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Forum on HIV/AIDS shows why frank talks rarity
Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY)
By Mark Cooper Messenger-Inquirer
03.11.01
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A forum Saturday on the impact of HIV and AIDS on the world's black
community was intended to be a frank and open discussion about the
disease and a call to black churches to become involved in the fight
against it.
Instead, the event at the H.L. Neblett Community Center was an
example of why that frank and open discussion is so hard to begin,
said Anna Davis-Nall of Providence, one of the forum's speakers.
A button and red ribbon lie on literature for the Black Church
Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS during a forum Saturday at
the H.L. Neblett Community Center. The Owensboro Area HIV/AIDS Task
Force sponsored the event. Photo by John Dunham, M-I
Of the 16 or so people in attendance, only one was black.
"Now you see what the problem is. I don't see any black churches,"
said Davis-Nall, a representative of the WIN (Women in the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Auxiliary of
the Kentucky Conference of NAACP Branches. "This is the problem
in the black community."
The forum, sponsored by the Owensboro Area HIV/AIDS Task Force,
was part of the 12th annual Black Church Week of Prayer for the
Healing of AIDS. The event included a photo exhibit of AIDS victims
in Kentucky, information about AIDS prevention and the role of the
task force.
"No one wants to talk about HIV," said Gary Robertson,
director of the task force. "For western Kentucky, it's a taboo
subject."
A goal of the event was to get black religious communities to become
centers for HIV prevention, treatment education and compassion.
But black churches and blacks in general are reluctant to talk about
a disease that is killing more blacks worldwide than any other race,
Davis-Nall said.
"Culturally, we don't talk about sex," Davis-Nall said.
"We tend to think that the spiritual part of us will bring
us out and keep us safe. But the church is not the prominent part
in children's lives. It's peer pressure."
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