A World AIDS Day Special: Shine a Light on It: Black Women, HIV & its Impact

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family. It’s your favorite queer radio personality. Anna [00:00:30] Deshaun, and this is Queer News. Your favorite weekly news pod where race and sexuality meet politics, culture, and entertainment. And when we look at Black women, and we are normalized as we can take on anything, then we’re also put to the side.

That’s where we start to really look into why HIV is impacting Black women. Because for the first time in 40 years, [00:01:00] we’re centering ourselves. As we need to be taken care of, we’re putting the oxygen mask on ourselves for the first time. This, this right here is what I want to talk about as we commemorate world AIDS day.

Black women, black women and HIV are not two phrases we hear together very often, but I want to dig into it today. Okay. But before I do the [00:01:30] merch stores here, the merch. store is here. It has been such a long time coming. So many people over the years have asked, which is a real blessing. Because that means our brands, right?

The brands I’ve built. E3 Radio and The Qube means something to you. You relate to them. You love them. You feel like they represent you. And that means the world to me. [00:02:00] And on the merch store, I have included a limited edition commemorative ornament. Yes, that says family. And I’ve set it to have free shipping.

It’s free shipping. I’m, I’m eating the cost. Okay. So I hope that you all get this commemorative ornament. I hope it starts a new tradition for you and your family. Also, I think it is so cute. Okay. I designed it. I think it’s cute. And the goal for this merch store is to help support this work. I [00:02:30] need an assistant producer ASAP.

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now for our World AIDS Day special episode, shine a light on it. Black women, HIV and its impact. First, I want to give a special thanks to the Counter Narrative Project, which we all lovingly call CNP. Earlier this year, I was accepted into their three month narrative justice fellowship program, which aims to change public policy regarding HIV.

and HIV [00:03:30] criminalization by changing the narrative about black, gay, bisexual, queer men, and the larger black LGBTQIA plus community. At CNP, one thing they believe is bad policy is shaped by bad narratives, and they are committed to shifting the narrative through storytelling. Okay. I’m honored. They said yes to me and my proposal to discuss the experience.

Of black women impacted by HIV. Thank you, CNP. [00:04:00] I began my journey of wanting to learn more about HIV in June of 2022. When the Q Crew, that’s right, the Q Crew of the Queer News Podcast funded me to cover the 35th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in San Francisco, the financial gifts of the Q Crew afforded me the opportunity to see the quilt up close and personal for the very first time.

Ronald N. When I was on [00:04:30] the lawn in San Francisco walking in the aisles of the quilt, and I do mean aisles, as there were 350 blocks laid out, which represented 3, 000 panels, 3, 000 stories, of people who have lost their lives due to complications associated to HIV AIDS. And listening to the soundtrack of the names being read and understanding that the average age of a person on the quilt is [00:05:00] 33.

Understanding that each panel quilt is six by three, roughly the size of a coffin. Telling a story of remembrance through art and words. There was a deep emotional response that came over my entire body. Tears just began to drop because when you walk through a display of the AIDS quilt, you understand it is more than just the largest community arts project ever [00:05:30] in the world.

You understand that it transcends needle and thread as the manager of the call my name project. Jada Harris likes to say there is quilt magic. And I know this for sure, because I have experienced it. Now, let me tell you a little about the call my name project. This project exists in an effort to honor the black and brown lives lost to HIV AIDS.

And I could explain [00:06:00] it, but I think it’s way better. There always. It’s coming from Jada herself. Take a listen, family. Call My Name is a program that’s specifically designed to increase the number of African American people on the quilt in all marginalized communities, black and brown people. Now, you put the quilt end to end, it’s 56.

39. How many of you think it’s for [00:06:30] black folks? Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Less than a month. That’s why we want to call our names because it’s our tradition. This is what we do as people. We call the names Bardet. Because they know, we know that they are also living in the spirit world. Yes. Right? That’s what we do. We call the names and what do we do in our communities? We quilt.

She’s right. We pour libations. We have altars. We honor our ancestors. We [00:07:00] quilt. And the call my name project was the magnet that really drew me in to cover the AIDS quilt display in San Francisco. And through funding from Gilead sciences, the quilt actually began to travel the South. This tour was called change the pattern and it kicked off in Jackson, Mississippi at the Mississippi civil rights museum.

And guess who was there? That’s right, I was there, but that wasn’t the major guest. I had the [00:07:30] opportunity and truly the privilege to travel alongside the quilt in a few places and I just learned so much just by asking questions, by reading, by taking in the experience. Now for real though, I want you to guess who you think was also in Jackson, Mississippi for this kickoff.

