Is anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past decade or so at all surprised by the "news" that we black folks are way more likely to get the virus that causes AIDS than our white, Hispanic or Asian American counterparts?
The specific numbers released this week by the Centers for Disease Contro l may change a little from year to year and from study to study, but the overall issue that black people are far more likely to contract the dreaded disease represents a true-to-life ' Groundhog Day' experience , a wretched nightmare we can't ever awake from.
This year's report shows blacks are eight times more likely to get HIV than whites, meaning that 1 in 22 black Americans will be diagnosed with the AIDS virus in their lifetime.
For whites, the number is 1 in 170. For Hispanics, it's 1 in 52, and Asian Americans have the lowest risk numbers with just 1 in 222.
The estimates are based on 2007 death certificates and HIV data taken from 37 states and Puerto Rico.
Just as predictable as the numbers on how HIV is battering the black community is the reaction we will hear from many in the community: "Why the news about black people always got to be so bad?"
"I know lots of black and white people, and I don't see us having it eight times more. They lying about us again."
"It got to be a white conspiracy against us. Remember the Tuskegee syphilis experiments ?" It's not surprising to me that we will reach for just about any explanation, reasonable or not, to try and justify the terrible figures on HIV that confront our community.
It's true that it seems that if eight times more brothers and sisters were contracting HIV , we would see black people dropping off like flies compared white folks, but just because that thankfully is not the case doesn't mean that the CDC figures are a lie.
The CDC is holding a mirror to the African American community, and we simply don't like what it is reflecting . The mirror isn't that different from the one we see when looking at incarceration rates, educational achievement and poverty rates.
http://conversations.blackvoices.com/welco...
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Saturday, January 1st 2011 at 7:40PM
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