Today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, a national HIV testing and treatment community mobilization initiative to encourage Black Americans to get educated, get tested, get involved, and get treated.
In observation of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we invite you to watch an online film screening of the groundbreaking 2012 documentary ENDGAME: AIDS in Black America.
“The film is about race in America as much as it is about HIV — how a virus has exploited our inability to deal with our problems around race,” says filmmaker Renata Simone. “In part I hoped to show how the big, abstract social issues come to rest on people every day, in the limited life choices they face. The story of HIV in black America is about the private consequences of the politics of race.”
In 2017, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that “although [Black Americans] represent only 12% of the U.S. population, [they] account for a much larger share of HIV diagnoses (43%), people estimated to be living with HIV disease (43%), and deaths among people with HIV (44%) than any other racial/ethnic group in the U.S.”
In our 30 years of providing free legal services to people with HIV, we have seen the percentage of our total client population that is Black Americans increase from 25% to 62%.
As we reflect on Black History Month and our 30 years of service to the community, we are mindful of how HIV has impacted and continues to disproportionately affect Black Americans.