A Key Way To End HIV In US: Stop Medical Racism Against Black Women

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1397069

I was struck by this passage:

“To address life context, E-WORTH is interwoven with Afrocentric themes of trauma and resiliency. These draw on Black Americans’ historical and lived experiences, from slavery to Jim Crow to the mass incarceration of Black individuals. Multimedia sequences in the sessions are intentionally infused with conversations about historical oppression, race and culture as well as systemic issues such as the overpolicing of Black communities and disproportionate sentencing laws.”

It sounds like you’re training poorly-educated women to perceive themselves as victims of impersonal historical forces that they cannot possibly overcome. How does this help their health?

I mean, kudos for giving them condoms, but this racial grievance identity stuff seems counterproductive to the cause.

Or, the passage that strikes you as racial grievance might rather indicate an empathic joining, allowing the recipients to begin to feel they are not crazy after all, as the systems meant to support them ignore them in ways that suggest incapacity.

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" Addressing Racism Against Black Women In Health Care Is Key To Ending The US HIV Epidemic"

Indeed. And people wonder why RonJohn came up with this shit to say?

Yes, white supremacist Christian nationalists are still mad that AIDS got reined in and didn’t kill as many LGBTQ and POC as they had hoped it would.

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Man wasn’t supposed to be able to overcome “God’s Scourge.” If Man keeps running up the score against God, it ends up making Him (him?) seem pretty weak and ineffectual.

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You’re accepting the author’s premise uncritically–that these women don’t get holistic care because they’re black. But the more likely explanation is that they don’t receive holistic care because they live in the US, where such care is uncommon even for those of us with good insurance. And this is exacerbated because they are poor. Race is a distant runner-up in the list of relevant IVs here. The entire article smells of single IV thinking.

Or maybe encouraging them to become doctors instead of perpetuating the current under-representation at that level of the medical profession? And how do you suppose this under-representation has been perpetuated in the first place? Pure accident?

WTF are you talking about? Seems like you don’t believe that there is systemic racism in the US. Is that your position?

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Clearly the goals of the Great Society movement haven’t been achieved so far. And, in fact, given the current political climate and general ignorance, both intellectual and generally racist, from the GOP and other nincompoops, it’s actually becoming worse for some time now.

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Read it again, slowly. Look up any words you don’t understand in a dictionary.

Maybe you could just answer my question: Do you or don’t you believe there is systemic racism in the United States?

Are you capable of understanding multivariate causation?

Are you capable of answering a basic question other than with rhetorical pablum?

Are you?

Still waiting…guess you can’t.

Oh, I dunno. …Jehovah seems to be doing pretty well with the rightwing. First he drives them mad and then he sends them Covid. and then he sends them their preferred Covid cures.

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