'AIDS Has Become a Black Disease'

New York Blade - October 2, 2006
By REV. IRENE MONROE
http://www.newyorkblade.com/2006/10-2/viewpoint/opinion/monroe.cfm

To date, the epidemic has claimed more than 200,000 lives.

The black church now understands there is a problem. But because of its discomfort in addressing issues related to sexuality, the 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.

BEFORE A CROWD of more than 24,000 activists, health workers and researchers from more than 132 countries at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto last month, Julian Bond, chair 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 & 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."

THE THIRD LEADING 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.

If these statistics are 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.

Although 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.

LET'S CONFRONT THE realities within the black community, tell the truth and shame 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 reluctance to even discuss the disease.

Will the leadership in fighting 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."

To date, the epidemic has claimed more than 200,000 lives.

The black church now understands there is a problem. But because of its discomfort in addressing issues related to sexuality, the 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 need a new vision. We need to exorcise our unrelenting hysteria, ignorance and homophobia surrounding AIDS.