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Special Report: AIDS AT 20: "Our House Is On Fire!"
Newsweek
National
06.11.01
BY LYNETTE CLEMETSON
The number of blacks with HIV is soaring. Phill Wilson is taking his rage to
his people - and hoping they'll wake up. His is a Sunday sermon the congregation
does not want to hear. So when Phill Wilson steps up to the pulpit at Holy Name
of Jesus Church in Los Angeles he knows he needs to shake people up. As he stores
into the sea of wary black and Latino faces, Wilson tells a story about the time
his brother accidentally set the house on fire, and how he and his siblings were
afraid to call the Fire Department because they didn't want people to find out.
Just as the congregation starts to feel comfortable with its guest speaker,
Wilson - an openly gay black man and one of the country's most outspoken voices
on AIDS - gets serious. "Our house is on fire!" he preaches. "The
fire truck arrives, but we won't come out, because we're afraid the folks from
next door will see that we're in that burning house. AIDS is a fire raging in
our community and it's out of control!"
Wilson's mission: getting blacks to face facts about AIDS. At a time when national
attention has turned to AIDS in Africa, HIV infection among African Americans
is soaring at staggering rates. In 1985, African Americans made up roughly a quarter
of reported AI DS cases. Today blacks account for more than half of the 40,000
new HIV cases in the United States each year. AIDS has surpassed homicide as a
leading killer of African-Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. Roughly one
in 50 black men is infected with HIV, three times the rate for 'white men. An
estimated one in 160 black women is HIV-positive; for white women the rate is
one in 3,000. And a recent six-city study suggests that the rate among black gay
men may be as high as 30 percent-more than three times that for white gays and
more than double the rate for Latinos.
But to even begin to stem the epidemic requires talking publicly about topics,
like homosexuality, that many blacks refuse to discuss even in private. A Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention study conducted last year showed that a quarter
of black men who contracted HIV through sex with other men considered themselves
heterosexual (compared with 6 percent of white men).Closeted sexuality is, of
course, not unique to blacks, but the level of homophobic rhetoric in black communities,
from hip-hop lyrics to Sunday sermons, makes denial about living "on the
down low", as some call it, especially high. Men with double lives whether
they be former felons who started having sex with men in prison or middle class
professionals with families and social standing are more likely to use condoms
with their wives and girlfriends for fear of outing themselves. And many women
are afraid to raise the subject of their men having sex with other men for fear
of the answer.The consequences are catastrophic. Black women now make up more
than 60 percent of all new cases of HIV among women, and rates for black children
are similarly high.
Beneath the secrecy lies a more insidious culprit: self-hate.The weight of
AIDS for Americans is laden with the historical cargo of racism, poverty and poor
access to health care. The result for many is resignation. "We don't get
as angry as we should because we don't have expectations of surviving," says
Wilson. "Surviving AIDS?" he's asked. "Surviving, period,"
he responds. Prevention messages that work in white communities often fall flat
with blacks. Slogans such as "AIDS kills,"for instance, are not as compelling
to a young man who believes he is just as likely to die from police brutality
or adrive-by shooting. Rampant rumors about AIDS's being inflicted on blacks by
the government compound outreach difficulties."lf it's a conspiracy, then
people can believe there is nothing they can do about it," says the CDC's
Dr. Helene Gayle. "lt allows people to shift the blame from personal responsibility
some amorphous 'they'?
Wilson's strategy, as he puts it, is to push blacks to "confront our shadows?
Though there are now many AIDS organizations focused on black communities such
as NewYork-based Balm in Gilead, which works with black churches- Wilson's African
American AIDS Policy and Training Institute, founded two years ago, is the nations
first think tank devoted solely to creating a prevention frame work tailored to
black realities. White activists, for instant, often Focus outreach gay neighborhoods.
Because black gays are less likely to live in clusters and to seek gay services,
Wilson's approach is to infiltrate the whole black comminuty.The institute trains
fellows to work with churches, community centers, black businesses and the black
media to influence policy, funding and research."It us a voice, says fellow
Deneen Robinson-Fountain, 35, an HIV-positive mother of two from Dallas. "The
e power and permission to control our own fate". But Wilson's take-charge
approach is often met with hostility. At a conference of black ministers in the
mid-1980s (a time when a decisive message may have prevented the surge in new
cases),one clergyman stood and shouted, "AIDS is not our problem. We're not
going to let them blame this on us? And just last year organizers of a black town-hall
meeting, which coincided with the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, denied
Wilson's request to include AIDS as a discussion point, along with topics like
violence and racial profiling.
For all his activism, Wilson believes the most effective AIDS work happens
on a smaller scale. "Before you can convince people to save their lives,"
he says, " you have to convince them their lives are worth saving."
Two summers ago he noticed his two teenage nephews were falling behind in school.
Fearful of their slipping into potentially deadly behavior like violence and risky
sex, Wilson took them in and redirected their lives with tutoring, curfews and
a strict schedule of household responsibilities. Winfred and Corey, now 20 and
18, say their uncle doesn't talk to them much about AIDS and safe sex. They get
the message by sharing in his life.For his senior project Winfred made a documentary
on Wilson's institute. And last year Corey accompanied Wilson to South Africa
for the International Conference on AIDS.
In between meetings and caring for his nephews, Wilson wages his personal battle
with the disease. Infected with HIV in the early 1980s, he has been living with
AIDS since 1990. He looked on helplessly as his partner of nine years died in
his arms. Twice doctors have summoned Wilson's family and told them he had mere
hours to live. Recently, the activist's viral load has crept up,signs that his
disease is progressing. But he is not bitter, he says, about his own fate. He
had contracted the virus before anyone knew what it was or how to prevent it.
What Wilson lives for now is stopping ignorance from taking more black lives.
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