When AIDS, Race & Politics Collide

A Yale political scientist critiques black leadership

While mobilization of African American academics against the HIV/AIDS epidemic has drawn applause, the performance of Black leaders during the crisis has generated some debate and invited intellectual scrutiny. At least one Black political scientist has found the performance of Black leadership wanting and has documented evidence of it in a book published by the University of Chicago Press.

In "The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics," Dr. Cathy J. Cohen, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University, sees the Black political response to the HIV/AIDS crisis as portending hazard for marginalized groups within the Black community.

Cohen, who has a second Yale appointment as an assistant professor of African and African American studies, argues that as the epidemic began to gain momentum in the 1980s and early 1990s much of the established Black leadership failed to rally around the crisis and seek large-scale government intervention. Government health agencies and the national media also proved inept at responding to the crisis, she says.

That failure resulted from a new political framework arising in Black communities, where traditional consensus issues no longer dominate the political agenda.

Cohen defines consensus issues as those "construed as having an equal impact on all those sharing a primary identity based on race."

Falling in the place of consensus issues are ones the author labels as "cross-cutting."

"Cross-cutting issues are perceived as being contained to identifiable subgroups in Black communities, especially those segments of Black communities which are the least empowered," Cohen writes, adding that Black political advocacy on behalf of poor Black women and Black children has weakened in recent years.

Black HIV/AIDS activists and health professionals have long complained that homophobia and prejudice against gays are leading reasons why socially conservative ministers, elected officials and officials in organizations, such as the NAACP, were initially slow to take up the HIV/AIDS cause.

"I realized there was a lot of misinformation, denial and a lot of homophobia [in the Black community]. And because of that, no one wanted to take ownership of the issue," HIV/AIDS educator Cynthia Davis says of her experiences in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Davis is based with the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles (see story, pg. 18).

That delayed response from government officials and Black leaders contributed to the rapid momentum HIV/AIDS gathered within the Black population, especially among needle-using drug addicts and their sexual partners.

Black women who were sexually involved with drug users and bisexual Black men were at great risk for HIV infection. As a result, pediatric HIV/AIDs cases among Black children born to HIV-infected mothers have skyrocketed this decade.

Mario Cooper, an HIV/AIDS activist and a founder of Harvard University's Leading for Life Campaign, says the inactivity of Black leaders led him to enlist Harvard University officials to launch Leading for Life, an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign targeted at Black leaders and the news media. Cooper has much praise for the book, but adds that he thinks Cohen's "too soft on Black leadership."

Cohen says the idea of analyzing the politics of HIV/AIDS came to her after seeing many of her gay Black male friends struggle with and die of AIDS in the late 1980s. Cohen, who was in graduate school at the University of Chicago at the time, based her dissertation on the subject.

"I saw this strong political reaction from gay White males, but I didn't see that coming from the Black community," she says

Cohen's adviser, Dr. Michael Dawson, a well-known Black political scientist, encouraged her to turn the dissertation into a book. Cohen, who is currently up for tenure at Yale, believes her book will prove useful to political scientists and students of politics because it gives readers a theoretical model for interpreting Black politics in the coming century.

"I think it can help inform us in next crisis and help us to think through tough issues," she says.

RELATED ARTICLE: African Americans and HIV/AIDS

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has wreaked havoc on African Americans. From 1981 to 1997, Blacks made up 35 percent of the 612,078 people diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, almost triple the percentage of Blacks in the general population.

Today, HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among African American men age 25 to 44 and the third leading cause of death among African American women in the same age group.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate between 240,000 and 325,000 African Americans -- roughly one in 50 African American men and one in 160 African American women -- are infected with HIV. Of those, it is estimated that more than 106,000 African Americans are living with AIDS.

RELATED ARTICLE: The AIDS Epidemic Around the World

Despite new treatments and information campaigns, HIV infection and AIDS are growing rapidly around the world.

                                          Adults &      Adults &
                                          Children      Children
                             Epidemic    Living With   Newly
Region                        Started     HIV/AIDS      Infected

Sub-Saharan Africa           late '70s     23.3 mil.     3.8 mil.
North Africa & Middle East   late '80s      220,000       19,000
South & Southeast Asia       late '80s        6 mil.     1.3 mil.
East Asia & Pacific          late '80s      530,000      120,000
Latin America                late '70s      1.3 mil.     150,000
Caribbean                    late '70s      360,000       57,000
Eastern Europe &             early '90s      95,000       95,000
  Central Asia
Western Europe               late '70s      520,000       30,000
North America                late '70s      920,000       44,000
Australia & New Zealand      late '70s       12,000          500

                             TOTAL        33.6 mil.     5.6 mil.

                                         Percent of    Main
                             Adults&     HIV-posi-     Modes of
                             Prevel-     tive Adults   Transmis-
Region                       ence Rate   Who Are       sion(*)
                                         Women

Sub-Saharan Africa               8.0%       55%       Hetero
North Africa & Middle East       0.13       20        IDU, Hetero
South & Southeast Asia           0.69       30        Hereto
East Asia & Pacific              0.07       15        IDU, Hetero,
                                                        MSM
Latin America                    0.57       20        MSM, IDU,
                                                        Hetero
Caribbean                        1.96       35        Hereto, MSM
Eastern Europe &                 0.14       20        IDU, MSM
  Central Asia
Western Europe                   0.25       20        MSM, IDU
North America                    0.56       20        MSM, IDU,
                                                        Hetero
Australia & New Zealand          0.10       10        MSM, IDU

TOTAL                            1.10%      46

(*) MSM - Male to Male Sexual Transmission IDU - Injected Drug Use Hetero - Heterosexual Transmission

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