Wednesday
Oct062004
Wednesday, October 6, 2004 at 02:13PM
- Ignorant or Just Ignoring Minorities?
Last night during the Vice President debate
moderator Gwen Ifill queried, "I want to talk to you about AIDS, and
not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country,
where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more
likely to die of the disease than their [white] counterparts. What
should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this
epidemic?" Cheney
responded by stating "I had not heard those numbers with respect
to African American women.. . I was not aware that it was
that severe an epidemic there, because we have made progress in terms
of the overall rate." --- What, now he wants to play dumb? As with the
election fiascos in Florida, Republicans always want to
appear blameless. But uncounted votes were not solely the result of
"sloppiness", "malfunctions", "mistakes", "incompetence" or
"negligence". Black votes were not counted due to the purposeful,
deliberate conduct of Republicans intent on stealing an
election. Here, due to some benign oversight, Dick
Cheney wants to make believe that he is unaware of the disproportionate
impact that AIDS has had on Black Women and communities of color. Like the sun, the only
way he could pretend to ignore the AIDS reality is by looking away. He
knows. Dick Cheney is a demonstrated liar and he could care less about the well
being of Black Women or their families and the communities they come
from.
- Although African American and Latino women
represent less than a quarter of all women in the United States,
together they make up 80 percent of AIDS cases among women in the
United States, according to a report "Women and HIV/AIDS: Confronting
the Crisis"[ more
] - AIDS is the leading cause of death for African
Americans aged 25-34. Overall, while women have become a larger share
of AIDS cases in recent years, there are considerable racial
differences. Black women represented nearly a third (34 percent) of
newly-reported AIDS cases in 2001, compared to 15 percent for White
women. [more ]
- Full Report [here ]
- Transcript of the debate [here ]
- African Scholar: Aids Disease is "a weapon to wipe out Blacks" [more ]
- Since the mid-1980's, AIDS and HIV have silently devastated Black America [more]
- Cheney and Edwards flub debate's domestic AIDS question: It's the prisons, stupid. [more ]
