RENWL

Our Black Women, the new face of Act Up

Winning an argument with a Know-It-All is never the goal. Such an approach is the best way to insure defeat. The Win-Win Approach is the only one that produces victory & friendship out of an environment of antagonism. ~Jay O’Toole

A few things happened most recently that has caused us to take on a more grave perspective about HIV and the black community. As many of you know, we have a running petition against ABC Network and The View talk show in regards to misinformation shared on the show by Sherri Shepherd and guest host D.L. Hugley. We weren’t alone in our outrage; Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) also started a petition and bought a full page ad in Variety calling The View out on the inaccuracies.

Several prominent African American and some non-black LGBT bloggers wrote about the issue as well as AOL’s Black Voices  Dr. Boyce.  Still, support from the black community has been weak at best. At first this angered us. But after giving it some thought we now realize it actually makes sense that the black community wouldn’t be too disturbed by The View’s mis-info. We’ll get into why in just a bit.

Last week RENWL hosted a post written by longtime activist and creator of the term Same Gender Loving (SGL) Cleo Manago. In the essay Cleo Manago On The National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS): Will It Benefit Black People?, he gives his take on the new National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) for the United States that was presented by President Barack Obama earlier this month.

In summary Manago stated that while NHAS for the nation does represent a potentially progressive step forward, its lack of specific strategies for African Americans more than likely would render the plan ineffective for blacks as other previous strategies not exclusively tailored to the needs of the African American community.

More recently however, another point of view on it all has stepped into the playing field that we think also deserves critical attention.

Local community activist and openly gay Nii Quartelai Quartey wrote the essay False Choice: President Obama’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy vs. The View. It’s posted on the blog Fresh Express.

Unlike Manago’s historically conscious and analytical assessment, Quartey’s essay enthusiastically takes a future forward perspective of what NHAS could hold for African Americans, HIV prevention and the role of activists in supporting the national strategy’s success. And he does a very good job in breaking down what needs to happen to implement the strategy in terms of developing and tweaking outreach curriculum. In this respect, he and Manago are on similar pages.

While we can remark on a multitude of differences in the two essays, the most striking divergence however is the clear separation in thinking purely derived from generational divide in our opinion in the black LGBT/SGL communities.  We don’t know the exact age of either men. We can safely guess however that Quartelai is somewhere in his mid to late twenties. Manago, somewhere in his late 40s to early 50s. Generation-wise, we lean toward Manago ourselves.

That’s not to imply that we feel Manago has the end all solution concerning HIV prevention for blacks. And he’s not claiming as such. We will say though, no one in our experience has come close to what we think are the most sound ideas in the realm of prevention than Manago. And that is because his philosophy in terms of the success of HIV prevention with blacks, is centered in the development of a solid grounding in self identity and defining, self-concept, self-worth, healing and an organic celebration of self; areas that have traditionally been neglected and even dismissed for exploration as possibility in creating healthy behavioral shifts in blacks and sexual expression.

Likewise, we support the enthusiasm in Quartey’s essay in the willingness to get it on and cracking with the new national strategy —–as we at the same time take in Quartey’s juxtaposition of the NHAS against recent protests aimed at the daytime talk show The View of which he feels, is a waste of resources and time. Thing is, Quartey is not alone in that thinking. Hardly. He speaks fluently and accurately for the generations of African Americans straight and gay under the age of 35.

Manago wraps up his essay by stating that national HIV/AIDS organizations are in the process of generating recommendations to the president regarding specific programming in the strategy aimed at African Americans. He invites others to participate in the recommendations. As it stands, the NHAS currently has no curriculum at all for African Americans—-the community with the largest and fastest growing HIV infection rate in the nation. Hopefully adding ethno specific content and strategy materials to the national plan won’t be an issue. But what if it is? What if the African American community gets no support in terms of developing strategies aimed at African Americans? That’s hardly out of the realm of possibility or even an empty concern.

And then there’s the deeper reality. It’s not like ethnocentric HIV prevention strategies have never been introduced and implemented within African American communities. While we appreciate Quartey’s enthusiasms and Manago’s wisdom in relationship to the new national strategy, over the years more than a few county, state and community based programs have withered unsuccessfully in the face of growing HIV infection among blacks while the gay community continued on with it’s remarkable rebound from a veritable holocaust.

Due to generational issues however, the gay community has relapsed recently in terms of drops in HIV infection. It’s almost like each incoming crop of gay men has to discover on their own terms the horrors of HIV and AIDS. Nonetheless we certainly hope with all our hearts that the national strategy can help African Americans.  But based on the last 25 years of unsuccessful prevention efforts aimed at blacks, we’re not holding our breath for a sudden miracle in this regard.

Our lack of optimism droops even lower when our young black gay leaders argues that all should focus their attention exclusively towards some newly discovered elbow room that we take advantage of in the dialogue on HIV/AIDS in the black community as Quartey does in the closing of his essay:

Our activism must have more depth, stamina, and vision. Blaming two comedians for lacking the expertise that most everyday people lack when it comes to discussing infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS may be more of an indictment of flawed and outdated outreach strategies than this manufactured protest.

Waving off his obvious aim in criticism at those including ourselves who pursued protest against The View, what commands our attention about the passage overall is what we believe to be a generational conviction on his behalf that we actually have the psychic space to pick and choose how we go about creating HIV/AIDS prevention awareness in the black community.

