TheLoop21.com

By: Marvin King (Add to your loop)
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 00:00

AIDS patients rally in California, where state budget woes may cut funding to HIV/AIDS programs.

(Read more about our Stop Black AIDS campaign.)

Earvin "Magic" Johnson deserves kudos for his dedicated efforts fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We should also applaud the efforts of Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, which helps more than 15,000 people in the Big Apple alone cope with HIV/AIDS, and all the Web sites and blogs joining TheLoop21.com in its Stop Black AIDS campaign.

But why is there even a need for so many private efforts to combat HIV/AIDS?"

Two easy answers: the mainstream media and Congress, which, as we all know too well, have never paid as much attention to so-called black issues.

In an ideal world, there would be enough resources to combat these scourges; better yet, there would be no scourges. Regrettably, funding from Congress to fight and prevent one disease often comes at the expense of something else. This is where the mainstream media matters.

HIV/AIDS has always faced a stigma, because of its twin associations with gays and drug users. Lately, blacks have been added to this word association game, and as we've seen before, making something a black thing makes it impossible to gain wide-ranging public support for it, whether we're talking about HIV or anything else.

Even though just as many whites suffer from HIV/AIDS, blacks disproportionately led in contracting HIV/AIDS throughout the last 15 years. The media now portrays HIV as a gay disease and as a black disease.

There are serious consequences of this.

Political scientist Martin Gilens has persuasively shown that in the 1960s media portrayals of poverty helped turn public opinion against the poor because the poor became undeserving. Stories of a man let go from his job of  15 years right before Christmas were invariably accompanied by a picture of a white man, while stories of alleged Food Stamp abuse were habitually accompanied by pictures of a black woman. The result was that the American public viewed the black poor as undeserving and support for programs helping them plummeted.  

The same thing has happened with HIV/AIDS.

The proof is in the numbers.

According to a 2008 Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, funding for all HIV/AIDS related programs has failed to keep up with inflation since 2002. 

In the 1980s, there was clear bipartisan support for studying a new disease, but over time, the congressional commitment to fighting HIV has waned. What is the difference between now and then? The perception that HIV/AIDS is a black disease and that most policymakers are reluctant to be viewed as friendly to HIV victims, lest they be accused of condoning their lifestyle.

Because HIV/AIDS is largely preventable, unlike breast cancer, for example, the public is mostly unsympathetic to the people who suffer from it. Again, this is mostly because of the way the mainstream media have covered the issue for so long.

What's just as important is what the mainstream media have failed to cover — the lack of a strong public health education system, which has created an environment in which misinformation and ignorance thrive. For some reason, we have abstinence-only programs and not nearly enough comprehensive and continuous sex education programs.

As a result, it is ridiculously difficult to increase the number of urban health clinics. Doing these two things would do more to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS than anything else could.

But politicians and many other people aren't concerned with a "black" disease. That is the real racial politics behind AIDS.

Marvin King is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Mississippi and writes the blog King Politics.

What's the best way to prevent HIV/AIDS?

Abstaining from sex

Using condoms every time

Getting tested often

Refraining from drugs/alcohol

I don't know