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Prevention of Risky Sexual Behaviors Among African American Men

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Handbook of African American Health

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Abstract

Twenty years is a long time in the life of a preventable epidemic. In 1990 when HIV was infecting and AIDS was killing white gay and bisexual men and threatening the general public, there was public concern about the disease and federal research and prevention dollars flowed. It was well established that HIV was spread primarily through sexual intercourse without barrier protection such as condoms. “Risky sex” occurred between men and between men and women. By 2000, HIV infection rates and deaths due to AIDS were in decline among White men in AIDS epi-centers, but continued among African Americans. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has not only continued its course among Blacks but also concentrated among black men and in black communities and has become yet another affliction among Blacks. At the very same time, public attention and urgency to the AIDS epidemic has waned and prevention dollars have been largely replaced by funding of clinical trials of new drugs. If you are Black and poor, there are now, in fact, more incentives to get infected with HIV to get social support through a clinical trial then to avoid getting infected in the first place. Public and government indifference to disease among Blacks but a willingness at the same time to use them in research are precisely the same reactions to disproportionate rates of yellow fever, typhus, syphilis, and tuberculosis among Blacks during Jim Crow segregation in the early twentieth century (McBride, 1991).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the substantive assistance of John Peterson and Anthony Lemelle.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Social Services, California State University, East Bay, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Benjamin P. Bowser

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  1. Benjamin P. Bowser
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Correspondence to Benjamin P. Bowser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, Tenth Ave. 899, New York, 10019, New York, USA

    Anthony J. Lemelle

  2. , Sociology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State, Blacksburg, 24061, USA

    Wornie Reed

  3. , Sociology and Criminal Justice, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, 30314, Georgia, USA

    Sandra Taylor

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Bowser, B.P. (2011). Prevention of Risky Sexual Behaviors Among African American Men. In: Lemelle, A., Reed, W., Taylor, S. (eds) Handbook of African American Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9616-9_12

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