Quartey doesn’t offend. He depresses. As we stated earlier, he’s not alone in this thinking. And what his thinking implies—-at least to us, is that it’s got to get a helluva lot worse for blacks and HIV infection before it gets any better.

As hard as the African American community has been hit by AIDS, it still does not hold a candle to the devastation that occurred between 1981 and 1995/97 in the gay community. And maybe that’s because the gay community in terms of concentrated populations in urban areas, was and is a lot smaller.

Nonetheless between the years of 1983 and 1985, a quarter of the entire population of the city of Manhattan—-dropped dead. Poof. Gone. An entire generation of gay men late-teens on up—-disappeared in a matter of 24 months; like a fuckin’ space ship just hovered over New York City, beamed them up and took off to another galaxy far far away never to return. And that was just Manhattan.

In looking at the current scenario and improvements, today’s prevention methods, strategies, medication, and all that the realm of HIV/AIDS,  the extension of lives, living with AIDS and HIV has to offer—this all didn’t just pop out of the side of somebody’s neck. All of it. Not some of it. ALL of it—is directly a result of the relentless violent protests of those people who remained standing in the minority among the majority of dead lying at their feet.

So again, when we read one of our young intelligent and brightest leaders say:

Our activism must have more depth, stamina, and vision. Blaming two comedians for lacking the expertise that most everyday people lack when it comes to discussing infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS may be more of an indictment of flawed and outdated outreach strategies than this manufactured protest.

We know with slumped shoulder certainty that the impact of HIV/AIDS on the black community has yet to reach its darkest hour.

As Quartey painfully reveals, the psychological personae that fully engages a stricken community’s collective mind in the activity and obsession of killing a disease before it kills you, does not yet exist in the black community. And yet the response to such terror will always be the same no matter the community if hit hard enough: in a desperate scenario of life and death there is no either or action. There is no such thing as a manufactured protest. There’s no elbow room to choose, process or decide. It is solely a matter of doing whatever it is in front of you with one hand while simultaneously reaching for the next idea, engagement or game plan with the other. There are no critics in such an existence.

That is how gay America survived AIDS. There was no previous example or national strategy in place or forthcoming.

There were no choices or debates to be had. It was completely and totally a system of survival until it became a system of manageability. In other words, not one stone was dismissed or unturned until the mass dying stopped.

But as Quartey noted, it ain’t like that right now—not for black folks. Save all that old skool useless protest drama for ya momma.  And his response is fitting and appropriate considering the source. Unlike the early days of the impact of AIDS, we’re now on different terrain. People live with AIDS today. We’re now in the age of AIDS manageability—not prevention. The voice of today’s young black gay leadership succinctly tells us so—even if that wasn’t his conscious intention.

In effect Quartey—spokesman for his peers and himself, delivered the bad news that some of us old folkies just did not want to hear:

No matter the numbers, rate of infection or misunderstanding about infection, we’re still not at a level of desperation in the black community.

We’re just not there yet.

• WE’RE NOT THERE YET no matter how many cities have populations of gay black men 45% HIV positive or the fact that of the nearly 25,000 infections estimated to occur each year among African Americans, more than one-third (38 percent) are among young people ages 13-29.
• WE’RE NOT THERE YET with blacks accounting for 48% of the 551,932 persons* (including children) living with HIV/AIDS in 34 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting.
• WE’RE NOT THERE YET as black women now make up 61 percent of all new HIV cases among women in the United States and have an HIV prevalence rate nearly 18 times that of white women. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women ages 25-34, and 80 percent of new cases are contracted through heterosexual contact.

We’re just not there.

Therefore Quartey’s closing statement, as much as it saddens us, is completely accurate and on point. Protesting two comedians at this time is inappropriate in terms of where the black community stands with HIV infection and impact.

Applying the activist methods of another community who was broadsided, ravaged and brutally beaten down—–with nothing more to lose because they had already lost almost everyone and everything but the clothes on their backs, is almost comical when we think about in terms of appealing to the indifferent African American masses of today to respond to HIV infection misinformation in a similar fashion.

Yet the fact is, deep down inside we already knew this.  We knew this even before soliciting folks for a protest against The View. We’ve known for a long time. We just didn’t want to face it. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Quartey’s essay served as an unwelcome yet long overdue slap in the face we needed to be jarred back into the reality of now. And so we let go. And let God.

Out with old. In with the new. And may Black America always find hope, strength and compassion in the loving bosom of God’s tender mercy.

Angels In America: the new millennium.

So, your husband knew that he had HIV?” Pinkston asked.

“Yes,” Ida Byther-Smith said.

“And never told you?” Pinkston asked.

“No, never,” she replied.

Byther-Smith is one of America’s new faces of AIDS, an African-American woman who contracted the disease from someone she trusted.

“I always believed in abstinence until you get married. But what did that get me? It got me AIDS!” she said.

With a shoe-string budget, Byther-Smith now runs an AIDS community outreach program on Chicago’s south side, teaching clients to avoid the mistakes she made. For instance, for years she refused to even admit she had the disease.

“I even had people tell me, ‘oh you must have done something really bad for God to punish you like that,’” she said.

Ignorance and fear partly explain an exploding health crisis in America’s black community.

Excerpt from Black America’s Exploding Crisis, CBS Evening News

Renwl: Cleo Manago On The National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS): Will It Benefit Black People?

False Choice: President Obama’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy vs. The View