Our media is filled with gripping and deeply moving tales of death and anguish,
I remember sitting back watching commercials and about the spread of HIV/AIDS in
Africa. I can recall seeing the faces of starving children, stomachs terribly inflated, clearly malnourished. I
often responded with statements like “Oh, those poor people!” Though
sympathetic, I was still very ignorant of the disease in relation to my
community.
During my first year in high school, I
was asked to research and present a project that was important to me. Being a
student that showed interest in science, I chose to research something that
dealt with health. After several days of searching, I came across the topic of
HIV/AIDS. I found that most information alluded to the fact that HIV/AIDS was a
problem only in Africa.
Therefore, I gave a long heartfelt
speech discussing how Africa has been turned upside down by AIDS. I spoke of
children who were orphaned by the disease, I discussed the risk factors and I
even gave my audience a chance to join the fight against AIDS by providing
information about a variety of organizations of which they can become members.
At this point, I was convinced that HIV/AIDS was a virus affecting the
impoverished peoples of Africa.
During my junior year, a special
edition of the popular ABC show “Primetime” titled “Out Of Control: AIDS in
Black America, confronted me with a shocking reality. It was said that African
Americans, which make up nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population, were
accountable for over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV, in addition to that,
the infection rate in African Americans is eight times that of whites (2). With
newfound knowledge on the issue, I am now determined to figure out what this
means for the people in my area. Click below to see a clip from the
show 
