11: Racism, HIV, and AIDS - Level Two

Welcome back to Six Minute Sex Ed, the podcast that helps families talk about sex and relationships. My name’s Kim Cavill. I’m a sex education teacher and I’m so glad you’re back! I make this podcast for busy families to listen to together. Listen together, then talk about it. For more info about me and how this podcast works, check out my website //www.teaandintimacy.com/ This episode is Level Two, which means great for more mature listeners, especially families with teenagers. Today we're going to talk about racism, HIV, and AIDS. In every class I teach, students ask me if HIV came from people in Africa having sex with monkeys. That's not just wrong, it's racist. To understand why it's racist, we need to go back in time to the USA in the 1980s. People sometimes say that HIV started in the 1980s in the US, but this was just when people first became aware of HIV. In 1981, a few cases of rare diseases were being reported among gay men in New York and California. No one knew why these diseases and opportunistic infections were spreading, but they figured there must be a disease causing them. At first, the disease was called all sorts of insulting names relating to the word "gay", but by mid-1982 scientists realized the condition was also spreading among other populations. By September that year, the condition was finally named AIDS. Multiple presidential administrations ignored people’s suffering. George H.W. Bush famously said “its one of the few diseases where behavior matters,” which is obviously untrue and just an excuse to continue ignoring people’s suffering. Click this link to read about the activism people engaged in as a response: //www.actupny.org/video/ In 1983, the CDC listed four main at-risk groups, including partners of people with AIDS, people who inject drugs, hemophiliacs and people who have recently been to Haiti. The absence of reliable information, along with the government silence, inflated the panic and stigma surrounding the epidemic. Click on this link to read more: //onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01480.x People talked about the “4-H Club” at risk of AIDS: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. They believed it was a disease African monkeys had and that it transferred to humans because African humans had sex with monkeys and spread it around. That myth was born of homophobia and racism. If you want to know the true origins of HIV, click here to read the research: //www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/origin Homophobia, queer phobia, transphobia, and racism all still play a role in limiting testing, treatment, and funding for care today. Many of our present day ideas about HIV come from the HIV images that first appeared in the early 1980s. The lack of information and awareness, combined with outdated beliefs lead people to fear getting HIV. Click here to read more about how stigma limits healthcare and treatment: //www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/stigma-discrimination and check out NMAC, which fights stigma in HIV and AIDS: nmac.org Conversation starters: Now that you know one way that racism impacts sex education and public health policy, what are other possible ways you can think of? What does HIV and AIDS education look like in your community? What do the curriculum materials look like and who do they speak to? Thanks for listening. Come back next week for another episode! *Addendum* I am grateful a supportive listener called me in to specify that I’ve never experienced racial oppression. I have experienced other types of oppression, but that oppression is not the focus of this episode of the podcast. Thank you to my wonderful listeners to engaging and learning with me in real time.