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Oakland, CA, USA -

Dear Friend in the Fight Against HIV and AIDS:

The room erupted with enthusiastic outbursts of approval at our Debate Watch Party in reaction to moderator Gwen Ifill's question about AIDS and Black women. Her question was quite specific: " ... I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where Black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts." Momentarily motionless, hardly breathing, we awaited the responses from the two 2004 Vice Presidential candidates, only to have our half-hopeful anticipation turn to exasperation. Both Cheney and Edwards responded in Media Training 101 style, by using the opportunity to get across other platform messages - as if asked completely different questions. At the end of his response, incumbent Vice President Dick Cheney did return to the original question with an open admission, that he had "not heard those numbers with respect to African American women." That moment in history was probably the most profound confirmation of what Black health advocates had previously known -- the health of Black women does not rank with any priority on the national agenda. -- Lorraine Cole, Ph.D., President & CEO, Black Women's Health Imperative [Emphasis the columnist's]

Blacks in the United States traditionally have the weight of under-employment on their backs, then came the crack cocaine epidemic (which some hinted sinisterly was provoked by the actions of the US government.) The fact of Blacks being the predominant victims of the American gulag, effectively stripping their communities of males of child-producing age served to further devastate an already struggling people as the pool of eligible men of African-American heritage shrunk dramatically. There was also the prevalence to death and stroke by heart disease to add to the mix. And some environmentalists claim that more toxic oil refineries and other ecological hazards just happened to be sited in communities of color.

If all of those malignant influences wer e not enough, the Center for Disease Control of the United States began reporting around the year 2000 that the fastest growing demographic for HIV/AIDS infections was Black women and children. Yet, as the above citation notes, people at the highest levels of the American government did not consider this new wrinkle in the pandemic worthy of being added to the panoply of issues facing that government.

Once again, it seems, death and devastation in the Black community in America was just not that important to that country's government.

While much was made at this year's Group of Eight (G8) summit of the world's leading economies held in Gleneagles, Scotland, about pledging assistance to African nations devastated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and increasing newsprint is being devoted to the increasing spread of the infection in India and China, little or no political or media attention in the United States is being given to the dire prospects for stemming the spread of the disease among Black Americans.

The Center for Disease Control's National Prevention Information Network reported in 2001:

In 2000, the rate of reported AIDS cases among African Americans was 8 times the rate for whites.

African Americans represent 12% of the U.S. population, yet make up over half of new HIV infections.

In 2000, almost two-thirds of all women reported with AIDS were African American.

African American children make up two-thirds of new pediatric AIDS cases.

African American and Hispanic women together represent less than one-quarter of all U.S. women, yet they account for more than three-quarters of AIDS cases among women.

Hispanics, who represent 13% of the population, account for about 19% of new AIDS cases.

Although African Americans and Hispanics combined represent about one-quarter of the U.S. population, they account for over two-thirds of both new HIV infections and new AIDS cases.

Any number of the "usual suspects," stereotypical answers can be provided for why the pandemic is hitting the Black population of the United States harder than their neighbors, but study after study prove those stereotypical racial assumptions wrong.

For example, in a Washington Post article by Daryl Fears entitled "US HIV Cases Soaring Among Black Women", published in February of this year, we read:

Black women -- the fastest-growing group of people with HIV -- are not more likely to be promiscuous than other groups of women, notes Adaora A. Adimora, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill associate professor of medicine and adjunct professor of epidemiology. Instead, Adimora and colleagues report the disparity is attributable to socioeconomic conditions in African-American communities, such as unemployment, poverty, drug use, and a scarcity of men, a significant proportion of whom cycle in and out of prison systems where HIV rates are as much as 10 times those of the general population. Such conditions 'are critically important' to fueling HIV's spread, said Adimora. Communities influence 'social networks, partner choices, likelihood of marriage, types of risk behaviors, as well as the consequences of risk behaviors,' Adimora said. 'A 22-year-old woman who has sex with multiple men in an area with very low HIV prevalence, such as a Georgetown bar for well-connected young people in D.C. politics, probably has less chance of getting infected than a 22-year-old woman who had sex with only one man in a poor D.C. neighborhood with a very high HIV prevalence,' she explained. Though black women comprise only 62 percent of women in the District, they accounted for 90 percent of female D.C. AIDS cases, the city Health Department reported last year. 'Incarceration directly affects sexual networks through disruption of existing partnerships,' wrote Adimora and Victor Schoenbach, a UNC associate professor of medicine. [Emphasis the columnist's]

