path to start this strange new disease affecting healthy young americans looks like this a period between the first outbreak of a summer night hundred eighty one and i today five not only were people coming down with a it's and dying and so forth but nobody knew who had it or who difficult now more than thirty years since its arrival the face of aids looks like this but the social stigma of this disease lingers persons get educated who but in the back of their mind a.t.v. may still be a little dirty secret the biggest part of this little secret is its growth across black america is that in a sense gotten a hold in the african-american community it's it's it's is right here is that spreading out that way despite in the african-american community a collective silence has enabled it to spread across gender and sexual orientation

african-americans tend to have sex with african-americans it's black men and black men usually it's black men and black women usually spreading death among ourselves. both black men down and women are at much greater risk of getting age i.v. compared to their white counterparts youth as well as adults. we began our investigation by looking at men who account for seventy percent of all new infections among blacks but what was surprising is that it's not just men new have sex with men who need to be concerned about hiv. so. i did everything

possible to get in this position you know i wanted you know the way i did my life was famous and free so i pretty much got what i was looking for if i'm not mistaken with him p g community clone and i think that's where our verse first fell in doubt when he told me i didn't believe it you know because i had always s.t.d. this is like now. is a cool way he had a. bet with my thinking about it it will way but it didn't go away and stanley's response was you know me now. like i already already you know i was like ok if i get it i'm like yeah. you know i want to get. and i probably did go get a had day you know i would not think about it because i know i know i 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 you want i would have buying. so many drugs that he did you take my calls to me. and i had a name and at one time i had to get stats like three times a week. just like. i've been. on that be a neighborhood if you only should you know everything everything is heavy you know your legs they have you very weak and you still gotta get in get it out to hit the street shot so we yeah and that's the way i think. i had three blood transfusions because of it you know. so they dealt with an experience both 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 it's like. 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 not opposed to. someone then with a steady. 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 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 heterosexual black men are a rising tide in contributing to the growth of this deadly virus take hundred 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 he's a 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 three i thank him and for whatever reason that god use him and 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 my parents spawn thousand each i repotted i was six years old and. it was on my doctor's appointment and you know how they have a play room for kids no one waiting for the doctor and i was in the play room whilst playing and they took one mom out the play room so i guess there is hope for her to tell me my doctor came out the room and he came and picked me up from the playroom and when we went into the the room i see my mom and pillows clears

so me i'm pulling away from my doctor like mom and 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 serious i'm like ok and she just told me she just like blurted out i guess i just passed so like stand up and how she is birches blurted out and so my first question was that always 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 both advance the 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 the age had to pass and i never expected and. 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 is just so when i went to school the next day and i had told my arm 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 put up a glows around the classroom and undo sort of back to her knowing that i was a child cry. as if i couldn't go on in crash to put garbage bags around me like if i had to use the back don't use the bathroom or myself choose to take my school lunch away from me although the fact that me being a child be positive she was abused she was abused by our school system other children started harassing rave and she even got older we to know that adults treated this child the way the cheated on minute 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 charm and i just want my and she was like yeah i'm cutting your hair up 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 when growing 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 at 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 dealing with any type of onus they would send a mike to disney world i went on his 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 and like i just remember me saying man talk to oprah and chooses crying my mother just start crying because men just telling everybody i'm having a child being i'm always sick and i told them i'm done oprah just like well how about if i send you to disney world or something and hope i didn't move on a moment they always wanted to go there in. oprah's send me to 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 just like why he was on the show why did you tell people to eat i'm positive shouldn't do that how do you think i'm going to look so it's just like who says like one though he just is by when he hears your thought on the magazine also and on the he'll just get upset like he's not supportive of. when i had them 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 me my mom started like really arguing and like isis thank it really matter had it was just it was a lot to me at that i say my teenage years was like my most of last year. and i got to the age of like sixteen seventeen i had to make realize like you know even. your mom then do something but you know she didn't know at the time and i had to realize i had that put my family sense into this like. i was born with that and 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 h.l.v. as a bad thing anymore and my and of other youth in raven's age group who are prone to

contract in h i v. the reaction of people what they're going to think of. this big mom that's the main one i think of the stigma that's why a lot of young kids it's good to get tested maybe on publicly that they discuss going on stuff like that but i'm talking as they young because i'm still in the young generation that you know it that's the that's what the big biggest problem is that you know people accepting us and in a statement. with

i would. choose. the stories but in. truth.

the americans have had to me to spot some of the family in the church to address what i have a 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 chance of going come and support you you know of someone died 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 if you would have you didn't have that chance of going to come in and fill that gap for you. but when the first black america. 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 a child v. and aids were shunned by close family members and when they turned to the church to

have have the stigma that initially applied to. anybody willing to come forward. they would be attacked as racially by religious leaders the church you know was caught up in this is a homosexual disease and you know it's you know again you know going to hail and we're not going to you know we're not going to address that that he was so important for the black church to be for the truth. because of the black church did not want to accept you because you were gay or begins each i mean instead of a bigger sort of impact in that if you were not then allowed to potentially good that church has been known effective jeter but if it did your mother your onto your brothers your sisters because they then also felt like maybe they were part of that being the child so in the beginning it's a gay white man's disease black folks it's not out 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 is sent to the sisters of the sentence into. silence by family members and local clergy bound by fears into an oil 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 phenomena 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 cheek. homosexuality i don't have that problem in my church i said a problem. i said how because the church we think we see twelve hundred people as a soul in twelve hundred people and easily does 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 out 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 then the family would get us out never said a word that 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 has undergone little more than cosmetic changes thirty one years later. lulu will obey

. and i have quite a few friends that were raised in a church you know i had lots in the church service 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 the new place that i needed to go back to what i needed something spiritually something a little more religiously grounding. from the same day isn't anything in the koran actually says of homosexuality being gay it's just a lot of the other. laws govern by the sharia laws you know things that don't have a lot of the some of what the profit will practice. where it goes into

homosexuality. it being missing. the point 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 he 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 me you know and he's you guys to this is what i'm involved with in a mother was cooking we came in 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 i told that i was a positive this is who i'm in a relationship with a mother started crying and my father being a man and he is asking so what does it mean. dresses and they bring the little he set up the days it was going on and just life floored me that started the whole argument and i just walked out you know that put a big strain on our 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 in a 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 out of 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 the midst 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 our community be diagnosed with the disease and we know how to prevent it by the way african-americans are more likely to get tested in a group more likely to get to get tested for the results but we always don't get into care particularly in rural. 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 i had to cheat persons or interview positive because it was all you remember the infectious disease physicians were treated so 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 and 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 positive. 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 testing positive for hiv let me see that again within a year of a diagnosis of. over sixty two percent of those patients are diagnosed with those patients the majority of them were receiving medical care what it means then is that the clinicians the physicians physician assistant nurse practitioner advanced practice nurse pharmacists dentist did not know. all 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. nobody even thinks twice about most herpes in sections but h i.v. seems to carry a burden that we just can't explain. this fear seems to be borne in not just the general public but among medical practitioners as well we had and i had an opportunity to speak with some young physicians. just finishing up residence and a group of them were talking with a meeting we were at recently and asked a load 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 a t. shirts and these are residents getting ready to go to become full fledged physicians to sit in a little one of windows patient's room that are positive ok you know clinicians clinicians with whom each of you has been a room all their life. 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 leaves right in front of us said to her did you get any positive cookies.

play. live. play. play. play i am i.

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