The Black Church now understands there is a problem. AIDS is the leading killer of African American men between the ages of 25 and 44 and it's the second leading killer of African American women of the same age. What makes this news so heart-wrenching is that as African Americans we as a people have always risen in the face of adversity and have learned that with nothing we can still make a way when no way is apparent. Our tenacity speaks volumes about our survival here on this American soil after centuries of slavery, decades of lynching and years of racial profiling. In knowing this history and in seeing what African Americans have done in the decades I have been alive, African American apathy around the AIDS epidemic in black communities revolves mainly around shame and stigma associated with being queer.
Shame also allows for behaviors of denial, neglect, and abuse.
We not only live in these black communities, but we die in them as well because there are no AIDS outreach programs. The Black Church's intentional silence on the AIDS crisis is unconscionable since it is a church born out of struggle. The Black Church colludes in the death of our African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The Black Church's intentional silence on the AIDS crisis is unconscionable since it is a church born out of struggle and it has historically been the leading institution in the black community to see to the health and welfare of its people. And while the Black Church can argue that it stands on the literal word of God and therefore has justification to erect its homophobic stance based on biblical passages, the Black Church literally discards all damning racial references.