you. Education is the root of the problem. We have to do something both in America and in developing countries. One of the best examples of the effectiveness of education is seen in Uganda. In Uganda, a prevention campaign called ABC was implemented. It promoted Abstinence, Be Faithful, and Use Condoms. Government, religious, and community leaders all worked together to spread the ABC message. They used pamphlets, TV commercials, soap operas, t-shirts, and other methods to spread the message. Reducing the occurence of new HIV infections became priority. As a result of this, the number of new HIV infections in Uganda decreased, while the number of new HIV infections increased in every other sub-Saharan African country. What’s all of this mean? There are things that can be done to reduce the burden of HIV in Baltimore, around the country, and around the world, but HIV currently isn’t at the top of the priority list.
I agree, I don’t think religious leaders in this city are prepared to face the issue of HIV in the African-American community, so I believe it’s the responsibility of publlic health professionals to train pastors and religious leaders to develop health education and awareness programs within their respective churches. Perhaps this can be a job for me in the future. I think the city health department could definitely use someone in this capacity.
I would be more than happy to come and speak to the youth at your church. Shoot me an e-mail, and we can figure somethign out. I don’t know of anyone who could speak to the adults, but I will check around and see if I can get some information on a resource person.
~Dawn
Thanks for the introduction Heb
I will be happy to keep commenting from this side of the world.
Dawn, I wasn’t aware of the ABC campaign in Uganda, but it is certainly the kind of things that needs to be done in order to prevent people. I just wonder if the World Health Organization is preparing masive campaigns like this round the world (I cound’t find the information in their web site).
Treatments for infected people prevent them of dying, but for developing countries getting the medicine it is not easy and most of the time, even inaccessible…
Heb, I hope that with the help of others like Dawn, you can start like you own preventing campaign in your city, and that what you do encourage others to do the same.
Take care you all,
Leti
ops… I meant “dieing”, not “dying” (third paragrahp).
Leti
From where i stand the issue is not HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, sex, drug or alcohol use. the issue is what causes persons to feel the need to engage in these activities. what has caused our young people to turn to sex as an escape from the real world? What has caused them to not care about who they sleep with? Why is it now not an issue if they protect themselves from this so called “enemy” you speak of?
Now that is a crazy question. What do we have access to for us to deal with our problems. We don’t seek therapy. MMany of us can’t affors it. How do we medicate the stresses we feel from the world we live in. I would love to say right here, Jesus but theat is not how most of us make it to the next day. We go to the liquor store, we smoke marijuana and crack and we f%*-, er have sex. That is the reality we take the edge off even as young people by having sex.
Can we find alternative ways to deal with our issues. Just knowing Jesus does not get our issues dealt with,nor does Jesus help us forget about the backlash from having issues. In fact knowing Jesus is often justification for having issues i.e. being chased by the devil, being sought by the enemy. The sad fact is drugs and sex does help us forget our problems. So we use them for medication. If the medication did not have side effects, HIV,STD’s,addiction,etc., don’t think more people would use the medication to interrupt the flow of the stress.
The shi-zizzle of life causes people of all ages to engage in these activities.
i couldn’t agree with you more. The so called “medication” is now being used as an escape. It is even harder than ever today to go a day without feeling the need to get “medicated”
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