Aids In Black America

After viewing the documentary film, 'Out of Control: AIDS in Black America', I was shocked and vividly awaken to how this disease has reached epidemic portion in the black community of this country, and how it has been ignored by both black and white leadership at all levels of community involvement and well as at governmental levels . Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles says that many of our black leaders and celebrities have acknowledged and supported to fight the epidemic in other countries, particularly Africa, while few have devoted this type of effort here is the states. He says, “In America today, AIDS is virtually a black disease, by any measure." It was pointed out in the film that the population
My personal opinion, the Black Church has failed the black community in so many ways since the days it helped galvanize, and was so instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. But as far as the AIDS epidemic, it has not stepped up to the ‘plate’! The Black Church has been silent on AIDS, according to Reverend Calvin Butts Jr., of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, "When you see the numbers going up, you know you have not done enough." The Reverend Eugene Rivers of Boston, "I see the black church being challenged as never before. There are going to have to be some tough conversations within the Black Church, because the Black Church is the only thing that black people have left. And too many young people are dying because black leaders have failed their
With so many years having passed, we see and hear black leaders who are still trying to comprehend the severity of this crisis. And so many are silent such as Jesse Jackson; or offer up ‘lame’ excuses, such as AIDS is not mentioned in the New Testament, or that there are so many negative forces being placed upon black America that attention to one takes away from the other. The questions, "Why do so many straight and gay black men have unprotected sex? And, why do so many straight black women practice unsafe sex?" What we do know, (1) infection comes more heavily to the black community due to high rates of HIV-positive men coming out of prison, (2) drug addiction and the widespread use of dirty needles, (3) the taboo against talking about the problem of homosexual-related AIDS transmission in many black religious circles and, (4) governmental failure: the absence of any comprehensive AIDS prevention and treatment programs that reach into the community of wide poverty, despair and lack of information. Until black leadership and responsible whites take up the ‘banner’ and realized that the main cause of this epidemic is the racist attitude of white supremacy that exist here in the United States is confronted, this problem will continue to exist and