Reclaiming Our Future: The State of AIDS Among Black Youth in America

January 9, 2005
CHAPTER ONE: Intertwined Epidemics – Living in an Environment of Risk

It was, perhaps, the defining moment of 2004 for Black America. Entertainment giant Bill Cosby took to the podium at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and lashed into poor African Americans. In Cosby’s eyes, the civil rights movement’s work has been wasted, because the community’s “lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.” As proof, he cited repeated examples of the debased state of Black youth. “People putting their clothes on backwards: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong?” Cos asked, later answering, “The white man, he’s laughing.”

Cosby’s controversial remarks touched off a firestorm of debate within the Black community about the state of Black youth culture. Some argued he was scapegoating and—as Michael Eric Dyson pointed out in a follow-up book—that he was doing so while abusing the facts about things like drop-out rates and teen pregnancy.1 But few argued with the basic truths that drove Cosby’s frustrated outburst: Black youth are in a state of crisis

When we think of the multiple challenges African American youth face, many of our minds rightly turn to mass incarceration, failing public school systems and an economy without living wage jobs. Clearly, our community’s young people are disproportionately affected by these and other social ills. Together, they dim our children’s horizons, limit their opportunities and, broadly, make their pursuit of happy, healthy lives more difficult—and in some cases impossibly daunting.

But in the following pages we will highlight another side effect of this broad crisis that we have too often overlooked. Ultimately, these collected forces have added up to make Black youth the new face of AIDS in America.

The Time is Now! – The State of AIDS in Black America

January 2, 2005

Just being aware of a threat is only the first step in confronting it. In order to interrupt the devastation that HIV has had in African American communities, we must also understand the political and social forces that help shape the epidemic—as well as our nation’s response to it.

The Time Is Now! explains, in plain language, both the history of those forces and the challenges that lay ahead. It begins with the public care and treatment system that policymakers and activists worked together to create in the early stages of the epidemic, explaining how that system works and walking readers through the challenges it now faces.

The report then highlights the most pressing prevention challenges for the Black community. It identifies the recurring barriers to stopping HIV’s spread in our neighborhoods, and discusses how political factors both inside and outside of our community have frustrated the search for solutions.

As with all of our publications, this report speaks not merely to AIDS experts, but to those members of our community who may have just become aware of the problem and now need information on how and where to get involved. Getting this information out, and getting African Americans involved, has never been more crucial.

Each year, the epidemic worsens in Black neighborhoods, and each year the national commitment to interrupting its spread and keeping those already infected healthy further lags. For Black America, the moment of truth has arrived. If we are to survive the AIDS epidemic, we are going to have to gather all of our resources and marshal them for the political struggles that lay ahead.