HIV Prevention And Black Gay Men In 2006:
Changing the focus

World AIDS Day has come and gone and 24 years into the game, we're still trying to figure out the million dollar question "How do we decrease HIV prevalence among Black gay men?" This is a question that researchers and HIV prevention workers have been grappling with for years. So what's the answer? I don't have the magic answer, but I have some thoughts on directions we need to go in if we have any chance of decreasing HIV prevalence among Black gay men. This post is about one area where I think greater attention should be paid as we progress into more effedctive HIV-prevention approaches.

I think that any effective HIV prevention approach must target improving the emotional health and well being of Black gay men. On a daily basis we have to cope with the impact of discrimination and marginilization, including: racism from the heterosexual and gay community; homophobia from the Black community; heterosexist ideologies of larger society, especially from our religious institutions; the violence that threatens to take our lives if we express who we are too flaboyantly and decide to do so outside of our "gayborhoods" to name a few. Dealing with any combination of these things has taken a toll on Black gay men which can be seen in the way we treat each other, the disproportionate amount of alcohol and illicit drug use that occurs among us and the sexual risk we engage in among other things.

I don't say these things as a blanket statement because I realize that there are lots of Black gay men who don't use illicit drugs, or engage in risky sex, but my statements are more about the need to address the mental health and well being of Black gay men. This approach is more easily attainable than trying to uproot racism, heterosexism and homophobia or eradicate economic disparities. They are too pervasive and deep rooted to realistically hope these things will be resolved and then we as Black gay men will automatically feel better about ourselves. A better strategy is to help people cope with these discriminations in a healthier way. Of course some people may like to engage in sexually risky ways or use drugs "just because", but for those who are engaging in these activities to cover pain are the ones we need to save. The needs of Black gay men are much more complex than simply using condoms or telling them that drugs are bad. Interventions need to be rooted in helping people figure out what's driving their unhealthy behaviors. In most instances sexual risk taking and drug abuse are symptoms of larger issues a person is dealing with and until those issues are discovered and dealt with, it's not likely that behavior is going to change.

One of the setbacks in HIV prevention has come with the Bush administration and their bullshit"golden standards" called the ABC's of prevention: A= Abstinence, B= Be faithful, C= use Condoms each and every time. Now those of us who have worked in HIV prevention for more than a day know that these are not the realities of most peoples lives. HIV prevention efforts have been forced into ineffectiveness by a government that won't allow organizations to do programming that will really engage Black gay men into services and if these organizations do things that the current conservative government disapproves of, they lose their funding. This has happened to several HIV service organizations since Bush has taken office. Maybe Kanye West was right when he blasted George Bush on the Katrina telethon when he said that "George Bush doesn't care about Black people". Indeed this country has a history of neglecting the needs of Black folks since it's infancy as a country.

I think the only way we will really be able to do the HIV prevention work that will make a difference for Black gay men is if we have our own source of economics that aren't tied to reliance on government funds. As long as government funds are being used, there will always be restrictions on the work we want to do because the lives of Black gay men are more complex than the scope of the ABC's. Unfortunately relying on government funds is a reality, so we have to at least hope for a less conservative political climate once Bush is out of office. In the meantime we have to figure out ways to save our community, because as Black folks, this isn't the first crisis we have had to deal with. We survived others and we will survive this one, but we have to make it happen and be unapologetic about how we do it.