The Root has an exclusive with Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett who wrote on HIV/AIDS in the black community:
Conclusive research shows that African Americans do not engage in riskier behaviors than other Americans. So why are HIV rates so high in our communities? One main reason is the lack of access to health care. As many as 22 percent of African Americans with HIV do not know that they have the virus. Of new infections among youths, 60 percent are among black Americans, and more than half of all HIV-positive youths were unaware of their infection.
It seems that the media arm of the CDC has been drinking from the same tainted trough as Jarrett. But let’s look at the numbers compiled by the CDC in their most recent health statistics report:
Whatever the causes might be, it is clear from this data that blacks engage in riskier sexual behavior than whites and Hispanics. This isn’t to pile on blacks; it’s just a factual rebuttal to Jarrett’s false statement. To note: there is bound to be overlap in some of those categories. Many of the people who have had sex with more than five opposite sex partners are going to be included in the “sex for money or drugs” category.
Blacks also have a higher number of lifetime sex partners on average than whites or Hispanics. According to the US Census Bureau 30% of blacks have had more than 15 lifetime partners compared to 20.9% of whites and 19.1% of Hispanics (and some quick analysis by Half Sigma)
Jarrett doesn’t even have the wherewithal to couch higher rates of sexual risk-taking among blacks in other confounding variables like poverty or education. That’s how other outcome gaps are usually explained away: “black people take more sexual risks because they are poorer or less educated.” But Jarrett outkicks her coverage.
There’s also the genetic argument. From Mother Jones:
New research shows that Africans and African-Americans bear a gene variant that helps protect them from malaria, but also makes them more vulnerable to HIV infection. The variant increases susceptability to HIV by 40 percent, says the San Francisco Chronicle.
The genetic trait is found in 90 percent of Africans and 60 percent of African-Americans. Thus far, it has protected against malaria by disabling a protein that some strains of malaria use to enter red blood cells. However, that same protein that’s disabled in Africans to prevent malaria can actually protect against HIV by soaking up virus cells before they can invade white blood cells. With this sponge-like protein disabled, Africans lose a key pre-infection barrier.
This seems pretty commonsensical. It is one reason (of other possibilities) that among the poorest countries in the world, it is those in Africa that have the highest rates of HIV infection. Ignoring these genetic differences causes health organizations to freak out and call for policies like universal male circumcision that might benefit Africans and other blacks but are less effective for other races.
The best thing for someone in Jarrett’s/Obama’s/any politician’s shoes is to call for more money to be thrown at the problem. Keeping the focus on institutional rather than personal failures or on just plain mean old Mother Nature is not a winner for pols.
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Nice job refuting the lib narrative. This is an entirely preventable disease, so I do not get why access to health care would help unless it referred to condoms or the speaker wants you to think about the poor not having access to health care.
Several years ago, advocates said that one of the reasons why blacks got herpes at higher rates was that the black community had herpes at higher rates. The effect was the cause, which made no sense.
Your practice of bringing data to the analysis sets you above the other writers in this sphere.
Interesting use of the phrase, “media arm of the CDC.” So true. CDC collects data, and then routinely analyses it with a “more resources for minorities” conclusion EXCEPT with respect to suicides. White men die of suicide more than any other demographic, but no CDC call to bring more resources to the problem.
Must be nice for Obama and his cronies to just lie whenever they want and never get called on it by anyone in the msm. Of course blacks have riskier sexual behaviors- any idea what goes on in those tenements? Tons of brothers are on the DL. The most recent being the unintentional outing of Darnell Dockett by Chris Rix. Funny story- google it.
“Conclusive research shows that African Americans do not engage in riskier behaviors than other Americans.”
True so far as it goes, They engage in the same risky behaviors as other groups. The unstated qualifier is that they engage in said risky behaviors much more often.
“Conclusive research…”
Apparently, research is conclusive when it delivers the desired conclusion.
She should have called it “conclusory research” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conclusory
How would going to a doctor prevent someone from getting HIV?
Nice numbers-based rebuttal to the usual fact-free liberal narrative. The stuff concerning blacks not knowing about their HIV infections because of “lack of access to health care” is also baloney. Most county health departments offer free, anonymous HIV testing. So anyone who wants to know his or her HIV status can easily find out, and for free. But this fact also doesn’t fit Jarrett’s BS-laden spiel.
“True so far as it goes, They engage in the same risky behaviors as other groups. The unstated qualifier is that they engage in said risky behaviors much more often.”
Yep. It’s yet another example of how they lie by telling the (incomplete) truth. Politicians and lawyers are masters of this.
The Leftoid Elite are performing the traditional time-honed ritual of the equivalent of a child sticking it’s fingers in it’s ears and screaming at the top of it’s lungs for more ice cream.
“Interesting use of the phrase, “media arm of the CDC.” So true. CDC collects data, and then routinely analyses it with a “more resources for minorities” conclusion EXCEPT with respect to suicides. White men die of suicide more than any other demographic, but no CDC call to bring more resources to the problem.”
Yes, and the gay male population has had so many repeated infections of gonorrhea that the bug has evolved resistance to our class of antibiotics that used to treat it. It is now like MRSA.
However, notice how quiet the news has been about this. Have you even seen it discussed how network or cable news? The CDC has gone about its instructions to doctors rather quietly. AFter all, wouldn’t want the gay pop. to think they were being targeting for blame or anything.
Interesting that malaria resistance makes one more susceptible to HIV. I’d seen previous reports that Africans are more susceptible to HIV because bubonic plague never really spread to Africa, while plague resistance also increases HIV resistance.
I don’t see how not knowing if you are infected can be related to being poor. health clinics will give the test for free, and as many Libs/apologists will say “in gross numbers, there are way more whites on public assistance than African Americans”. So, by that metric there are far more poor whites who are in a position to not know they have HIV.
Now, I have read that Blacks may have a genetic vulnerability to the infection, but if they truly don’t know, it’s got to be because they don’t want to know. Blacks are human too. I suspect like any human they lie. I’m sure many DO know, or suspect, but lie about it because they don’t wish to be excluded from the sexual marry-go-round, or simply because it’s too difficult to come to terms with the death sentence HIV/AIDS really is