sagaciously is...

Great spot you have here! I watched the special too. The part that touched my heart was the epidemic of the women in that small North Carolina town. WOW! Why haven't we heard about that before now?

Hey Saga.
Well, the long-running epidemic actually has had ongoing publicity here and there. I was living in the D.C. area (before recently relocating to N.C.) and heard about the AIDS/DL problem in the black community particularly among the N.C. colleges.
Then over this summer I saw an article in Newsweek magazine about the way AIDS has been sweeping through small towns in upper N.C. Then here's this "Primetime Live" piece.
Honestly, there is WAY TOO MUCH for me to write here but I will say this. It's frightening as a young woman digesting this information. While I know the media ALWAYS puts spins on things, this here ain't no spin! These folks who were profiled are real and they are dying of AIDS. And, it's also very real that A LOT of black boys/men are not just on the DL but are just freaky deeky, careless, greedy, bored sexually, carrying around masses of unresolved shyt and unfortunately bed hopping with such a load as this on their backsides.

On a lighter note, if there could be one, I find myself, after having arrived here in North Cacky, eyeing sideways every single "brutha", wondering if somewhere deep inside his seemingly masculine self, there's a flowered dress, sugar water, a twist of femininity that would cause him to lay with one of us and then send us to the grave.
It is, indeed, frightening. To say the least. I hate living in paranoia but it comes with LIFE's territory, not just relating to AIDS, yes?

Also, for those who read this...Mosey on over to abcnews.com to the "Primetime Live" link (like I did) and ask/demand for this show to reair with adequate PRE-publicity. While I know there are so many video-ho's, he-WAS-gonna-wear-a-condom-but-I-didn't-want-to-interrupt-him types out there who will see such a program as this, watch it and return to normal-- there are some of us who will hear it and bury it in our psyche and change the way we move through the world sexually.

'Til next time...

At first I thought that this wasn't publicized very well but then I typed in the title of this segment and found that it was listed on a few sites. Whether or not they were frequented by many of us is a different story but still, it was out there. I happen to find out about the story through e-mail and I in turn forwarded it to a few of my associates (I think I have you in my Yahoo address book instead of my primary e-mail address and that's why you didn't get it - correcting that now! :-) ). But whether or not they read the email and tuned in is a different story altogether.


However, I definitely thought it was worth watching and I also feel that it was done very well. As you, I wasn't surprised by the government's response but I was surprised by the level of bullshit answers that came from certain people in our community when asked why they didn't tackle this subject with a vengeance! I was also equally frightened by our plight as Black women. It seems like this epidemic has surrounded us in such away that it's almost screaming to us that our men are killing us. Also, with the absolute dreary prospects that we already have for mates, it's also saying that in order to stay alive we DEFINITELYneed to protect ourselves but also insinuating that not only are "Black men deceiving us and killing us and our kids but we might need to BACK AWAY!"


I dunno. Maybe I'm still a little sensitive and shook from the segment because the instant I finished watching it I wonder why I still persist to want to date Black men when they clearly have so many issues. This coming from a woman who has always wanted to support her Black men but now starting to find less of a reason to do so.Hmmmm... maybe it's just the terror talking!


But Saga, if you think about it, what are our other choices? Unfortunately not many. Because it's not to say that if we "change lanes" and the outside our race that we won't run into these kinds of problems anyway but it's certainly seems that they'll be less of a chance of it. We also have a choice of just keeping to ourselves and find pleasure in other things outside of relationships but everybody knows that human beings need intimacy and interaction and eventually will crave it or be unhappy for lack of it.


But I digress, the bottom line with this piece is that even though the government is ignoring the epidemic in our community and even though the white gay community has drawn a line between them and Black gay America, it looks like we are on our own when it comes to assistance and becoming the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

I heard about it constantly in church. My minister, Calvin Butts was in it so...we were told to watch it.

A couple of years ago I worked on an AIDS seminar with some friends and most of the facts that we discussed were in this doc. I believe that they said somethings that really needed to be said...like the lack of discussing this topic in our community. I don't understand why we fear speaking to our own people and children. That is the only way we have kept our tradition, by oral presentation. *sigh* Hopefully this opened enough eyes that folks will start talking about this.