If Black people are going to devise an appropriate and effective response to the AIDs crisis, we're going to have to look at things ACCURRATELY, without using hyperbole, junk math and ignoring the facts.

75-80% of all new AIDs cases among women (According to you) doesn't translate into 80% of Black Men being on the DL. Furthermore, making such a claim simply creates MORE tension between Black Men and Black Women and breeds ignorance that prevents people from addressing the true nature of the problem.

In fact, despite the fact that HIV transmissions are high within the homosexual population, not all homosexuals have AIDs and homosexual activity (or contact with someone who has engaged in such) isn't the only way people get HIV.

According to the CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/facts/afam.htm

In 2003 there were roughly 16,000 new cases of HIV amongst Blacks & 21,000 diagnoses of AIDs and 172,000 of us living with AIDs, since there are over 35 million of us in the country - that means that less than 1/2 of 1 % of us have AIDs.

See, people hear that Blacks make up X% of HIV infections and start getting crazy and applying that data to mean X% of us have HIV, instead of realizing that it's a % of infections, which in turn is a small % of the overall population.

There is also some data there about transmission categories - and yes, 50% of Black Men who get HIV receive it via male to male sexual contact. But nearly 45% of them receive it via injection drug use, heterosexual sex and "other" causes.

Now let's consider that not all homosexual men have AIDs and not all men who engage in homosexual activity sleep with women as well and let's think for a few minutes:

Who is more likely to be sleeping with women?

A Man who gets HIV via heterosexual contact/drug use/other means, who then passes it on to another woman?

A Man who gets HIV via homosexual contact?

Let's also consider that since 2/3 of Black Babies are born to unwed mothers, that Black people don't use protection, meaning that our rates of STD transmission are going to be much higher than other groups. It's not accident that the rates of out of wedlock births by race, roughly relate to the rates of STD transmission by race.

80% is just a hyperbole number provided by the chicken littles, it does little to address root causes of the problem (Infidelity, Lack of protection/safe sex) and it just creates tension between Black Men and Women.

There is no such thing as "DL Brothas" - they're called Closeted Gay Men, it happens all the time in the white community, happened to the families of some childhood friends of mine and they give White Women HIV too.

The biggest difference is that IMO they're more likely to use protection, as they're obviously much more likely to use protection with women.


Peace,









M2