Black Subjectivity as “Autocartography” in the Work of Lyle Ashton Harris B. E. Myers In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself. —Frantz Fanon An artist must be free to choose what he does certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. —Langston Hughes1 How […]

A fourth impediment to our efforts to grapple with AIDS is the association of the disease with drug abuse. We as a community have a complex relationship with illicit drugs, a relationship that often para­lyzes us. On the one hand, blacks are scared to even admit the dimen­sions of the problem for fear that we […]

A third reason the black community has been slow in responding to AIDS is that many of us do not want to be associated with what is widely perceived as a gay disease. More than once I have heard of black parents readily volunteering, so as to forestall even more em­barrassing speculation, that their HIV-infected […]

It is difficult to overemphasize the extent to which the black com­munity, qua community, reflexively responds with suspicion and mistrust to what are perceived as "white" initiatives. Just as Jews ad­monish each other to "never forget," we do not wish to forget the bit­ter lessons we have been taught since being brought to these shores. […]

Early on in the AIDS epidemic, and continuing for some time, scientists, the press, and the public seemed curiously fixated on the origins of the virus associated with AIDS. From the perspective of the black community, interest in HIV’s possible African roots seemed insatiable. Article after article appeared, recirculating identical hy­potheses. The discovery of a […]

Already, a set of stock explanations for the Black community’s re­luctance to address the AIDS crises has emerged. We are told that for too long the media have inaccurately portrayed AIDS as a dis­ease that almost exclusively afflicts white gay men,20 that for too long public health officals have failed to use media appropriate to […]

Unquestionably, AIDS has hit the black community hard. We are los­ing our sons and daughters at an alarming rate. Twenty-five percent of all persons with AIDS in the United States are African-American.2 Among the newly diagnosed, the figure exceeds 36 percent.3 In many Eastern cities, blacks and Latinos constitute a majority of the AIDS cases.4 […]

Harlon L. Dalton MY AMBITION IN the pages that follow is to account for why we African-Americans have been reluctant to "own" the AIDS epidemic, to acknowledge the devastating toll it is taking on our communities,1 and to take responsibility for altering its course. By the end, I hope to convince you that what may […]

To Be or Not to Be? Ron Simmons TOO OFTEN THE homophobia and heterosexism within the African American community force men to be the "hardest hard." They must nullify any feelings and emotions others may consider unmanly. To prove their manhood, they will often attack that which they fear in themselves. Amiri Baraka (born Everett […]

He Is No James Baldwin Huey P. Newton ELDRIDGE CLEAVER’S PRISON masterpiece, Soul on Ice,1 was a manifesto of its time. The book is riddled with powerful insights and contradictions typical of the transitional period of the 1960s; it is a link in that long chain of prison literature brought to its zenith in the […]