Michael, a member from the live audience, seized his opportunity to have a "teachable moment" about AIDS on national television. With a diplomat's tact, Michael told BET anchor and town meeting moderator, Cheryl Martin, in response to her question about how he contracted AIDS that the mode of transmission was not important, the fact that he was living and coping with HIV is.
Rashaad Burgess, sadly enough, didn't have a teachable moment of his own. Burgess is the director of the Chicago Department of Health's MOCHA 2000, a capacity building project among community-based organizations serving gay men of color.
Burgess asked, "How do we as African Americans ensure that our mobilization efforts are inclusive to Black gay men?" There were no Black gay men on the on the panel, held July 19 in downtown Chicago.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, now President of the Morehouse University School of Medicine, and the former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, were the only men on the panel. Sullivan had to leave due to other commitments about halfway through the broadcast. Keith Boykin, a nationally known Black gay leader, was in the audience. Jim Harvey, who also has worked with Black men's groups around the country on HIV issues, was also in the audience.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the venerable tele-evangelist for social justice and human rights, reached out electronically with a live broadcast over the Black media powerhouse Black Entertainment Television ( BET ) during a town meeting devoted to looking at AIDS in the African American community. Questions from the audience came by phone and the Internet. An estimated 400 people were in the live audience. The town meeting was part of the annual Rainbow/Push Conference.
Rainbow/Push volunteers warned that the doors of the subterranean ballroom at Chicago's Hyatt Regency on Wacker Drive would soon close as we landed on escalators going down two levels. That evening, a Jackson-related event started and ended on time. Good thing I hadn't relied on my previous public event experiences of late starts with Jackson. I crossed Michigan Avenue with Test Positive Aware's Charles Clifton with just enough time to spare to reach the hotel. Clifton is researching Chicago's Black gay community's history and directs a program at TPAN that works with Black men.
AIDS in the Black community is indisputably on the African American public agenda due to the collaboration between the Rainbow/Push Convention and BET. Since the earliest days of the AIDS pandemic there have been African Americans who felt as if they were witnessing the equivalent of a train wreck that they knew was going to happen but couldn't stop. The wreck that was two decades in coming has occurred. Now people are coping with the aftermath.
African Americans account for nearly 50% of all new AIDS cases. Unless decisive measures are taken the devastation of the wreckage will increase.
With predictions that by 2005 African Americans will account for 60% of all U.S. AIDS cases, a live broadcast by BET with any team of experts to share the stage with Jackson is timely.
Chicagoans Rae Lewis-Thornton ( a national AIDS spokesperson-educator ) , and Dr. Lisa Henry-Reid ( the CORE Center's Chair of Adolescent Medicine ) were on the panel. Dr. Helene Gayle ( director of the National Center for HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control ) ; Sandra Thurman ( director of the White House Office of National AIDS policy ) ; Anita Estelle ( a lobbyist ) ; and Debra Fraser-Howe ( CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS ) were also on the panel.
Dr. Helene Gayle moved beyond the territory of labels when she said nearly a quarter of men who tell surveyors they are heterosexual have sex with other men. Gayle said heretofore that a stigma has been driving men underground. The African American community needs to openly discuss its diversities of sexual orientation, she said.
Not only was the issue of sexual orientation raised, so were related issues of the nation's correctional, drug, and other social policies. Anita Estelle bluntly stated it would be malpractice to make the evening's discussion the only one that took place on the issue of AIDS in the Black community.
The evening ended with Jackson exhorting the audience to come down in front if they wanted to get tested for HIV. A large group of people responded and assembled at the front as the closing credits rolled on the large monitor screens to either side of the podium.
Unfortunately, there were no HIV testing resources provided.
