CHAPTER ONE: Intertwined Epidemics – Living in an Environment of Risk
It was, perhaps, the defining moment of 2004 for Black America. Entertainment giant Bill Cosby took to the podium at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and lashed into poor African Americans. In Cosby’s eyes, the civil rights movement’s work has been wasted, because the community’s “lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.” As proof, he cited repeated examples of the debased state of Black youth. “People putting their clothes on backwards: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong?” Cos asked, later answering, “The white man, he’s laughing.”
Cosby’s controversial remarks touched off a firestorm of debate within the Black community about the state of Black youth culture. Some argued he was scapegoating and—as Michael Eric Dyson pointed out in a follow-up book—that he was doing so while abusing the facts about things like drop-out rates and teen pregnancy.1 But few argued with the basic truths that drove Cosby’s frustrated outburst: Black youth are in a state of crisis
When we think of the multiple challenges African American youth face, many of our minds rightly turn to mass incarceration, failing public school systems and an economy without living wage jobs. Clearly, our community’s young people are disproportionately affected by these and other social ills. Together, they dim our children’s horizons, limit their opportunities and, broadly, make their pursuit of happy, healthy lives more difficult—and in some cases impossibly daunting.
But in the following pages we will highlight another side effect of this broad crisis that we have too often overlooked. Ultimately, these collected forces have added up to make Black youth the new face of AIDS in America.