Paper One: Perceptions
MY PREDICTIONS
On the first day of class I was asked to take a guess of how many cumulative AIDS cases were in my hometown of Oakland, California. When I was asked this question I had no idea what the number could be. For as long as I can remember AIDS and HIV have always been talked about, it was just a disease I was always aware of, like cancer or diabetes. The difference was that I have never known someone afflicted with AIDS or HIV. To me AIDS always seemed like a disease that affected people in Africa or gay men and drug users in the 1980’s, I did not know there was a specific problem in Alameda County. Despite my lack of knowledge about AIDS in Oakland and Alameda County, I guessed that there would be relatively high amount of cases in the area because of high diversity, the large gay population and poverty in the Bay Area I guessed that there would be relatively high. I guessed 10,000 cumulative AIDS cases in Oakland and 1,000 cumulative cases in Piedmont, a significantly richer city that is completely surrounded by Oakland. For both cities my guesses were high. I guesses were higher than the actual number of cases because I was unaware of the population of my area and realistic national AIDS rates. I also guessed high when I was asked what percentage of cases were women, I guessed 35%. I guessed this number because I thought of AIDS as a disease that mainly affected men but I had heard that cases had recently increased in African-American women.
MY EDUCATION
Where I live, my parents and my schooling had a great affect on the numbers I guessed. I live in the lower part of the Oakland hills in an up and coming neighborhood near the border of Oakland and Berkeley. My family has always been very open and liberal in what we discussed at home. As an only child my parents treated me as another adult and openly talked to me about sex and STDs. But my parents were not my only education on sex and STDs, from a young age I was taught about sex and STDs in school. Because of the horrible public school system in Oakland, I went to small private schools my whole life. My elementary taught sex education but mainly focused on puberty and attraction to the opposite sex. It was not until my 7th grade science class that I first learned the specifics and science behind sex and STDs. In this class I learned for the first time the details of the AIDS epidemic, I learned about transmission, protection and the effect the disease was having on the world. Around this time I also completed a project on South Africa. Learning about the science of the epidemic and the social implications of the disease at the same time helped me see how AIDS have impacted Africa. This project on South Africa started my interest in international socio-political issues. In high school I continued taking sex education and health classes in my freshman and sophomore year. During my time in high school, I also learned about the AIDS epidemic in Africa I history or current events classes. Although my high school taught me a lot about the epidemic in Africa they did not teach me about the affect AIDS had in the U.S. or the Bay Area.
Most of the information I received about the local AIDS epidemic in the Bay Area is through the local news and newspapers. Because I receive news casts and newspapers from San Francisco, AIDS and HIV has been a well publicized topic in my area since the early 1980’s. The San Francisco Chronicle and The Oakland Tribune have consistently reported on Global AIDS Days, new developments in HIV testing, and new treatment options. The openness to report AIDS cases through out the Bay Area has helped spread awareness about the disease.
Not until the last decade have the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune begun to report about the specific AIDS issues in Alameda County. I used the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune’s websites to research the reporting of the disease in Alameda County. Within the last year the S.F. Chronicle has written seventy articles on the topic and the whole internet archives hold close to one thousand articles. The Oakland Tribune had a similar amount of articles. The majority of these articles commented on the AIDS epidemic with the African American community.
In 1998 article the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Alameda County was asking for a county wide state of emergency because the AIDS rate in the African American community had reached epidemic levels. This article went on to speculate why the disease had affected the community so harshly because of the stigma that was attached to AIDS in the African-American community. [3] Over the next decade, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Oakland Tribune published numerous articles that reported similar findings about the AIDS epidemic in the African-American community throughout Alameda County and especially in Oakland. It made front page news on June 4, 2001, in a report on the AIDS epidemic 20 years later the San Francisco Chronicle published that new AIDS cases show a change in the affected racial demographic.[4] It reported that African-Americans made up half of the new HIV cases in the United States. Five years later, on June 5, 2006, the epidemic in the African-American community made front page news again, when The San Francisco Chronicle reported about the denial of the disease within the African-American community.[5] Articles like these have tried to bring awareness to the African-American community in the Bay Area but it seems that the message has been unable to get through. Although awareness and support has increased HIV and AIDS are still spreading throughout the Bay Area and especially in Alameda County. Currently, Alameda County and Oakland are facing massive AIDS epidemics.
Earlier this year the local government of Oakland changed. The new mayor, Ronald Dellums, has made the AIDS epidemic and other health issues in Oakland one of his priorities. In early March, Mayor Dellums and AIDS activist Bono met and discussed, with other members of the community, the current epidemic in Oakland. Bono commented on the AIDS epidemic in Oakland, "We're at the epicenter here in East Oakland of a new rise of the AIDS epidemic in the United States," said Bono. "But I'd also say we're also at the epicenter of the resistance to that epidemic.”[9] Dellums and Bono called on churches to play a larger role in the resistance against the growing epidemic in Oakland.[9] They asked the church to help educate people on the disease and help break the stigma of the disease in the African American community.[9] In a continued effort to stop the AIDS epidemic in Oakland has appointed a health task force to help improve health care in general.[10] The new task force does solely target the AIDS epidemic but the task force it trying to create health care that attacks all sides of health issues in Oakland.[10] Hopefully with the new help and support of local government and celebrity AIDS activists Oakland can find a way to improve the AIDS epidemic throughout the city.