DIGGING OUR OWN GRAVES :

By ignoring AIDS, blacks dig own grave (Cynthia Tucker, July 10, 2002, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

[A]IDS is wreaking more havoc on black America than racial profiling, assaults on affirmative action or Republicans in the White House--all of which remain popular targets for the outrage of so-called black leaders. African-Americans continue to contract the deadly infection at an alarming rate; in 2000, blacks, only 12 percent of the American population, accounted for 43 percent of the new AIDS cases.

The stigma AIDS carries in black America has only increased since researchers became aware of the prominent role played by bisexual black men in transmitting the virus. (Previously, researchers had focused largely on IV drug use, especially among women victims.) The discovery has highlighted the shadowy world of gay and bisexual black men who refuse to openly acknowledge their sexual orientation and live dual lives of risky behavior.

In his invaluable book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDs, Michael Fumento discusses how in many minority communities the stigma of homosexuality remains so fearsome that the best epidemiogical researchers learned how to approach the topic of a patient's sexual history more obliquely, in order to elicit somewhat more truthful answers. By so doing they were able to determine that many cases that would otherwise be classified as involving heterosexual transmission of the disease from a woman to a man were in fact a result of male/male contact. But the political pressure for AIDs to be considered a universal problem, especially one that can affect straight men, largely prevents intelligent discussion of such topics. And so, rather than acknowledge that AIDs simply does not threaten straight men, we continue to lie to ourselves, and people sicken and die because of these lies. The very people charged with controlling the spread of this dire disease continue to pretend that straight men are at risk and that it is fine to have any amount and any variety of sex so long as you use a condom, instead of focussing their attention on the communities that are genuinely at risk and counseling them to abstain, especially from anal sex.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 14, 2002 4:16 PM