About 150 black and Latino women broke their silence about HIV/AIDS during an elegant and intimate discussion over dinner and dessert on Nov. 5 at the Japanese American Cultural Center in the Little Tokyo district on the northeastern edge of Downtown Los Angeles.
Tony Wafford, National Health and Wellness Director for the National Action Network, hosted the invitation-only dinner. It featured professional women, community leaders, and expert activists who are working to educate and inform women and girls in their communities on the causes, implications, and treatments for HIV/AIDS.
The dinner also served as the kickoff to "Breaking the Silence," a daylong conference on how black and Latino women can take care of themselves while building healthy relationships with men. The conference was held at King Drew Medical Magnet High School on Nov. 7.
"One really important thing I always want people to know about this topic in particular is that, although 1 out of 4 women in the U.S. are black and Latino, 4 out of 5 HIV cases are black and Latino. It doesn't mean that we're all infected or anything like that. It just means that among the HIV cases, we're way overrepresented," said Nina Harawa, Ph.D., a faculty member at Drew University and a convener of "Breaking the Silence."
Harawa said the more important theme of the event was the call for women to become more honest with themselves about potential risks that occur within relationships.
"Often times we might get caught up in whether someone has cheated on us, and we might get mad or think about that other person, but we don't necessarily think about what this means for our health," she said.
Harawa moderated the evening's panel discussion, which also included actress Sheryl Lee Ralph ("Divas Simply Singing!"); Camila Crespo and Tania Rodriguez (PALS for Health); Pam Yelsky (Women at Risk); Brenda Stone Browder (author of "On the Up and Up," which details how she survived being married to J.L. King, a man on the down low); and activist Yolanda Salinas ("Latinas Living with HIV/AIDS").
During their "Herstory of Women and HIV" presentation, Crespo and Rodriguez gave an HIV/AIDS infection timeline that documented how the rates among women have grown. The two provide training in language competency, cultural sensitivity, and HIV information, but about four years ago they discovered that information specifically about women and HIV was missing.
"We became very frustrated because what we were seeing in the clinics and out in the community wasn't what we were being taught," Rodriguez said. "The Centers for Disease Control was reporting (in 1981) that non-homosexual folks were not at apparent danger to contracting HIV, and actually during that time, AIDS was referred to as GRID, which was Gay Related Immune Deficiency, so that name in itself was already excluding women, because women didn't consider themselves in this category, and therefore didn't consider themselves being at risk."
Buy 1988, however, women were named the fastest-growing population with HIV.
Ralph gave a rendition of R&B and jazz artist Diane Reeves' "Endangered Species" before she admonished everyone to raise their voices louder against the AIDS pandemic. Five years ago, she began touring the country with a show she wrote called "Sometimes I Cry," which highlights women's real stories wrapped around HIV/AIDS.
"The change that we need to see around this disease begins with each and every one of us, Ralph said. "Infected or affected, if you are living and breathing on this planet, it's our issue. 1 out of 4 young women across America, every color, every race, every culture, has been diagnosed to be already infected with a sexually transmitted disease. When the CDC can make that announcement and we still remain silent, then we get the results that we deserve."
Wafford said there's clearly common ground between black and Latino women, "because when we talk about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the women's issues are so parallel, so similar in that they don't talk about it as our women don't talk about it."
In response, he created NAN's I Choose Life campaign, which is a five-year, five-state campaign that partners with social, civic and civil rights organizations and the medical community to address five major interrelated health concerns and disparities facing the African American community: HIV/AIDS (STDs), diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, mental health and obesity.
"My goal is to engage and encourage black men to get involved because it's up to us to rescue and reconstruct ourselves and save our sisters," Wafford said. "We can't claim to be fathers and husbands and protectors of our community and our families and our wives if we're afraid to talk about HIV and AIDS."
Another way to reduce the number of infections among black and Latino women is to take the message directly to the youth, according to Joandrea Reynolds, founder of End to Begin-ings, a grassroots organization that provides education to female youth.
"We need to go to where they are and come down to their level," Reynolds said. "We need to speak to them and not at them at their schools, libraries, any public forums where we know the youth and adolescents will be because we know they are the future. They are the ones that are going to be affected by this disease as it's spreading so rapidly, so we have to go find them."
Charlene Muhammad is a writer for the L.A. Watts Times.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.
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