all new infections among blacks but what was surprising is that it's not just men who have sex with men who need to be concerned about hiv. says. i did everything possible to get in this position yeah i wanted that you know the window of my life was facing free so i pretty much got what i was looking for if i'm not mistaken alison pain she community club in any case i think that's where our verse first fell went out when he told me i didn't believe it you know because i had all these s.t.d. is like now. it'll go away. in bed with my thinking about it of all the way but it didn't go away and stanley's response was you know

new now it doesn't need as like i already already you know like ok if i get it i'm like yeah. you know i want to get our. and i probably did go get a had day you know i would not think about it because i know i know my know me so i play and we get home and my dad you know you tell me all head on head along. he want to know who won i would have buying. so many drugs to be to take my calls and name. and i had and you know one time i had to get stats like greece has a week. just like. i think. now be a neighbor and if you don't wish it was you know everything everything is heavy you know you're lazy have you very weak and you still gotta get in get it out to get these three shots a week yeah that's the way i think. i had three blood transfusions

because of the name. so that out was an experience of in the self and after living with hiv for over thirty years if i tell you my story. is that all of it you got to go through. and that's why. everybody's body is different and you know everybody's body is different what i go through you may never go through then again you might go through it twice is worse so don't look at me and say oh yeah i'm opposed to no i'm not opposed to. someone then with h.l.v. . i remember when major magazine said this would never be a heterosexual disease it would always be you know in the in the gay community it would always been the drug community it would now have a spread to they had all sorts of community well that was false but when people

heard that it was like all thank god i'm heterosexual i don't have to deal with i don't have to be worried about this you know this epidemic our investigation reaffirmed that men having sex with men are highly susceptible to contract ing hiv . what we also learned is that straight ahead roe sexual black men are a rising tide in contributing to the growth of this deadly virus take ten percent of the population may be african-american but we make up a much larger percentage of the individuals that infected with hiv the any and it is screwing especially among young people young african-american the centers for disease control have presented strong data showing that youth between ages thirteen to twenty nine are an ever growing population falling prey to

h.i.v. . however we learned of a segment of this group that seems to have gone almost unnoticed youth born with this disease i've heard women use the terminology you know he gave this to me when somebody gave you something it's because you accepted i contracted hiv from this man i was in a relationship with him and we had a child i love my daughter he meant for the i thank him and for whatever reason that god used him in me as a vehicle to bring this challenge to the world h.i.v.'s here the elephant is in the room is what i'm doing with that elephant i no longer. have locked myself into this anger you know look what he did to me. when i burnt spawn thousand entirely positive i was six years old and. it was on my doctor's appointment and you know how they have

a playroom for kids you know when waiting for the doctor and i was in the play room whilst playing and they took my mom out the play room so i guess they were paying for her to tell me my doctor came out the room and he came and picked me up from the plane room and one went into the the room i see my mom and bill of tears so me i'm pulling away from my doctor like mommy i'm still i mean toys equally not i don't know why my mom was crying and she's like most we had just come in and the doctors was like you know your mom want to talk to your so i'm like ok and she just told me she just like blurted out i guess i just passed so like explain that and how she is birches blurted out and so my first question was that oh you're on a diet because i used to hear like a lot of kids in africa dying from a child me an aids so that was my biggest fear that i thought i was going to die they broke down and saw a way that i could understand they you know there's medications out there that's going to take care of you but you're not this is something that's going that you're

going to live with for ever i shared with the school that raising a child impossible i never expected outcome i never expected teachers would have discriminated against or even i never expected that administrators would not have taken the time to learn and understand how this disease is transmitted so they wouldn't discriminate against it. so when i went to school the next day and i had told my own friend i say you know i went to the doctor and my doctor told me that my mom told me that i had hiv and i soon as i said that my teacher she automatically pulled my friend away from me and probably glows around the class so my back to her knowing that i was hiv positive i couldn't go on any class trip she has to put garbage bags around me like if i had to use the bathroom she let me use the bathroom or myself choose to take my school lunch away from me or do so factor me being a child be positive she was abused she was abused by i was school system other

children started harassing gravely and she even got older would to know that adults treated this child the way that she did i mean a child was in catholic school. private schools you would think you know somebody know better they do better that was not the case kids used to make fun of me saying that i have the monster or they used to just that i would get things to me like this one guy used to have really long hair she cut my hair off one day like i was while i was watching a movie in class and all of a sudden i heard says gold. and i just want my and she was like yeah i'm cutting your hair off because you're going to die soon and i just sat there and i love how continue doing it and because i'd just like as i said we've grown up i just felt like you know this is how my life is going to be like everybody just going to make fun of me but everyone did not make fun of her and that the tender age of six trichotomy oprah winfrey and i was a millennium dream at the time that's what made donal's was doing kids that

