If you want to not get the HIV virus and then quite possibly AIDS, here is what to do.

If you are a gay or bisexual male, only have safe sex - meaning use condoms. Add to that only monogamous relationships with monogamous partners, if you'd like to further minimize risk.

Do not inject drugs into your body with a needle, especially not a needle someone else has used.

If you are a heterosexual woman, either avoid sex with bisexual men or suspected bisexual men, or at least practice only safe sex with them.

Barring a tainted blood transfusion or other very rare medical cause, that covers the vast majority of cases. According to the Centers For Disease Control, in 2004 in the 35 U.S. states or jurisdictions engaged in confidential name-based reporting, AIDS cases among men were nearly three times more numerous than among women, and a combined 84 percent of the cases among men were related to male-with-male sex or injecting drug use. According to the same fact summary, among women, the leading cause by far is heterosexual sex (with bisexual men, although that is not spelled out in the fact sheet). The CDC also looks at AIDS among U.S. women 2001-2004, and finds that black women have markedly greater totals of diagnosed HIV or AIDS than women of other racial groups. A lot of brothers on the down low, you know - many of them bi.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today on HIV/AIDS and African-Americans, falling back on good old reliable victimology because, well, there's just nothing else quite so handy when erasing personal choices from the equation. The Chron's article first relates what is a truly worrisome set of statistics. In the U.S., blacks account 51 percent of new HIV virus diagnoses and 55 percent of yearly AIDS deaths, but are only 13 percent of the country's population.

Citing researchers, the Chron then identifies three main risk factors for HIV and AIDS among U.S. blacks. They are:

*high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (which can open up skin lesions allowing transmittal of the HIV virus);

*poverty (which results in less medical information, care and treatment);

*denial of the HIV/AIDS problem in black American culture, due to religious and other social taboos regarding homosexuality.

Poverty is an implausibe explanation for reckless sexual conduct which can result in HIV and then possibly AIDS. Anyone in the U.S. - especially in the urban centers where HIV and AIDS are most prevalent - who does not know how to avoid the risks is in effect playing with fire. Denial or avoidance of HIV/AIDS and homosexuality among many individuals and institutions in black and Latino U.S. communities is real, but is far more an after-the-fact issue than a matter of upfront prevention.

Citing sources as needed, The Chron then backhands the entire notion of personal responsibility for HIV and AIDS prevention, from a perspective fraught with white institutional guilt.

...the higher African American HIV infection rate is not driven by intravenous drug use or risky sexual behavior, according to medical experts."There is not a significant difference between African Americans and other ethnic groups with regard to risky behaviors," said George Lemp, an epidemiologist in Oakland who directs the University of California's AIDS Research Program. "The riddle is why there is such a rate when the risk behaviors appear to be similar."

Poverty plays a significant role by reducing access to health care and adding challenges to all aspects of a person's life. "When you are focused on basic needs like paying the rent, buying food and the electric bill, the last thing you are thinking about is HIV," said Lisha Wilson, medical director of the Magic Johnson AIDS Clinic in Oakland. "There are so many other issues. Poverty can lead people to do things they wouldn't normally do, and that can involve unsafe sex."

...."We can't continue to try and use programs that were piloted and developed for white gay men," said Roosevelt Mosby, a founding member of the State of Emergency African American Task Force in Alameda County. "The methods do not transfer to black people.

Got all that? It's not IV drug use or risky sexual behavior that gives blacks HIV or AIDS, although that's certainly what causes HIV/AIDS for whites, Lationos or other patients. No, it's...ah......mental clutter, that's it......which due to the difficulty of affording groceries and electricity admittedly can cause high-risk sexual behavior. But how can anything better be expected, truly? Poor people just don't have their wits about them, see. Compounding all of this: a lack of culturally appropriate HIV/AIDS prevention programs for blacks. The methods of monogamy and prudence aren't even on the table in the clientized, racialized class-riven construct. These "white" approaches "do not transfer to black people," to borrow a phrase from Roosevelt Mosby, of the State of Emergency African American Task Force.

Yes. Kind of in the same way that expecting a white-derived "future time orientation" from K-12 students of color is considered racist by the Seattle Public Schools. (Note: SPS removed the language after a furor erupted but it is preserved in the link immediately above).

If I were black and had just read the Chron's article I'd be seriously smarting, because race hustlers masquerading as caring social service and non-profit providers were expecting so little of my race. The role of society, culture and institutions in HIV/AIDS prevention is as nothing compared to the role of the sentient individual.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN FRANCISCO, BLACKS, HIV, AIDS, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, PREVENTION, POVERTY, RACE, RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 5, 2006 04:26 PM

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