Well, fresh off her first Emmy win. Cheryl Lee Ralph showed up. I got to meet the legend [00:08:00] herself, and it was such an honor. Now, you know, Cheryl Lee Ralph has been an advocate for HIV AIDS for more than 30 years, with her organization, The Divas Foundation. She walked to the mic With her very own quilt panel, she curated behind her of those she’d lost and she did this.

We’ll be back right after this quick break. Need health insurance? It’s open [00:08:30] enrollment for the Get Covered Illinois Marketplace. Our navigators will help you enroll in a health plan and you could qualify for financial help. Visit, get covered illinois.gov to enroll by December 15th for coverage starting January 1st.

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We have a platform. You should use it. I am an endangered species, but I sing no victim song. I am a woman. [00:09:30] I am an artist. I am an artist. And I know

where my voice.

Ooh, can we talk about the chills and y’all know she [00:10:00] wasn’t done right because deep down I think she is a preacher. So take a listen to this. You see what you all don’t realize is 33 years ago when I started talking this talk and walking this walk, people told me I was stupid. They told me I was stupid.

They told me to shut up. They told me God would find no [00:10:30] favor in me because I spend too much time talking about those people.

And a little church girl in me said, who are those people? Because there, but for the grace of God go I. That’s it, thank you, and when they said. You must be one of [00:11:00] them. And I said, Oh, I am absolutely a human being. And it was very difficult. And then launching divas at a time when people were not paying attention to people of color and this disease.

You heard it said it was known classified as a gay white man’s disease. [00:11:30] But from day one, I saw black folks getting sick. and die. And they weren’t just black gay people. They were black, gay, gay and straight people. They were not just men. They were men and women. That wasn’t just one section of our community that was hit from day one.

It was all. But every doggone year we raised our [00:12:00] voices to say this is a black and brown people’s problem. This is a woman’s problem. This is a child’s problem. Who can say it better than Cheryl Lee Ralph? And what really resonates with me today in this moment is that overall, black, gay, bisexual, and queer men still make up the The most impacted by HIV.

But when it comes to women, amongst women, black women are the most impacted. So [00:12:30] HIV is a black woman’s problem, which makes it my problem. And I hope after you hear more of the story. You’ll feel like it’s part of your problem too.

On February 20th, 2024, we lost a Ashiro in the movement of HIV AIDS awareness. [00:13:00] When Hadeeah Broadbent passed away, I can remember seeing Hadeeah on television, talking about being born with HIV. I remember her so vividly because she looked like me. She looked like me. She was always so honest, so open, so vulnerable.

So willing to educate. She was a bright light who made the sacrifice of living her life out loud. [00:13:30] First off, it’s not easy being a public figure, let alone a public figure living with a disease that comes with so much stigma and ignorance. We remember Hadea today. And I ask you, can you name one black woman living with HIV today?

Do any public figures come to mind? Oh, wait, how about this? How about this? Can we [00:14:00] think of any public figures that are talking about wearing condoms? Getting tested. I mean, in the 90s, you wouldn’t even have a problem listing Arthur Ashe, Sylvester, Eazy E, Howard Rollins, Salt N Pepa, Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby, Let’s Talk About You and Me.

I mean, TLC with Waterfalls. Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the You know what I’m saying. [00:14:30] The word was out, okay? Okay? The word was out. There was a movement. To educate folks in the community about HIV. And let me tell you, if no one came to mind today, I can help a little, just a little. I’m Magic Johnson is still out here thriving, right?

We have Ray Lewis Thornton, who’s been an advocate for decades. We have Billy Porter, but is that it? [00:15:00] I can’t think of any others. Even if there are a few more that I can’t think of right now in this moment, isn’t this part of the problem? Representation matters, and in the age of influencers and social media, if your favorite person isn’t talking about an issue, and you don’t have a personal connection to it, you probably aren’t thinking about it.

And this is something we all need to be thinking about. [00:15:30] While doing my research, I came upon the Ask the HIV Doc video series from Greater Than HIV, which features top HIV doctors providing answers to commonly asked questions about HIV prevention, testing, and treatment. One of the questions posed was, why are black women at higher risk for HIV?

Now, if I ask you that question, what would your answer be? It might be the old tale of down low men, but [00:16:00] that’s old. Okay. And it’s really just not that simple. Dr. Charlene Flash shared in response to this question. She said, In the United States, as quiet as it’s kept, one in five HIV diagnoses actually occurs amongst women.