drilling with any type of onus they would send them my to disney world i went on my show and i was sick at that time i had a fever and i was like oh i'm sick i don't want to sit next to me and she just open mike sweetheart i don't care what you have you're on my shoulder i want you to tell me what what do you go through in like this remember me saying in talking to oprah and she was just crying my mother just start crying because man just telling everybody i'm having a child being. always sick and i told them i'm done oprah just like well how about if i suddenly disney world or something and hope i didn't move on then when they always wanted to go there and i. hope with them into disney world i confronted her dad he said to me ain't life ain't life a bit. you know how long i've been living with this he called me and he was a spike while he was on the show why did you tell people to eat i'm positive you

shouldn't do that how do you think i'm going to look so is like who says like one though he just as i when he hears asked why it's not on the magazine or science on the he'll just get upset like he's not supportive of why though as raven grew into her teens life with her mom became strained they took thirteen i always tell people i did try taking my life away my mom started making really auguring and make isis i get really mad i have it was just it was a lot to me at that i say my teenage years was like my most of. my cancer isn't like sixteen seventeen i had to make realize like you know even. your mom didn't do something but you know she didn't know at the time and i had to realize i had to put my family sense into this like. i was born with that i did x.

that is you know i can't be mad at my mother what can she do you know let me make make it make your future better don't don't look beyond the path i don't look at a child we as a bad thing in my and of other youth in raven's age group who are planning to contract in h i v. the reaction of people what they're going to think of. the stigma that's the main one i think of the stigma that's why a lot of young kids the scary think it tested me that they discussed being on stuff like that but i'm talking as they young because i'm still in the young generation that you know and that's the that's what the big al biggest problem is that you know people accepting us and in a statement. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then something else you

hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charged welcome to the big picture. mission to. critique a should be free. for charges free from a humanist free. free. free. download free blog just plug in video for your media projects and free media oh god our t.v. dot com you. hear the reindeer isn't everything for the burger. and when it suffers. people do their best to help. but the distances are. on the roads are. predictable.

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african americans have having me two major spots of the family in the church to address whatever crisis they are going through because the church was the place that sent us historically the collets the church was the place of you had the illness the church of god called and supports you you know of someone died and you can depend on the church to come and bring the food you know to me come in bring whatever you need even help me to bury your loved ones you know i mean that was the church of you whatever you didn't have the chance of going to come in and fill that gap for you. but when needs first black america most family members were caught off guard those two points those points of comfort were not quite there you know thank god some people had great family support. most families back then did not know what he was they were afraid you know there was not

a lot of information there was not a myth so we have that myth that it's not part of me i'm not gay i'm not a lesbian oh i'm a lesbian i can't catch it. i'm not in that age group i can't catch it yes it is it's it's it's in the house many victims of h i v and aids were shunned by close family members and when they turned to the church to head behead the stigma that initially applied to. anybody willing to come forward without fearing that they would be attacked especially by religious leaders the church you know was caught up in this is a homosexual disease and you know if you know again you're going to hell and we not going to you know we're not going to address that that he was so important for the black church to be there for the truth. because of the black church did not want to

accept it because you're a gay or begins each i mean instead of a bigger sort of impact in that if you're not then allowed to potentially good that church has. been known effective jeter that effected your mother your onto your brothers your sisters because they then also felt like maybe they you know me were part of that being a child so in the beginning it's a gay white man's disease black folks it's not our issue really when people were dying left and right by nineteen eighty six african-americans accounted for twenty five percent of those infected with hiv causes for this rapid increase were disproportionately low response at the national state and local levels adding to these external factors was the growing stigma surrounding this infection. unlike many other communities when somebody. an african-american has each and that person essentially says the sense into. silence by family members and local clergy

bound by fears and denial only strengthened the growing prejudice against those infected with hiv every black family has someone who has been addicted to drugs or alcohol as someone who was gay you know so that wasn't a new phenomenon what was new was that we were not about to talk about it in public i had a minister the said to me it's a rule reverend cheeks. homosexuality i don't have that problem in my church i said a problem. and i said how because should charge we think we see twelve hundred people as a so and twelve hundred people and easily to say that ten percent of the population this gay and lesbian and you don't see anybody so you don't have anybody in your choir you don't have anybody on your deacon board on your ministerial staff on you in your administrative office no way you don't see no one gay and as i understand homosexuality and drug addiction are two taboos that were well entrenched within

