Posted by
Shogrensus on Friday, March 09, 2007 2:51:37 PM
March 8, 2007
On HIV/AIDS:
Queen Latifah stars in a new movie, Life Support, exploring the struggle of women with HIV/AIDS.
The African American community continues to be hit especially hard by this virus, spread almost exclusively through sexual or drug abusing behavior. Black women are the fasting growing group to acquire the virus.
Interestingly, she doesn’t want to get all political but Latifah takes issue with this administration (remember, everything comes back to “It’s Bush’s fault”) because they don’t want to support groups that don’t strictly preach abstinence to stop HIV/AIDS.
She is right that HIV/AIDS virus doesn’t “care if people are Muslim, Christian, black white, gay, straight- it’s a killer.”
LATIFAH: The virus does care that people engage in irresponsible behavior because that is the only way this virus will survive. The only way to avoid getting HIV from sexual activity is ABSTINENCE!
After an interjection by Elizabeth interrupts Joy’s effort to belittle the abstinence movement, Latifah does acknowledge that abstinence does work but because people are emotional, they will engage in high risk behavior. Therefore we need to educate children and youth about how to engage in irresponsible behavior in the most responsible way possible. Brilliant!
Maybe if more people like Latifah would work harder to empower young girls to stand up for themselves and say no to the boys and men who would ruin their lives for a quick 10 minutes of mostly their own hedonistic pleasure, we could save these young women from not only HIV/AIDS but also the burden of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and the emotional baggage that generally comes from engaging in promiscuous sexual behavior.
It seems true that this is an issue that affects the African American community more than other populations: African Americans comprise approximately 12% of the American population, but just over 50% of people newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2005 were African American. The Hispanic population is approximately 13% of the U.S. population but makes up over 19% of newly identified cases of HIV/AIDS. Contrast this to the Caucasian population, which comprises 70% of the population but only 29% of newly diagnosed cases.
I think that it is possible this is really a crisis tied to socioeconomic status. While I couldn’t find statistics tied to socioeconomic status- which would probably reveal that the transmission rates are probably more equitable when comparing people of the same socioeconomic status- i.e. low income Caucasian women may be just as likely to acquire HIV as low income African American women. There are simply fewer Caucasian women living in poverty, therefore the statistics are possibly slightly skewed.
To get more information on HIV/AIDS please check out the following websites:
For general information on HIV/AIDS:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#aidsage
For data on women with HIV/AIDS:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/women/resources/factsheets/women.htm
For information on transmission to children:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/perinatal/index.htm
A couple of additional points on today’s show:
On American Idol:
Simon has a job to do- tell these people what they need to do to be the stars they hope to become. As these young people argue and act as though Simon is a fool, they are the fools. They should say “Thank you” and do some honest reflection about his comments.
On Bill Clinton and stray dogs:
Joy: Good joke comparing Bill Clinton to a stray dog who always comes back… I love when the libs go where no conservative could, at least not as a host on one of the major networks…