Throughout my career as an actress and activist, I have learned that determination and focus are the most valuable tools in achieving success. And yet, in our fight against HIV/AIDS here in the U.S., we seem to have lost our collective focus. In fact, late last year, we learned that we have 40 percent more new infections in this country than we previously thought. This February 7, the 9th annual National Black AIDS Awareness Day, is the perfect time for us to recommit ourselves to defeating the AIDS epidemic here at home, as it continues to strike some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
The incredible increases in the effectiveness of antiretroviral drugs and expanded testing and treatment throughout the country have, without a doubt, saved thousands upon thousands of lives, and prevented an incredible amount of new infections. But we cannot allow ourselves to rest on our laurels at this point. HIV is a tenacious disease that thrives on ignorance and complacency. Once we start thinking that we have defeated HIV here in the U.S., or that it is only a problem in the developing world, we begin to lose the fight.
Instead, we must turn a critical eye inward, and face the fact that HIV/AIDS has reached crisis levels among the Black population of the US. The statistics are startling. While making up 13 percent of the population, Blacks make up half of all new HIV/AIDS cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One analysis shows that a black male in this country has a 1 in 16 lifetime chance of acquiring HIV and for black women it is 1 in 30. The impact of HIV is greater among Blacks than any other racial or ethnic group, with an HIV incidence rate that is 7 times higher than Whites, and almost 3 times higher than Latinos. As a country, we should be not just startled by these numbers, we should be ashamed.
The reasons for this severe racial disparity are complex; certainly, a lack of community resources, poverty, homophobia, the plight of incarceration, limited access to health services, and education all play a part. Additionally, the impact of racism and discrimination in this epidemic cannot be ignored. Still, there are a number of steps we can take to begin to fight back.
We should begin by reinvesting in the behavioral prevention programs that we know work. During the last several years, even as the epidemic took its increasing toll on communities of color, the federal budget for prevention actually shrunk. We will never beat HIV/AIDS if that is the approach we take. Instead, we need significant investment in prevention and an end to ideological obstacles that feed the epidemic.
A good place to start in restoring integrity to our domestic prevention efforts is in ending ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. SIECUS' research shows that blacks are likely disproportionately affected by these programs: the region with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS among Blacks is in the South which not coincidentally also receives nearly half of all federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funds. In fact, of the top ten states with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS among blacks, all but one are located in the South. And what do these programs do to help stem this disease? They purposefully deny people the information they need to protect themselves from acquiring HIV when the ideals of abstinence and marriage fail. And they fail. Often. But, these programs are prohibited from discussing the effectiveness of condoms in preventing infection or discussing them in a positive light in any way, even for young people who may be sexually active. At the same time, we know that a comprehensive approach to sex education works and reduces the sexual risk behaviors that lead to HIV infection and the federal government must begin to invest in this approach.
Education is a necessary weapon in our arsenal to defeat HIV/AIDS, but on its own is not wholly sufficient. We must also continue to break down the old barriers that have prevented progressive groups from joining efforts and working together. Poverty, sex education, and HIV/AIDS organizations all have a stake in defeating the HIV epidemic in the Black community and we must work together if we are to be successful.
National Black AIDS Awareness Day was established to increase awareness in the Black community on HIV/AIDS prevention and testing, and also to decrease the stigma around the disease. We honor that today and raise our voices to say change is needed. Thankfully, President Obama has pledged his support to tackle the domestic epidemic and to begin this important work through a public-private partnership that creates a National AIDS Strategy. Make no mistake, this important plan must address the issues of prevention and the increasingly racial path this disease is taking.
Gloria Reuben is an actress, singer, and member of the Board of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.
This means that all people of color have normal receptors or alleles to which HIV can attach and replicate...a small portion of the Northern European population is immune due to mutated receptors.
What next? Black Cancer Awareness Day? Black Heart Disease Day? Or have they already been taken?
The possibilities are endless, but they do not belie the fact - AIDS, like any biological disease, knows no color.
Abstinence only is surprising as an answer for this problem. What is more surprising is people being surprised when such approaches do not work. This is a sad story...part of a continuum, an epic saga that began when other men came to distant shores and kidnapped or traded for life to ravage, to enslave, to toil under the hot sun and to die on the dirty floor. We cannot know what it would have been because it is what it is.
Concerning STW's comment, you are correct, there is the suggestion of blinders, since I have heard this story...of a disproportionate incidence of HIV infection in brown communities...long before today. One would have to be isolated within this country or in a foreign country not to have heard. I get what STW was saying -- on the spiritual level. Extend empathy to all. However, we cannot fake the funk. The high infection rate calls for innovation in getting the word out. Also, there is no accounting for style of delivery of message. People are dying is one way to say it. Black folks is dying at alarming rates, is another.
"we know that a comprehensive approach to sex education works and reduces the sexual risk behaviors that lead to HIV infection and the federal government must begin to invest in this approach"
Education unobstructed by religious dogma.= less people dying...
It is very politically incorrect to discuss this issue for obvious reasons regarding the current sanctified state of gay behavior. But from a public health perspective it is vital ! When women are pregnant, their immune systems more or less shut down to prevent them from rejecting the fetus. If their husband infects them with HIV while they are in this vulnerable state, both the mother and the infant will face very serious and long lasting health issues. The mother will not know what is wrong and not be tested. Many men are asymptomatic carriers and they wrongly assume that, because they themselves are not visibly sick, they cannot pass on the virus.
Knowingly engaging in behavior which can put your wife and children at risk for this disease is clearly criminal behavior. When are we going to stop coddling men and start insisting that they grow up and quit behaving like toddlers who refuse to be sexually potty trained ? There is something very wrong when men are more devoted to their own and other men's sphincters than they are to their wives and children.
What do we do when the elephant in the room takes a dump ? Still keep pretending it isn't there
This is a factor, but it's much more complicated than you're making it out to be. Homophobia and gay oppression is one of the reasons why gay men marry women and try to hold up that whole charade. Until homophobia and gay rights are addressed on a grand scale, you're not going to see the problem lessen. Treating the men in these situations like horrible people doesn't help anything.
Now the bigger issue I think is unsafe sex practices by the black community. I know there are some people out there who have some pretty warped ideas about how you can and can't get AIDS. At the same time however I've know plenty of blacks (this goes for people in general but the focus is on the black community so I'll stick with that) who know all the risks and pitfalls that come with unsafe or unprotected sex yet engage in it anyway. And that's male and female.
I'm definitely more for education regarding safe sex but I also think some values are going to need to be instilled by the parents regarding safe safe.
Gloria I loved you in ER!!
From a public health perspective, it's much less complicated than you are making it out to be. Males who deliberately and knowingly engage in downlow behavior which risks exposing their wives and families to HIV and other serious diseases endemic in the gay community (the current one is MSRA USA 300) are guilty of both criminal endangerment
and fraudulent negligence. Now what's so complicated about that ?
“...the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website ...According to the table I found at the end of 2006 there were 439,693 cases of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Of this total 154,495 cases are in the white community and 191,590 cases are in the black community. That’s a breakdown of 35% for the white community and 44% for the black community. While it is true that areas like Washington, D.C. and the state of Maryland can have black infection rates of about eighty percent of all cases, I discovered that states like Montana, Maine, Idaho, and Oregon will have white infection rates that can go as high as ninety percent..... Although the black cases are high, higher than the numbers in the white community, it is far less than the six hundred thousand reported... HIV/AIDS is a problem for the entire country.”