MINNEAPOLIS (NNPA) – Phill Wilson watched painfully as HIV/AIDS was dismissed by African-Americans in the early 1980s as a disease primarily afflicting gay men. Now, a quarter of a century later, African-Americans, who are 12 percent of the U.S. population, account for nearly half of all new HIV infections, a rate seven times that of whites.Wilson, CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV/AIDS think tank in the United States focused exclusively on African-Americans, says there were several reasons Blacks were so slow to grasp the severity of the threat to Black America.
“We started in a bad place,” Wilson said in an interview before addressing the annual convention of the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA). “We started with the conventional wisdom that AIDS was about white gay men. So we got a free get out of jail card – it was about white people. If I am honest, I was included in that group.
“Secondly, it was about gay people and for most African Americans, that means that it was not about us. Thirdly, we already had a full plate. AIDS really hit in 1980 to 1982 and we were dealing with unemployment, we were dealing with poverty, we were about to deal with welfare reform. There were all these issues that we were busy with. So this was an issue that we didn’t want to be a part of and we could make the excuse that all these other issues were more important.”
In the early 1980s, there were no Hollywood celebrities adopting HIV/AIDS as their pet projects. For Blacks, confronting the issue of HIV/AIDS, there were also other considerations.
“There is an increased reluctance to take on any other possibility to be further stigmatized,” Wilson explained. “So, ‘I’m not willing to take on the banner of homosexuality and I’m not willing to take on the banner of drug use and I’m not willing to take on the banner of having a deadly disease.’”
Wilson began taking up those banners when he helped organize a candlelight vigil for AIDS victims in Los Angeles during the early stages of the epidemic. The issue became personal when Wilson, who is openly gay, learned in 1980 that he was HIV positive. His partner died of AIDS nine years later.
Unlike many Blacks, Wilson does not believe that homophobia is any worse among African-Americans than whites. However, he says, the rejection is much more painful.
“For Black and gay lesbians, we need our community to protect us against the bias of racism. Where do I go when I am called a nigger? I go to our church. I go to my mama and pappa – that’s where I go.
“But when I’m called a faggot, I don’t got anywhere else to go,” Wilson said, intentionally selecting his words for impact. “And particularly if the people who are calling me a faggot are my mommy, my daddy and my church.”
Wilson said white gay men have a different reality.
“When you are a white gay man, you’re still a white man and all of the privileges that go with being a white man are delivered to you,” he explained. “When I am a Black gay man, at the end of the day, I still have to be a Black man in America.”
Wilson not only lives with the marginalization of being gay, he also has to live with being HIV positive. That means taking powerful drugs every day with powerful side effects, including making him feel tired and nauseous.
“There are challenges you have to address and it’s not a matter of taking a pill and going on with your life,” Wilson explained. “You don’t go on with your life, you manage life. There is something profound about knowing that this disease is going to be with you forever.”
He isn’t the only one forever affected by HIV/AIDS
“AIDS doesn’t just happen to an individual,” Wilson stated. “It happens to me, it happens to my mother, it happens to my father, it happens to my aunt who’s in the missionary society, it happens to my other aunt who’s on the nursing board, it happens to my uncle who’s a minister and it happens to my cousin who’s a choir director. It happens to all of us.”
That includes other segments of the Black community as well. Black women, for example, represent 61 percent of all new HIV infections. According to the CDC, 80 percent were infected while having sex with men and 20 percent through injected drug use. Blacks 13-19 years old represent only 16 percent of teens in the U.S., but account for 69 percent of new AIDS cases.
Still, Wilson remains optimistic.
“I’m more optimistic now around mobilizing Black folks around HIV than every before,” he said. “I think we’ve made tremendous stride and our institutions across the board are at a different place than they were. They are not where we need them to be, but I think in many ways, we’re poised to really dramatically change the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic in America.
Many credit Wilson; Pernessa C. Seele, founder and CEO of the Balm in Gilead, a national organization that helps churches become more supportive of people with HIV/ AIDS; C. Virginia Fields, president of the National Leadership Commission on AIDS and her predecessor, Debra Fraser-Howze, and others with forcing the Black community to confront the AIDS epidemic.
“Black institutions were accused of not caring and what I discovered was that isn’t true,” Wilson said. “What was true is that Black institutions didn’t know – part of it was because they didn’t want to know – but nevertheless, they didn’t know. Number 2, they didn’t know how to respond and Number 3, they didn’t have the resources to respond.”
Wilson organized Black AIDS activists and they urged the CDC to provide additional funding to African-American groups eager to educate and mobilize their community around HIV/AIDS issues. The result was the announcement of a five-year domestic “Act Against AIDS” campaign that resulted in 14 Blacks organizations, including the NNPA, being awarded grants to hire an AIDS coordinator to expand their work.
Wilson realizes that he has already established a legacy and knows how he wants to be remembered.
“I think that I would want people to remember that I never gave up,” he said softly. “Everyone has their trigger. That’s what I am most fearful of, they will give up.”
Not only has Wilson not given up, he doesn’t waste time feeling sorry for himself.
“I am glad that I have purpose and focus,” he reflected, with tears welling in his eyes. “A lot of folks go through their entire life without purpose or focus. I’m grateful for that. I’m glad that I get to try every single day to make the world a better place. There are lots of days when, obviously, you don’t succeed. But there’s something magical about getting up in the morning and saying – and I do this every single morning – getting up in the morning and saying I need to try to make the world a better place.”
Insightnews.com