Some times it is necessary to connect the dots. You don't have to be an analytical genius to figure out that if the population of men in a given community are pulled out of that community and placed in an artificially-induced high-risk environment the effects on the source-community will soon have an impact. From language, among those for whom the impact is most felt (jokingly called "Ebonics,") to dress to the very nature of sexual interaction, prison-culture has had an impact on the Black community.

But you won't find much of what is examined here normally reported in the Mouthpiece Media. In fact, our research found that little or nothing was written in the American mainstream media about what can only be considered a crisis for Black Americans, as a community, until after Ifill's cited question during the recent Presidential election cycle. Five times as many articles have been written about this issue since Ms. Ifill's question than in the four years prior.

Connecting the Dots - "Let's Not"

It can be argued that there are a number of good reasons for the Mouthpiece Media (MM) in the United States not to address this issue. Among them:

1. The world knows that the majority of people dying of AIDS in the world are Black Africans, it would be a public relations disaster for the world's richest nation to report that the majority of people being infected within its own borders also happen to be Black.
2. Any serious journalist providing background analysis on this phenomenon would have to make the connection between the well-documented institutional racism in the American justice system that finds Blacks inordinately getting maximum charges for infractions and maximum sentences for those infractions compared to other people arrested. From there, the well-known prevalence of homosexual practices in the penal system would have to be addressed, leading to some of the conclusions reached by the researchers cited above.
3. Connecting these dots would also lead to the disparity in employment ratios and poverty, not to mention inadequate or non-existent access to healthcare among this population.

Most editors in the MM would simply decide, "Let's not go there." Particularly as regards social issues, including public health issues, the MM has conceded every inch of ground to the bias presented by the Bush Administration (a high-ranking member of which had "not heard those numbers with respect to African American women" as recently as last fall) and the various Murdoch empire publications and broadcast outlets.

As a Black columnist writing about these findings, what is one inclined to make of them? Basically, that's its an American disgrace.

Regardless of at what point one finds oneself on the political spectrum, that the most serious and widespread pandemic the world has known in decades is inordinately affecting a specifically documented segment of a nation's population and that those citizens' government makes short shrift of the problem is not only news but also one must feel that it demands action and solutions. Thus far, our government has been less than forthcoming.

It can be reasonably argued that, as long as the current ruling party in government insists on lining the pockets of the nation's most well-heeled citizens, pandering to its richest corporations and borrowing money to further imperial wars, any and all social programs will find themselves wanting - not only public health programs. Thus, hope of having a public health crisis that affects only one part of a minority population addressed seems a doomed aspiration. That may be so but raising public awareness to this crisis for Black women and the future of the Black population in American must be done. Demanding solutions, asking questions - as Ms. Ifill so admirably did in the last Presidential election cycle - must continue.

The foregoing is, by no means, meant to downgrade concern for all of the people suffering from this pandemic, here in the US or abroad, gay, bisexual, transsexual, other heterosexuals, or men of whatever race. It is meant to address the fact that there is a documented segment of the American population that is most at-risk from what we know today. Solutions for that segment, it is believed, can be solutions for all.

In the next installment of this series, the author means to address solutions for the pandemic offered by experts and academics inside and outside of the United States, as well as the issue of the costs of prescription drugs used to make the lives of those suffering from infection and disease better, more prolonged and hopeful for a universal cure.

Peace out.