I was studying at the Columbia Journalism School and, through that, covering an education story in Harlem. A member of the PTA came up and said, "You want a real story, talk to all the kids whose parents are dying of AIDS." My response was, "Wow-- huh?"
Then I started to report it a little bit, and what I found was that AIDS has been disproportionately black since the moment the epidemic began. That was another "wow" moment. We're 18 years into the AIDS epidemic, there have been thousands of stories written, plays, books, movies, and I haven't really heard this. What happened here?
Then as I reported more, I realized that AIDS intersected with crack cocaine, heroin, the black church, the legacy of the civil rights movement, the American South, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the crumbling of Harlem and Oakland [Calif.]. These were things I had always been really confused by, interested in, but always had a hard time wrapping my mind around.
I had been dissatisfied with the culture of racial debate in this country -- it felt very stilted and cautious. Too often it was either always peering backwards at the civil rights movement and these heroic figures and how we overcame 200 years of institutionalized racism, or else painting people in terms of their victimhood, or else, more often -- with most of us, myself included -- there was this sense of caution. As a white person I'm really not supposed to be thinking about or being critical of black people, or really engaging them in any kind of serious debate. And if I do, it's a fairly dangerous road to traverse.
I'm about as white as they come. I'm glow-in-the-dark. And this question dogged me the whole way through: Why are you doing this? Why have you been interested in this subject? Have you been touched by this? Do you have a black friend?
But working on the book not only empowered me to engage with the black community in a way that felt honest and way freer than I ever felt before, it made me feel more comfortable talking to my white well-meaning, liberal friends about race in this open way, which for so long has felt really stilted and uncomfortable. What I found was that more than black people, white people were nervous about me writing this book. You know, "What are you getting at? What are you trying to say?" My agent said, "White people don't get book contracts to write about blacks."
You must read the rest of "AIDS: The black plague," Christopher Farah's interview with Jacob Levenson, author of "The Secret Epidemic," in Salon.com (who we think could use, as always, more subscribers)
posted in articles on March 11, 2004 12:54 AM | t (2)
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Nobody talked about the Black people who died in the early years of AIDS because those who died were mostly Black gay men. Homophobia in Black communities caused many families to bury their children in quiet shame and mysterious explanations. Meanwhile the white gay community, which spoke up aggressively about the virus, failed to recognize or incorporate the needs of Black gays in their advocacy. Only when Black gay men ourselves began to lead the fight for our own lives did people notice we have always led the mortality statistics. Even so, the fight for adequate funding is an uphill struggle.
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