the black family but almost never openly discussed. aids in the black family added one more tip to subject to be consciously ignored the many times i would preach a sermon call for a family and that would have the family come and say you cannot say that he was gay or you cannot say that he died of aids you can say doubt of cancer but they can you can say he died of aids are you kidding me all of the whole community no. so the way i used to give a round that was i would have remarks come first and of course people would get up and say well i knew when he first got infected and the family would get i say i've never said a word as it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about it. we explored internal factors that led to the early growth in the aids epidemic in black america while doing so we learned that silence fear

and denial so evident back then as undergone little more than cosmetic changes thirty one years later. lulu close . and i have quite a few friends that were raised in a church you know i had lots in a church service and then so quite a few churches visiting but it was something that i just didn't see. in my spirit and still to come to. enjoy the music but a lot of the other rituals just didn't sink in as i became older and found all the way islam was the only way that i knew and if they said i need to go back to what i

sometimes feel it's leave something a little more religiously grounding. from my understanding there isn't anything in the koran actually says about homosexuality being gay it's just a lot of the other. laws govern by the sharia law as you know things that were not a part of the sort of what the profit were practice. where it goes into homosexuality. it being a sin. of when i first found out i was positive. like i said i really didn't think it would be possible i was doing a student teaching and i want all my lunch break to get my answers to get the results. and when i walked out today and they said i was positive it was like i was livin in a fog. but i was in a daze. and i went

back to work like nothing had ever happened but it did it devastate i didn't know where to turn to talk to. how to tell family. i was lost. it was my mother father and we were any kitchen. and my husband says oh hi how are you what's going on and they say nothing you know i had him with me there as well when it's all you know i need you guys to this is one involved with it in a mother was cooking we came in and he said he wanted to talk and he came in and my husband came in. he told us he had something to say to us and its own that i was a positive this is why i'm in a relationship with my mother started crying and my father being the man he is asking so it is me your dresses and i bring you little he said out of the said

mother was going out and just life floored me that started the whole argument and i just walked out you know that put a big strain on the relationship. is different it's better than it was there isn't a whole lot of conversation or close to none conversation about my sexuality me being gay or maybe n.h.l. be positive. washington d.c. carries the distinction of being ground zero for having the highest h.i.v. infection rate in america all of d.c. has an epidemic because there are unusual consolation as not being a state not even be in city where a cut out all of d.c. is that in them an epidemic level but d.c. is not so unique when compared to other major cities across the nation if you

compare metro d.c. that is diminished did the disk of columbia and its suburbs metro d.c. with metro philadelphia metro chicago metro miami were about the same there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives city d.c. is one of those twelve cities. we spoke to medical professionals concerning the disproportionate rise of hiv aids in the black community you ask forty five to fifty percent of the community deadness with the disease and we know how to prevent it by the way african-americans are more likely to get tested in any other ethnic group more likely to get to know we get tested we always go for the results but we always don't get into care particularly in rural graphical remote areas we tend to have a physician or a clinician who has graduated from school or from college you know ten fifteen years ago when have

a hard to treat persons or interview positive because it was all you remember the infectious disease physicians who treated so they still don't treat and they still don't know and they are not willing to. what is the level of hiv training provided for medical professionals the majority of the local hospitals and doctors offices within the district of columbia i think staff physicians nurses ancillary personnel understand that this is not a disease of casual contact so that you go in the hospitals now you don't see red bags outside of the door you don't see signs up there of isolation just because a person is a positive you may see it up there for a host of other reasons but not for being impossible. it would seem that this heightened awareness of medical professionals would lead to earlier detection of new age hiv patients six to two percent of patients who actually come into care are

diagnosed with aids within a year of being tested positive for hiv let me see that again within a year of a diagnosis of hiv over six to two percent of those patients are diagnosed with aids those patients the majority of them were receiving medical care what it means then is that the clinicians the physicians physician assistant nurse practitioner advance practitioners pharmacists dentists did not know the clinical manifestations of the disease or didn't pay attention. of those who can afford medical care it appears that many medical practitioners are not adequately trained in detecting the early signs of hiv or may simply choose not to treat such patients nobody worries about being positive with syphilis and or nobody even thinks twice about most herpes infections but h.i.v. seems to carry

a burden. that we just can't explain. this fear seems to be borne of not just the general public but among medical practitioners as well we had i had an opportunity to speak with some young physicians. just finishing up residence and a group of them were talking at a meeting we were at recently and to ask them both is each of you being taught in your in your program and told them said to us you know when we're at the hospital do notation and these are residents getting ready to go to become full fledged physicians to sit in a little one of when those patients are not are positive ok clinicians clinicians with home hiv has been around all of them. and we were stunned when one young woman talked about being in the clinic. and a patient was each of you visited some cookies and it should be. going to another of the police went in front of us said to her did you people say to be positive.

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me that a little. i've . been.