July 1986
Gay Peoples Chronicle
page 11
BLACK MEN
AND AIDS
the
On the national and local level, the heavy toll of AIDS in black and Hispanic communities is finally being confronted and this society's blindness is lifting slightly..
Yes, there is a disproportionately heavy rate of AIDS in Black and Hispanic communities. Yes, we are dying in greater numbers. Facts that BWMT began studying and revealing over a year ago are now getting out to the media and community organizing is under way.
The reality of AIDS is that it has struck over 4000 Black people, or about 25% of the total number. It has struck about 2,300 Hispanic people or about 14% of the total. These numbers are more than double the expect ed percentages, because Blacks comprise about 12% of the population while Hispanics make up about 6.5 percent.
Statistics, of course, are mere representations of the misery faced by the real people involved. But these statistics do make a lie out of the oft-repeated myth that AIDS is only the problem of gay white men who've flocked to the "gay meccas" --New York and San Francis-
co.
The San Francisco Chronicle quotes Dr. Calu Lester, a BWMT/San Francisco member and a social psychologist working with the Shanti Project, as saying, "The word is simply not getting out. We continue to get Blacks and Latinos who don't understand what is going on."
Lester and others also blame the AIDS health agencies and public health officials, with their white blindspots, for the communications failure.
They describe the problem by highlighting these aspects:
1) projects focused on serving people with AIDS were started in gay communities and catered to a white gay clientele;
2) the media have focused exclusively on individuals such as Rock Hudson and the effects of the disease on the [white identified] "gay lifestyle";
3) the impact of racism is typically removed from consideration in any complex situation, bowing to the pretense that we're now well beyond all that stuff about ensuring racial equality;
4) the distortions that say minorities are only affected by AIDS because they are the junkies while gay men are all white men.
The issue of Blacks and their homophobia keeps being raised in connection with this communications failure. Is this perhaps another way of blaming the victims, of saying Black people are once again responsible for not getting the necessary information that would help save or improve their lives?
Dr. Wayne Greaves, assistant professor of medicine at the Howard University Medical School and chief of the Infectious Disease Division, offeers a widely-disputed view. Greaves is quoted by Ebony as saying, "Black AIDS victims are often abandoned by family and friends. Blacks are a lot more conservative than whites overall, and because of that, many black homosexuals are less ready to admit they are homosexuals.
What is being done to educate and organize in response to this critical situation?
Groups other than BWMT are recognizing the problem and shaping countermeasures. The NAACP places the AIDS crishealth care. is in the context of overall
The health concerns of Black communities are generally overlooked and underfinanced. Belle Glade, Florida, for example, is a rural black majority area with a high incidence of AIDS, but it also has a high incidence of other infectious diseases due to such factors as inadequate sewage, excessive pesticide spraying in the fields where farm workers toil, and a lack of basic health education.
The NAACP and many other organizations consider drugs to be another plague in the Black community and shooting dope to be a major health crisis.
The National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays has been insrumental in encouraging groups and churches in the Black community to apply for available grants and to disseminate information on
AIDS. The U.S. Conference of
Mayors
has made several noteworthy grants to educational campaigns aimed at Blacks and Hispanics. And more material is being published in Spanish.
BWMT chapters in all parts of the country have taken up the tasks related to AIDS education. Major efforts are underway or on the drawing boards.
The AIDS Outreach Project of NA/BWMT has set an ambitious agenda. It was created to a) educate members about
ASK THE DOCTOR
By PETER BEEBE
Of our various emotions, anger is perhaps the most perplexing and valuable. Anger is powerful precisely because its presence indicates a need to examine what is happening to me in the
Frese
When expression of anger grows out of some understanding of what this analysis tells me--the meaning of the emotional intensity-then I find myself moving/growing/changing.
Usually when I am angry, there is something ocurring in my life that I do not want, or there is something not occurring that I do want. My anger indicates I need to consider the boundaries in my life: what am I allowing/not allowing; what do I want/need; and how can I go about acting on what I discover? Anger prompts me to take some stand on my own behalf or for the sake of some other person(s). Effectively-taken stands help me get at least some of what I want from my life.
The worst of pop psychology with its emphasis on pillow-pounding, towel-twisting, "speaking your mind,' "letting it all out" misrepresents the power in anger. It is not in the expression of the emotion solely, but in the understanding of the emotion, that I lern what I must do for myself if I am not to continue being angry.
Certainly feeling and the expression of feeling facilitate understanding, but the active process of asking myself, as I feel, "What does this mean?" is a critical
the disease, especially AIDS in Third World communities; b) encourage chapter partic ipation in a national project as well as within their local communities; and c) establish our organization as an effective national leader on issues of AIDS and Third World communities.
In addition, a questionnaire hs been sent to major organizations responsible for providing AIDS educational services. We want to find out if any of them are directing a portion of their outreach to people of color The goal here is to document what is being done, to provide ideas for vital educational campaigns, and to demonstrate the unmet needs for education and services targeting Third World comcommunities.
The AIDS Outreach Project is also asking for a liaison person from every chapter interested in working with it.
The NA Project will be called upon to take stands on controversial issues as they arise. For example, it now appears that funds for AIDS educational material have been delayed by the White House and the Dept. of Health. The Director of Pre-
element. Only as I discover what is missing for me, or what I don't want in my life, can I then, for example, go to the other person and say: "Let's talk about this in our relationship and see if we can come to some new arrangement."
This is the constructive expression of anger; it comes from the experiencing of the emotion and the analysis of the meaning of the emotional intensity. This process might include open, verbal, or other expression of the feeling--usually best done privately or with a supportive friend, since these behaviors rarely aid constructive/confrontive conversation with the person who is the object of the anger.
But inevitably this process must include important questions: i.e., separating past from present--what of my present anger is really about something in my past simply triggered off by the current experience? What of my anger is actually related to what is going on now in my life? How angry will I continue to become if I do not do something to create change? The stand I take emerges from this kind of questioning--and I shape my fife through the stands i take or do not take on a daily basis.
As I consider anger, I am reminded of a statement (much paraphrased) from the late philosopher, Hannah Arendt--we need to think about our lives, to ask ourselves what it is we are doing.
ventive Services at the Centers for Disease Control has admitted that pressure was brought to bear to insure the "palatable" nature of materials available to the public.
New CDC guidelines propose that local review panels be given the authority to stop federal money from going to any specific organization's educational outreach program. Membership of these 10cal review panels is "not to be drawn predominately from target groups," but should "represent a reasonable cross section of the general community."
This stand not only delays vitally needed funds to educational efforts already short-changed by the federal budget, but it also raises the specter of censorship. Will AIDS material have to pass inspection by the most reactionary elements of a community, the same folks who are terrified of schoolchildren with AIDS antibodies?
[Reprinted in abridged form from the NA/BHMT Newsletter for March, 1986]