AIDS is a Black Disease!

[Phill Wison, founder and executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, is now a blogger on AOL's Black Voices Blogs - taking over "AIDS - 25 Years & Counting" - and this is his first post!]

A while ago when I was staffing a booth at the Black Philanthropy conference in Washington, D.C. a young woman approached the booth. "That is sooo wrong." She said. "Excuse me?" I replied. "That's not true," she said, pointing at the slogan behind me in bold red letters, AIDS is a Black Disease! "Black people are not the only ones getting AIDS. Putting things like that out there just further stigmatizes us, and that's the last thing we need.

I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Phill Wilson. I'm the executive director of the Black AIDS Institute and I've been living with HIV for 26 years. Over the next few months I am going to be sitting in for Angela Bronner (BV's original AIDS blogger) while she is out on maternity leave. I'm very excited to be joining the Black Voices community. I'm looking forward to being a part of this dialogue about AIDS in our community.

I'd like for you to think of this blog as the 'Everything you ever wanted to know about HIV/AIDS but was afraid to ask' blog. I plan to talk about my own experience and the experiences of my family and friends. We'll look at the latest information on AIDS prevention, care, treatment and research.

And of course, no conversation about AIDS would be complete without thoroughly exploring the policy and politics of the epidemic. After all, I hear there is a presidential election coming up. There are a gazillion people vying for the job. Does anyone know what their plans are to end the AIDS epidemic in our community? Not to contain it or minimize it, but to end it? I think we should find out. What do you think?

AIDS in America today is a Black disease. Of course it's not just a Black disease, but, it IS a Black disease. No matter what lens you use -- gender, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status, level of education, region of the country where you live -- Black people bear the brunt of the AIDS epidemic in America today. Nobody wants to talk about that, nobody wants to own that and that silence is killing us.

Read the rest.