Poverty. Racism. Violence. Slavery. Repatriation. Considering the tremendous adversity blacks and Latinos have struggled to surmount in this country, it seems impossible we would actually add weight to our own burdens or stifle the survival of our own people. But we do, and ironically, we use hatred and discrimination as the vehicle to do so.
In the ’80s and ’90s we watched toy soldiers run around our urban streets, killing their own people in the name of territory and brotherhood. But the complexities of gang mentality are too deep and rooted in socioeconomic factors to easily explain or ameliorate. Luckily, the problem has solved itself — in a way.
Today we choose a much simpler form of suicide. It’s called homophobia, and it runs rampant throughout both communities. This blatant form of hatred is directly responsible for the rising number of AIDS victims, especially victims of color.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that, for the first time, AIDS cases among Latino and black gay men have outnumbered those among gay whites. The study, which focused on men who have sex with men, showed that 51 percent of the men with AIDS were either black or Latino, a number that increased from 31 percent in 1989. In the same timeframe, AIDS victims in the white gay male group declined from 69 to 48 percent. We’re also being infected at younger ages than our white counterparts.
Our enduring stigmas against homosexuality have everything to do with these numbers. The more we demonize homosexuality, the less likely a gay man is to come out. If a man is not allowed to be openly comfortable with his sexuality, his sex life tends to be less healthy or safe than that of a heterosexual.
The phenomenon is similar for many young, sexually active Latino women (most of whom grow up in stringent Catholic homes): The thought and effort it takes to put on a condom gives the person time to rethink a decision they’ve been taught to believe is wrong. At the same time, actually buying or using protection is a form of giving him or herself permission to commit an act they view as deviant. Instead, they allow themselves to get caught up in the moment, refuse to acknowledge their sex act by protecting it and worry about the guilt and consequences later.
A survey of 8,780 HIV-positive men supports this theory. It found that one in six Latino men and one in four black men identify themselves as heterosexual, even though they have sex with other men. Many of these men also have sex with their wives and girlfriends. Although sexual identification is not always definitive, there is clearly a problem within our groups.
For far too long, both the black and Latino communities have tolerated and even promoted the homophobic attitudes inherited from our parents, bought into the perpetual mindset of machismo and blindly accepted religious justification for hatred. Of course people of all colors should fight homophobia, but it’s a damn shame when people who have experienced firsthand the dehumanizing effects of discrimination and hatred choose to impose that cruelty on another human being.
