The Associated Press reported in early February that public health officials had identified an HIV outbreak among black male college students in North Carolina.
The United Nations reported in its 2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is "expanding rapidly" in Asia. An estimated 7.4 million people are living with HIV in the region, and 1.1 million people became newly infected last year alone -- more than any previous year, according to the report.
Approximately another 1.3 million are living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, compared to 160,000 in 1995.
Despite these facts, communities in the United States and beyond refuse to recognize the growing epidemic. Disturbingly, political and religious leaders -- Indian, African-American and Caucasian, among others -- want to place blame for the epidemic on already marginalized groups in society to avoid taking action.
Cathy Cohen, in "The Boundaries of Blackness," discusses the problem of AIDS in the black community and the needed actions to help fight the problem. The failures Cohen points to need to be emphasized because many other communities are committing the same mistakes.
Cohen emphasizes the early communal apathy given to the AIDS epidemic.
"The lack of action, from the general public on down to the president, was and is directly tied to the conception of AIDS as a disease of white gay men, black and Latino/a drug users and other marginal people engaged in 'immoral behavior,'" Cohen says in her book.
Many political leaders display a lack of leadership and ignore the epidemic, according to the 2004 U.N. Report on the Global AIDS epidemic.
Cohen writes marginalizing works to separate the problem from the group as a whole. She argues that Earvin "Magic" Johnson, a Hall of Fame NBA player, announcing his diagnosis with HIV heightened the level of coverage on AIDS among black Americans. But, despite someone so close to the mainstream coming forward, the black community still wanted to believe the disease was an outsider disease.
Cohen criticizes the black press for not bringing the issue to the forefront in the early '90s but rather confining itself to "an internal organizational structure dominated by the black church as well as black public officials who reinforce moral and conservative ideologies of acceptable behavior."
Cohen alsothat argues the black church approached the issue as a problem of the immoral or lost. Religious leaders in the United States, India, Russia and Mexico, among many other countries, are committing this same failure.
Sadly, Cohen's criticisms are falling upon deaf ears, as media outlets constantly emphasize gay sex as the problem.
As Cohen repeatedly maintains throughout the book, this understanding only works to suppress the issue by attributing it to outside groups. Promiscuous sex between men and women typically are placed at the bottom of the list for causes of AIDS.
Grabbing religion by the neck, political leaders argue that these outsiders -- gays, lesbians and drug users, among other groups -- need to find religion and morality.
If these leaders are willing to ignore the lack of health care, lack of education and lack of economic security and wellbeing and relegate the epidemic to a morality issue, they should at least apply it to all groups in society -- not just those already placed on the outside.
"Cross-cutting issues like AIDS necessitate a political strategy which is not driven by simple identity politics," Cohen writes. The issue requires a new movement that recognizes the differential, yet interconnected, experiences of all persons.
Kurt Davis is a Health and Sexuality columnist. He can be reached at kurt@cavalierdaily.com.
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