Thursday, February 07, 2008
Today, get smart, get tested
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
Shanna Flowers
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If the Super Bowl hadn't dragged during the second and third quarters, Marquita Clements wouldn't have gotten bored. And if she hadn't gotten bored, she wouldn't have flipped away to the Lifetime channel and watched "Girl Positive."
And if the movie about a high school girl infected with the deadly AIDS virus hadn't jolted Clements, the young black woman wouldn't have stopped by Roanoke's Drop-In Center just before closing Tuesday for an HIV test.
"I watched a Lifetime movie," she said. "It was awesome."
Then added the 23-year-old college student who said she requires her partner to wear a condom, "I've never been tested."
I want to stress that testing at the Drop-In Center is always confidential, but Clements agreed to speak with me. Her test was negative.
On this, National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Clements' decision to get tested should be modeled by black people who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend AIDS is a gay white man's disease.
It surfaced there. Thirty years later, it's everybody's disease.
HIV doesn't care if a person is gay or straight, man or woman, married or unmarried, young or old. It doesn't care about skin color.
But it has hit hard in the black community.
To create greater awareness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with a coalition of seven national organizations today are putting the spotlight on the disease. They are urging blacks to get tested, get educated and get involved. And if they are living with HIV -- get treated.
The Drop-In Center is conducting free tests today from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Participants will receive a $5 gift card from Wal-Mart.
"HIV is so under the radar these days," said Pam Meador, director of the Drop-In Center.
The message of "safe sex" has lost its resonance with young blacks who weren't even alive or were too young to notice when basketball star Magic Johnson scared the bajeeb out of me and my contemporaries with the announcement of his diagnosis.
America needs a refresher on AIDS -- and blacks need to be seated in the front row.
According to the CDC, blacks account for about half -- 49 percent -- of people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. AIDS is the leading cause of death among U.S. blacks between the ages of 25 and 34.
In 2005, black men in Virginia were nine times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV and AIDS than white men. The HIV rate among black women in Virginia is about four times that of white women.
Being black doesn't put a person at risk for HIV, but experts attribute the population's vulnerability to several social factors specific to many black neighborhoods.
Those factors include poverty, substance abuse and men cycling through the prison system, where the rate of HIV is estimated to be eight to 10 times that of people on the outside.
Yet as a group of people, we're reluctant to acknowledge the disease that literally is killing us.
Black churches and families don't want to address the cultural dictums that influence the behavior contributing to the rise in HIV infections.
Meador sees how the stigma of being a gay black man has forced many of them to live lies, putting themselves and others at risk.
"They can't be who they are because of the culture, because of their moms or because of their churches," she said.
From childhood, black girls need to be taught it's OK for them to say "no" and stand up for themselves.
"If girls don't start respecting themselves and putting a worth on their sexuality, they're going to end up with HIV," Meador said passionately.
"You can't let some boy talk you into having sex without using a condom. You can't watch some guy stick a needle in his arm and then have sex with him."
Clements said she gets an annual medical exam. She said that she gets a full blood work-up and assumed that HIV was part of that. It isn't. So as a smart health consumer, she knew she should get tested.
The young woman who has a degree in health sciences and is getting a certification in physical therapy training said she has never had unprotected sex.
"I love myself too much for that."
You go, girl.
Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
