The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), has over the past several years infected and affected many persons all over the planet. Worldwide, over twenty two million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses. HIV/AIDS has indeed invaded every socioeconomic realm of society leaving behind devastated family members, orphaned children, and innocent, infected pregnant women. With it came humiliation, despair, and dishonesty, disowning of family members, marital breakdown, rebuked action, and judgments. This pandemic has brought with it an illness call stigma. Even in 2007, stigma taps mankind’s deepest emotions, in spaces linking human nature to sexual conduct. The price paid is discouraging. There are 14,000 new infections every day (95 percent in developing countries).
An estimated one million people are currently living with HIV in the United States, with approximately 40,000 new infections occurring each year. Seemly asleep, HIV/AIDS has rapidly become a disease of our future generation with half of the five million new infections each year occurring among people ages 15-24. HIV/AIDS is presently known to be the leading cause of death of African Americans between the ages of 25-44. Fifty-four percent of new infections in the United States occur among African Americans and sixty-four percent of the new infections in women occur in African American women.
As the world marked the 26th anniversary of the first reported cases of what was once referred to as “the gay pledge” or “Grid” now called HIV/AIDS, African Americans in particular bear the burden of the epidemic since they account for over forty-five percent of new cases, a percentage greater in proportion when compared to any other racial group.
Reminiscent of this writer’s experience, heterosexual transmission overwhelmingly accounts for seventy-five percent of new infections in women. Under the weight of the twin S’s, (stigma and silence), the plague is now a worsening crisis. Unfortunately stigma equals isolation; silence equals suicide creating a fatal intersection of African Americans drowning in denial. For the most part, the African American Church and the African American community at large have remained close-minded to the deadly disease that rips at the core of African Americans.