One in five, y’all. Okay? She goes on to say, and the majority of those women are black women. What the data shows us is that when you compare black women and white women who are living with HIV, the black women who are [00:16:30] diagnosed with HIV actually have fewer sexual partners, are more likely to use condoms, And yet are more likely to become diagnosed with HIV because there’s more HIV in the communities in which they’re having sex.

Nobody wants to be a statistic, right? You want to be a person. If you’re in a community where there’s a lot of HIV, you don’t know it. She goes on to say, If we keep thinking, of HIV is something that only happens in those [00:17:00] communities, then we don’t get tested because you’ll say, Oh, it’s not me. I don’t fit that bill.

I’m not that person. So I don’t need to get tested. Not because you didn’t make all the right choices, but because you allowed the story to stop you from getting tested. Ooh, Dr. Charlene flash.

And when I sat back and really began to think about what Dr. Flash was saying, it [00:17:30] stopped me and reminded me of two conversations I had as we prepared for our first Qube original podcast, Black HIV in the South. How did we get here? The first conversation that came to mind was with Daphina Ward, the executive director of the Southern AIDS Coalition.

Here what she had to say about the rates of HIV and this high concentration that Dr. Flash was talking about. We know that most people living with HIV [00:18:00] in the U. S. that are black and brown live in the South. We know that the majority of new HIV diagnoses happens in the South. We know that most Southern states have not expanded Medicaid.

Most Southern states do not have comprehensive sexual health education in our schools. Most Southern states are on the list of the states with the highest rates of poverty and lowest rates of employment and lowest rates of housing. There’s just all these things. And so when I talk about. HIV in the context [00:18:30] of the South, whenever I present, I always start with this map from 1908.

And back in 1908, the NAACP, um, hired cartographers, map makers, to show us the rates of lynching in every state in the country. So it’s a really remarkable map that goes from lightest to darkest, and the darker states have the highest rates of lynching in those, you know, that century leading up to 1908.

And if you layer that map with the HIV map. As far as [00:19:00] rates of HIV, it’s the same math. So it’s like, we can’t have these conversations about why HIV in the South, why is it so bad, until we talk about systemic racism, until we talk about the fact that this was the plan from the beginning. Daphina’s words are just so piercing because this reminds me how interconnected everything is.

How systemic it all is. The next conversation that came to mind for me was an interview that I did with Jimmy Gibbs, an HIV [00:19:30] advocate and ordained minister. His conversation came to mind because we talked about the role women played at the beginning of the HIV crisis in the eighties, how this concentration and devastation and stigma made it impossible for people to get the care they needed and how lesbians.

Stepped up and provided support here. What Jimmy had to say, but let me tell you back then we all joined forces with [00:20:00] our lesbian sisters. We called them sister. We called a mother. We didn’t have any other name, but to call them what they did. They were our mothers. Whether or not they showed up in jeans and t shirts, whether some wore dresses, whether some were feminine, whether some were whatever you want to call it across the rainbow.

Those women came and they brought food because their mommas taught them how to cook. [00:20:30] And they brought something that we couldn’t provide, which is motherly love. Oh, there’s something about a woman’s love. That you can not get over. And those women came to work. They came home from their jobs. Some took ship work where one could work one 12 hour shift.

The other one would come in and sleep a little bit and still get up and provide care for our boys.[00:21:00]

We don’t talk about it as much as we used to. But we know that we made a difference because we called upon our lesbian siblings who provided that motherly care because we told them, we said, Hey, you know, we got guys going to be released from the hospital. They have nowhere to go and they open their arms and welcomed them in.

No one wants to talk about that. That was a hard time. Now, with that, I’m wondering, where [00:21:30] is the support for women today? And let me shine a light on some of the stats to help provide some context on all of this. The CDC estimates that as of 2019, about 1. 2 million people in the U. S. are living with HIV.

In 2019, Black people accounted for 13 percent of the U. S. population, but 40 percent of people living with HIV? Make it make sense. In all of this, Black women continue to be [00:22:00] disproportionately impacted by HIV, accounting for nearly 60 percent of new HIV diagnoses in the U. S. amongst women, despite making up less than 15 percent of the female population.

Come on, y’all. That makes sense for black women in particular, 91 percent of these new HIV diagnoses were attributed to heterosexual contact. This is the highest compared to women of all other races and ethnicities [00:22:30] family in a nutshell, black women are more likely to be diagnosed. Which puts them at more risk and no one is talking about it.

