The streets cultivate and perfect the image of a mindless monster, the tough guy, the Lone Ranger in the ghetto. The code of the streets defines manhood in ways that desensitize young men to their own humanity and that of their people. On the other hand, the church rejects the code of the streets - at least on the surface it does. The position of the black church is complicated because it has been socially marginalized, segregated, relegated to a socio-economically unequal status in society. Then there are the politicians.
Black politicians are preachers in the secular arena.
They try to combine streets with church - which means they often combine the weaknesses and intolerance of both worlds. All three realms are proudly black. Each invokes blackness to justify its refusal to deal with the meaning of AIDS and the relationship of AIDS to what it means to be black in America. That's a deep and critical irony. Rather than a united confrontation with the problem, in our public stances we have turned to banishment of the sufferers, even to falsification of the facts.