I was reading this article titled why black women face barriers to accessing prep and HIV preventing drug. Now this article is sharing a story of a black woman named Alexis, who after attending a sexual health education class decided she wanted to get on prep. [00:23:00] Logically her first stop. was to her OB GYN’s office for a prescription.

She was met by the medical assistant who had not heard of PrEP. and seemed uncomfortable even talking about it. Now, Alexis went on to say that her provider had heard of PrEP, but didn’t feel confident prescribing it. At the time the article was published, she was still looking for a provider to write her a prescription.

I also think it’s important to note here that Alexis is a nurse [00:23:30] herself, so she’s familiar with the systems more than the average person. Now, what if this was a scared black woman going to get help, and this was the response they received? Do you think they’d go back? Most likely not, as it probably took a lot for them to walk into that doctor’s office.

They probably have to take off work and ask for this information in the first place. [00:24:00] Now, another frustration that I read about in doing my research has been that pharma companies haven’t been testing these drugs with cis black women in mind. Let me give you an example. The FDA has approved three drugs for use.

as PrEP. The pills Descovy and Truvada, which you’ve probably heard of because there are tons of commercials about them. And then there’s the injectable aptitude. Descovy was approved [00:24:30] for men and trans women who have sex with men, but wasn’t tested on people assigned female at birth. This was a point of major frustration, as you can imagine, for many HIV researchers and advocates.

If we have This rising population of folks, why aren’t they being prioritized in the research? Gilead Sciences, the company that makes Dyscovee, later announced it would conduct a trial focused on the drug’s use among cisgender women. The [00:25:00] company said that the study is ongoing and the data is expected to be released in late 2024.

The CDC for its part in early 2023 announced an 8 million grant to fund studies on strategies to increase PrEP uptake among black cisgender women. So where systems have failed over and over again, advocates have been making progress to shift the focus and remind folks that black cis women are being [00:25:30] impacted too.

And let me digress because I’m talking about PrEP. And maybe you don’t even know what PrEP is. PrEP stands for pre exposure prophylaxis. It’s a medicine when it’s taken as prescribed is crazy, highly effective for preventing HIV. And then there is PEP post exposure prophylaxis, which is a medicine that you can take if you believe you’ve been exposed to HIV.

If you take it, within the [00:26:00] allotted timeframe. Let me tell y’all, medicine has come a long way, but access to that medicine is still very much so a work in progress. One advocate that I got to talk with about this impact is Deidre Speaks. Deidre Speaks is the national programs and strategic CERO project.

She’s also a public health, social media influencer. Advocate, [00:26:30] resource provider, and a mother of two womb nuggets, as she puts it. She’s also a friend, a sister, someone I can talk to and learn so much from, and, and she agreed to talk with me about her journey as a cis black woman living with HIV for 23 years.

Deidre talks about her own journey. We talk about why, why Black women are being so impacted and where Black women are [00:27:00] finding support. Here’s a tiny piece of what Deidre had to say to Black women. I want Black women to know that you are not a number. You are a woman, you are a person, and you are valuable.

You are beautiful. You are needed. You are all the things that the world needs. But even more importantly, it’s not even about what the world needs. The world needs you. You don’t need them. And that probably came out [00:27:30] wrong, but I hope it came out right. Honestly, family, I think it came out exactly right. I hope you choose to share this with a friend.

Now y’all know I always end the podcast with the word and this episode series will be no different. So for today’s word, it’s coming from Cheryl Lee Ralph. And a song that was born during that change, the pattern week we talked about earlier in Mississippi, the song was led by [00:28:00] HIV advocate LS. Now, if you know the song, sing along or hum to yourself, if you out here in these streets, and if you don’t know the song, you will, by the time it ends.

Okay. And so family until part two, peace was okay. When black folks would drop in dead of this disease, it was so okay. They didn’t want to talk about it. Was so okay, they didn’t want to remember their families. It was so [00:28:30] okay. It was so accepted. Change. The. Pattern. Change. The way we think change the way we love ourselves.

Ready to change the pattern. Oh, I woke up this morning with my mind [00:29:00] ready to change the pattern. If[00:29:30]

you’ve enjoyed what you heard, rate and review us inside your favorite podcasting app. This podcast is written and produced by me, Anna Deshaun. Podcast editing by Ryan Woodhull and brought to you by E3 radio and distributed on the Qube. We are Queer News Done Right.